Rasik Shah is recorded as an Indian student enrolled on the 1964-65 postgraduate course run by the Architectural Association’s Department of Tropical Studies, in London. Shah was registered on the Department’s ‘General Course’ and received his Postgraduate Certificate in Tropical Studies in April 1965, staying on for a further term to earn a Diploma in Tropical Studies. By 1969 he is noted as having returned to the city of Baroda (now Vadodara), in Gujarat, India, where he appears to have set up an architectural practice and became acquainted with the architect Suryakant Patel, possibly through a teaching position at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Rasik was closely involved in the establishment of the Arvindbhai Patel Institute of Environmental Design (APIED) in Vadodara, in 1980 (now located at Vallabh Vidyanagar). In an interview from 2011, Shah notes that the idea for a school had been long held by Suryakant Patel and that he and their fellow co-founders, Mahendra Modi, Bhupen Khakhar and Prabhudasbhai were instrumental in setting the guiding principles and finding appropriate backers for the school.
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