MODERN INDIAN ARCHITECT (Page 7)

Architecture must be understood (and taught) as a Way of engaging sensitively with society and its changing needs rather than as a routinised tool with which to implement pre-determined and formulaic solutions.

These sobering statistics determine the paradigm within which the Indian architect operates today. Furthermore, even though architects like to consider themselves part of the westernised elite transforming the country, their actual status in society as effective professionals is low. Their advice is routinely substituted by others who hold influential opinions about the architectural product, thus reducing the economic worth of architectural service in the marketplace. It is, consequently, unsurprising that in governmental and popular perception, the advice of the engineer has greater authority in deciding architectural issues than that of the architect, whose contribution is reduced to merely manipulating the facade of the building under construction. 

The burgeoning of architectural schools in the last 15 years has, sadly, resulted in a precipitous drop in educational standards as the shortage of architects needed to service India's developing economy has consolidated the debilitating colonial pedagogic agenda that imparts vocational training. The ubiquity of computers in architectural practice has also only reinforced this vocational trend as schools churn out mechanically skilled draftsmen instead of thoughtful practitioners. And, in the globalised marketplace of business process outsourcing, there is a growing demand in the west for Indian technicians, thus vindicating the intellectually colonised pedagogic choices of most architectural schools. 

Finally, the fear of increasing chaos in the system is forcing bureaucratized agencies like the council of Architecture to standardise benchmarks and curriculum. To achieve this objective, the focus of governance in architectural education is to discipline and punish schools for infraction of rules; for example, there are currently over 40 Schools listed for de-recognition. This has radically stifled new educational initiatives and increased conformity, thus reinforcing the colonial agenda yet again. 

The challenge for Indian architecture today is both intellectual and institutional. It must, at long last, confront its lingering colonial legacy (Without regressing into parochial revivalism) and formulate a disciplinary philosophy and professional practice that is both substantive and mature enough to reflect and respond intelligently to its historical context (local and global). This requires the development of an independent, hybrid, local architectural Sensibility that is based on the rigorous generation of ideas rather than the easy and mechanical mimicry of received images. Architecture must be understood (and taught) as a Way of engaging sensitively with society and its changing needs rather than as a routinised tool with which to implement pre-determined and formulaic solutions. And meeting this challenge requires not just a cadre of critically innovative practitioners and teachers, but also the firm support of institutions that are bold enough to Unshackle themselves from their particularly postcolonial bureaucratic adherence to the inherited status quo. The modern Indian nation deserves no less. 

The End.