New Indian museum design alleged to be copied

The upcoming Museum of the Prime Ministers of India might not seem so stately after a claim that its main feature is stolen from another building’s design.

Architect Raj Rewal has claimed that the design of the museum is copied from his design of the library block of the State University of Performing and Visual Arts in Rohtak.

The museum, which is expected to be built for Rs 271 crore (about US$2 million), features a salient feature of the Dharma Chakra on the slanting roof, which Rewal claims is a rip-off of his own design. He said his design of the library and campus “had been published prominently in various architectural magazines in India and abroad, which received wide acclaim for its innovative design.”

Raman Sikka of Sikka Associates Architects, which is behind the design of the museum, said they have conceptualised the design to represent the hands of Prime Ministers shaping a rising nation, while the Dharma Chakra from the flag is a symbol of a rising India.

Sikka said: “The allegation of plagiarism is baseless; our concept is unique. One cannot break down parts of a building to find other similar parts. The building and its concept have to be seen as a whole.”

Both designs feature a central disc with photovoltaic cells to generate electricity, located on a sandstone perch, with a similar incline for the disc. The museum which will take up about 11,000 square meters is expected to be completed in a year.

Copycat designs are common in the this industry and there are plenty of allegations of rip-offs among architects, imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery.

For example Manhattan’s One World Trade Center is the subject of not one, but two lawsuits.

Last year, Jeehon Park accused the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of falsely claiming design credit for the One World Trade Center, saying the building bears too much similarity to a tower he designed in 1999 while in graduate school.

In 2004, Thomas Shine sued David Childs, a well-known architect, over his design for One World Trade Center. Shine claimed that Childs had copied from Shine’s Olympic Tower design, which he had submitted as a student architectural project in 1999 to a panel including Childs.

Shine actually registered his projects with the Copyright Office in 2004. He chose to withdraw his claim and it seems he settled the matter out of court with Childs.

Because an architect cannot help being influenced by images and works he has seen and kept in his memory, most of them are caught between working under the influence of other architects and being original. Like musicians, this means constantly having to strike a balance between influence and originality.

New York architect Robert A.M. Stern once said: ''As long as the source is good, I steal. Not in the sense of taking away from another architect - he is not poorer because of a theft but is in fact more influential. We copy, borrow and derive motifs from other architects. Artists have always quoted other artists.''

Artists are often quoted, but it is when larger companies copy too much, and from a Creator who they assume does not have the resources to contest them, that it is a rip-off. It seems that apart from sending a letter to the owners of grounds on which the new museum would be built, the accusing Creator Raj Rewal is not going to legally contest the museum’s design.

The foundation stone of the upcoming museum has been laid in a ceremony and works have started.