The inaugural conference of ‘The State of Architecture’
exhibition (currently on at the NGMA, Mumbai, curated by Rahul Mehrotra, Ranjit
Hoskote and Kaiwan Mehta) called ‘The State of the Profession’ achieved the
objective set out by Kaiwan Mehta in his opening remarks: ‘Historicize and
Problematize’. In doing so several affirmative readings were possible about the
state of architecture in India today. The conference covered the profession,
practice, education, criticism and institutions. Here are some larger
impressions that remained with me:
The profession of architecture, if seen as a collective
set of ideals, is difficult to pin down. At one level this is the consequence
of the diversity of practice that is now increasingly prevalent. Yet at
another, this difficulty may be attributed to the lack of ‘communities of judgment’,
to use an evocative phrase by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who gave the conference’s
keynote address, among architects in the country. Looking towards ‘institutional’
definitions does not seem to help, as institutions too, in a sense are ensconced
in silos of their own making.
The choices made by several architects who spoke at
the conference present (rather than represent) the ‘problematization’ of the
profession and the fuzzy presence of the professional. This conference brought
together such professionals whose practices are essentially reflexive, rather
than located in the self-confident comfort zone of the mainstream. For what it
is worth, this too can be attributed to the impotence of regulatory mechanisms
or the community’s own unwillingness to introspect as a collective. Questions
were raised, but it will be some time before definite readings are possible.
The practice of architecture in India, since the millennium,
seems to have grown richer by moving outside of the mainstream. It is not the
diversity of practices that are the most revelatory (although that is important)
but the diversity within individual practice. The embracing of multiple
disciplines, media, collaborations and muses have resulted in a variety of ‘messy
practices’, reflecting the ‘punctuated chaos’ (to quote Bill Gates) that we
find ourselves in currently. This can only be a good thing. The feedback loop
between thinking and doing gushes like a cataract in some practices. In many
cases, these practices cater to the same patrons as that of the mainstream,
indicating a more enlightened patronage and a greater sense of collegiality and
synthesis.
On the other hand some practices, co-create with end users, bringing
themselves in direct contact with the communities they design for, even
searching out communities not catered to by architects so far. Several
practices reach out to the marginalized- slum inhabitants, those living in tribal
or rural areas located far away from transport streams. These architects
subsume their expressions into those of their constituents, and even encourage
the users to express themselves in the built form. There is an embedded-ness of
the crafts-person in the design process. This does hark back to the pre-modernist
practices in the country before technology got valorized at the expense of the
indigenous crafts tradition.
The state of architectural education is particularly
problematic. It should have been an article of faith that schools of
architecture were the laboratories that informed architectural practice. This
does not seem to be happening. Education is overwhelmed by numbers. One of the
unique features of this exhibition is the location of architecture within the
larger eco-system of education, criticism, location and institutions. What
emerges is that from 2015 onward, more than 25,000 students will graduate from
the 450 odd architecture schools in the country. This is a number greater than
the number of practicing architects in the country. This begs the question- who
are the teachers, and what is the nature of learning in these many schools? How
may quality or innovation or farsightedness be possible in this proliferation?
Curricula too, are largely prescriptive, where under the rubric of a single
university, may cater to the lowest common denominator. The roles of both
students and teachers of architecture have to be re-examined in the light of
fast and easily available information. The top down didactic and ‘expert’
supervisory approaches seem to have lost their relevance. The teacher has to be
reimagined as an ongoing learner and co-create with the student. There are few stand-alone
schools in this country who may chart their own course. A clear call was made
in the conference for a syllabus that was more flexible and less prescriptive,
less of a cookie-cutter, one size fits all templates. Here, the diversity of
practices can provide role models, and be muse to architectural education
rather than the other way around.
The role of institutions that oversee the profession was
perhaps the most problematic. The governing institutions mandated to look after
the interest of architects and to regulate practices and provide codes of
conduct under which practices could flourish seemed to present a monocular
gaze, more at ease with the mainstream sense of the profession. Laboring under self-perpetuating
myths of their own presence, they presented a stance of protectionism and definition.
The current positions of institutions comes across as largely reactionary-
expressing fears of encroachment by ‘others’- by engineers, by ‘non-architects’
of various stripes, by foreign firms, by project managers. In the affirmative universe
of collaboration and multi-disciplinarity they seem to write themselves out by
focusing too much on who should be an architect and who should not.
While it
was readily accepted in the conference that architects as a whole in the county
influence a relatively small amount of actual building, the vast majority of
building still happens outside the pale of institutional memberships. The institutions
themselves did not seem to accommodate this reality in a worldview largely oriented towards building memberships and corpuses.
In both the exhibition and the conference, the state of criticism in the country was historicized
perhaps for the first time . Architectural
writing and critical self-examination is only now emerging, and its influence
is far from clear. More books on Indian architecture are being written, but not
enough on contemporary concerns and challenges. Like reflexive practices, we
need more of reflexive criticism whether in books or journals. Journals such as
that of the Indian Institute of Architects have excellent archival value,
particularly from its early decades, but do not provide critical writing. Other
magazines that have emerged since the turn of the century largely valorize and
commemorate the boutique practices and showcase architects in their very
limited roles as lifestyle designers.
There is also a dearth of academic
writing on architecture because of the absence of peer-reviewed journals on
architecture. In the last couple of years some journals have been established
but their value shall only be seen in their sustainability.
One issue undiscussed
in most part was the location of the Indian architect in a stage larger than
the local. Perhaps the valedictory conference that focuses on architecture in
South Asia will pick up the gauntlet.
