The State of Architecture: Practices and Processes in India

By 2050, India’s cities will be populated by 850 million people. Will India’s cities have the ability to house these millions, or be home to them? And who will deliver viable housing and infrastructure for the other 60% of Indians who will still be living in villages, or in the peri-urban margins of India’s cities? In anticipation of this looming crisis, we ask ourselves: Does architecture matter? Are architects still relevant in India, and can they contribute in any significant way to a nation-state and society in extraordinary flux? Has the architectural profession registered merely quantitative growth, or have architects refined their practices while engaging with the processes of historical transformation during the seven decades since Independence? The State of Architecture: Practices & Processes in India aims to address these questions. It proposes a critical review of the architectural profession, and historicises it with reference to three formative events: Independence, Emergency, and Liberalisation.

UDRI Urban Design Research Institute (2016)

by Rahul Mehrotra (Author, Editor), Ranjit Hoskote (Editor), Kaiwan Mehta (Editor)