If we pick up any architectural magazine, or perhaps scroll through the many wonderful projects published on ArchitectureLive! itself, we will find a plethora of innovative schools, rustic yet thoughtful Indian interiors for the rich businessman who likes to mud-it-out in the hills, classy farmhouses overlooking a lake, perhaps a hotel using smart local materials and even a beautiful restaurant in ferrocrete and bricks. Seasoned architects and students of this field lap up the beautiful imagery and monochrome plans, and take notes on using the jargon such as “juxtaposition”, “materiality”, “critical regionalism”, and “connect-to-nature”.
Yet factually, these buildings form but a tiny, minuscule part of our built environment. In India, and likewise in many countries, the dominant typology that warrants good design is HOUSING. And not only that, the majority of Architects practising in larger offices are actually working on Housing projects, including this Author. We label this as “commercial” work, “routine”, and perhaps not worthy of design discussions. Yet these are the structures that shape our identity of cities, their hinterlands and the overall sense of urbanity for decades upon decades.
So why aren’t we talking more and more about this? Why aren’t we publishing, innovating and opening ourselves to debate and discussion? What is there to be ashamed of?
Or perhaps, there is indeed enough to be ashamed of.
India has one of the world’s most ambitious and successful urban and rural housing missions. Apart from the work being done for countless real estate Developers directly with Architects, the central and state governments under various Missions and schemes, and most noticeably the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) and PMAY Gramin. Apart from numerous slum rehabilitation and redevelopment schemes, with PMAY, over 1.2 Crore homes have been registered under PMAY and over 4.5 Crore homes under PMAY-G. In totality, more than 4 Crore homes have actually been built.
Four Crore… That’s FORTY MILLION homes.
These are actual architect-designed projects. You can see them as they are gloriously displayed on the websites, like PMAY.
Amidst a fraternity of more than 1.37 Lakh Architects in India (registered, that is, as per COA), someone must have done these projects. Someone must have thought these projects were worthy of humanity to live and propagate in. Obviously not the best ones. Not the firms with resources and sensitivity to understand the needs of these end users, empathise with how they have attributed their earlier existing shanties, and put their theories into practice.
The way our nation is heading, we may (perhaps) do away with abject poverty and homelessness in the next decade or more, but these housing structures will last for the next 50-70 years. I hypothesise (without much challenge) that there is an obvious apathy of good, mainstream architects and their respective organisations to deal with improving livability, aesthetics, innovation (both material and social), and work with sustainability in the affordable, small-home sector.
Imagine the scale and scope of this sector! Housing for all has its roots in understanding and designing the small homes (or would we relegate them to poor, cheap homes?). Even business opportunity-wise, this is a wonderful opportunity. However, it lacks purpose, opportunity, and sensitivity from the architectural community, which often engages in works that can look good in a coffee table book.
Habitat Forum (INHAF) has been championing the cause of raising architectural sensitivity and exploring actually practical, design solutions coming from Architects, Designers, and literally any Indian, by doing the National Open Ideas Competition in “Improving Livability in Small Homes” over multiple years. This author got to work with them through VK Group’s own NGO – Sustainability Initiatives – teaming up with them for the 4th edition of this invigorating competition, while expanding on this idea across various Housing Studios at the 4th year level, in Schools of Architecture in Pune, Mumbai and Vellore. One can learn a bit more about the 2024-25 edition in this nice article.
This year, while INHAF-SI again embarks on the 5th edition of the competition, we are expanding the scope… to encourage retrofitting, to consider embedded furniture design, and to take both urban and rural projects for working on better-designed affordable housing communities. We want many to participate freely. To lend their ideas towards making more usable, more intuitive, more livable, more sustainable, more smart and more aesthetic homes in small-sized communities. We want schools of Architecture to consider affordable homes in their Housing Semester and use our guidance to do more sensitive development beneficial for both Students and Teachers. They can register here to participate in OINC and here to enrol in the Housing Studio.
We want to take these learnings to the Government and tell them that if the future of our nation can ideate so well, while also working with tweaking rules and policies, what is stopping the authorities from engaging with good architects to achieve this objective? We are elated to note that even COA has recently initiated a small home competition that many must have participated in.
There needs to be such efforts and competitions to encourage both empathy and a solution-centric thought process. We need to raise a cadre of sensitive architects who can contribute to nation building by doing better design and critical thinking in housing for all… with the same zeal towards design-centric architecture, as they would with… say a café or a museum.
Small homes for the needy, who have grown in squalor and with minimum resources, deserve our attention. We hope the prize-laden competitions and support from Industry patrons and real estate leaders in this competition can provoke the interest of our youth.
Do register!
