"Blueprint is a… heavily illustrated biography through buildings that Bhatia has designed across his career and plans that were built and not built. At the same time, it is a meditation on what separates architecture from mere design and building, on the life of buildings, on the graph from conception to realisation to eventual, inevitable ruin—the full life-cycle of the process of architectural conception.”
—Ruchir Joshi, India Today

How does one view the cumulative work of one’s life? For Gautam Bhatia, this publication is not merely a record of his personal or professional legacy, but rather a profound examination of his life in architecture.

According to Bhatia, architecture is, by its very nature, a practice of contradictions. It operates under influences from sociology, design, engineering, landscape, anthropology, urbanism and civic practice in order to impose its will on the nature of space. This volume brings together several of the author’s built works, from commercial and residential buildings to large public spaces, from places of leisure to places of worship. Together with detailed essays, drawings and photographs, Bhatia lays out his philosophy of design to illustrate how architecture became not just a conquest of the imagination but also of reality.

To physically will a building onto a site is an act of design, but to set it free onto a course of transformation is an act of architecture—into a realm beyond the present, where the space is not just made, but lives and dies. This volume demonstrates how Bhatia’s practice became not just a tool for solving problems but also a mode of personal expression, making this book an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of architecture alike.

Gautam Bhatia graduated in Fine Arts and went on to get a master’s degree in Architecture. A Delhi-based architect and sculptor, he has received several awards for his drawings and buildings and has also written extensively on architecture. Besides a biography of Laurie Baker, Bhatia is the author of Punjabi Baroque, Silent Spaces and Malaria Dreams—a trilogy that focuses on the cultural and social aspects of architecture. Among his other books are The Punchtantra, a rewriting of the original Panchatantra into contemporary folk tales, Comic Century, An Unreliable History of the 20th Century, Whitewash: The Tabloid that is about the India that isn’t, and Lie, a graphic novel, the result of collaboration with miniaturists. Two of his shows of drawings and sculpture—‘Looking through Walls’ and ‘The Good Life’—examined disparities between the professed goals of architecture and the public perception of building. Bhatia is currently working on ‘Future Building: An Exhibition of Ideas for the Future City’.