By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, 02.08.2024 (The Hindu): Gerard da Cunha’s quest to discover his roots led him to Goa at the impressionable age of 19. His maternal grandparents had moved to Lahore and his paternal grandparents to Mumbai. His father worked in a bank and so they lived in various cities, wherever he was posted. During summer vacations, they would visit one set of grandparents, but never Goa.
He instantly fell in love with the place, especially it’s architecture, and decided to make Goa his home as soon as it were possible. After graduating from the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi and working in the national capital for few years, he felt it was time to set up his architectural practice in Goa in 1984.
He was intrigued by the Indo-Portuguese house, which harmoniously blends the double-storey rural Portuguese house and the traditional Goan house designs. He began documenting and photographing these houses, and published the seminal Houses of Goa book written by Heta Pandit and Annabel Mascarenhas in 1999. Around the same time, he held an exhibition of Goan houses in Panjim, which travelled to Lisbon and Porto, Mumbai and Delhi.