Vrutul Panchal traced the evolution of shading devices in Indian façades, from historic carved-stone screens through post-independence institutional buildings to contemporary high-performance glazing, arguing that glass and the shading device together now define the modern envelope.
Shading has been part of the Indian building envelope for centuries, long before it became a performance calculation. Vrutul Panchal set contemporary façade practice against that longer history, showing how the means of controlling sun and light have changed while the underlying problem has not.
Façade then
Historic Indian architecture treated the wall itself as a shading device. Carved-stone screens filtered light and air while carrying ornament, the stone tracery of the Sidi Sayed Mosque in Ahmedabad, dating from 1573, remains a reference point for how a perforated surface can shade an interior without closing it off. Forts and older civic buildings handled heat through mass, depth and small, deliberate openings.
The post-independence shift
After independence a period of rapid development prioritised cost-efficient, quickly executable buildings, while architects worked to integrate Indian principles into a context-responsive language. Ahmedabad's institutional buildings of that era, among them the Reserve Bank, Dena Bank, the State Bank of India and Newman's Hall, used expressed structure and projecting elements to shade the wall, with openings positioned in response to the sun's path across the day.
Glass and the shading device
In contemporary practice, Panchal argued, two components define the modern envelope: glass and the shading device. Where earlier buildings used clear or wired single glazing, as at the Aga Khan Academy, or double glazing with internal blinds, today's palette runs from recessed windows and horizontal light shelves to vertical fins, overhangs and full double-skin façades, each shaping how much sun reaches the glass.
Choosing the glass
The glazing itself now spans a long list, single, double and triple units, fritted and ceramic-printed glass, laminated, reflective, acoustic, switchable and low-carbon products among them. High-performance double-glazed units carry recent institutional projects such as IFSCA and the Common Central Secretariat. Panchal's closing point was one of restraint: design shading elements deliberately, and choose glass with minimal tint and reflection so that daylight still reaches the interior rather than being engineered out of it.
