Suneet Paul reflects on Chandigarh’s modernist planning, lush green spaces, and iconic architecture, highlighting architects like Le Corbusier’s and S.D. Sharma’s contributions, high quality of life for residents, and the city’s enduring appeal despite emerging urban challenges.
The quest to define Indianness in architecture has been a recurring and vital theme in contemporary discussions on identity and the pursuit of modernism in India. Radha Hirpara explores this ongoing dialogue, examining what characterises architecture in India as distinctly “Indian” within a global framework, and what elements make it inherently rooted in Indian identity.
Through his detailed critique, Nitin Mandhan talks about the architectural education and employment in India, highlighting outdated minimum standards of education by Council of Architecture, poor industry-academia links, exploitative low-paid work, and elitist access. He argues for reform in the education standards, ethical workplace systems, better mentoring, and collective responsibility from institutions, council, and practices to create fair, sustainable careers.
The Garden Histories of Ahmedabad is an investigation into this potential of garden space as vessels of socio-cultural memory, as spaces that hold within them the shifting tides of power, society, and identity.
Court Fort in Nandoli is imagined foremost as a home, an everyday retreat on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, where slow living meets meaningful solitude.
Ravindra Punde, architect and academician, calls for a fundamental reimagining of architecture education in India, arguing it must shift from colonial pedagogies to address climate change, social inequality, and ethical responsibility through ecology-centred, community-engaged, and culturally diverse learning.
