You and your neighborhood: Charles Correa e il progetto dlla residenza collettiva

In 1955 Charles Correa exhibited at MIT in Boston his Master's Thesis, "You & Your Neighborhood", an animated short film aimed to investigate important issues related to contemporary living: why are modern neighborhoods inhospitable? How do the city and its parts grow? Can we reverse the cycle? Can we improve their environmental qualities? In that same year, at the age of 25, the young Correa finds himself facing a double crossroads: to dedicate himself to the art of cinema, a passion that will remain constant over the years and will lead him to other small productions, or to approach architecture? Continue his career in the United States or return to India, his home country? To these crucial questions, despite being very young, he will answer with a strong sense of responsibility, embracing architecture and responding to the urgent call of a nation at that time absolutely lacking in professionals. In 1956, at the age of 26, Correa returned to India: here his talent was able to express himself in the design of small exhibition pavilions and museum buildings created after winning some competitions. His great passion, however, will remain linked for the rest of his life to that first short film in which the young architect feels the urge to provide the Indian nation with a responsible answer to housing needs. For sixty years Correa will offer to the Indian nation, his extraordinary ability to ask questions and to give profound and personal answers to the great universal questions, knowing how to combine the vernacular dimensions and the modernity and offering a new collective vision for the shared living.