Pranlal Chunilal Shah appears to have studied architecture at the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, in the late 1930s, obtaining a ‘1st Class Diploma’. He then worked as an Assistant Architect at the Ministry of Works, Housing and Supply, based in New Delhi, from where he was dispatched to London, in 1956, to attend the Architectural Association’s six-month post graduate course in the Department of Tropical Architecture. On his return to India he is recorded in the 1960s as employed as Architect to the Central Public Works Department, at Talkators Barracks, New Delhi, rising through the ranks to become the Deputy Director of the National Buildings Organisation by 1972.

Sources

• Architectural Association Student Register 1945-1972, AA Archives
• Department of Tropical Architecture, student listing, Otto Koenigsberger Collection, Box OK27, AA Archives
• Architectural Association Council Minute Books, 25th February, 1957, p133. AA Archives
• Architectural Association Membership List, 1961
• Civic Affairs, Vol. 4, 1957, p60.
• Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects, Vol. 31, 1965, p23.
• ‘All India Architects Directory 1972’, Architects Publishing Corporation of India, 1972, p32