The Architectures of Diversity

By Durganand Balsavar - 3 March 2025

Practices in the Indic subcontinent showcase spontaneous diversity in response to the contingent reality of a rapidly changing context. The role and relevance of the discipline of architecture is being reimagined in new, never previously envisaged ways. The uncertainty that social change entails may be conscious and reactionary as well. The rapid pace of growth in cities, the nature of economies, migrations, and in our digital epoch automation, artificial intelligence and the prospect of climate change are all redefining creativity in architectural practice in incredible ways. The shift to an urban population, exceeding the rural hinterland of the early 2000, has resulted in new settlement typologies such as large warehouses, office towers, mass housing and metro-rail, bringing in its wake new demands for consumption and production. Architecture’s relationship to engineering, technology, the arts and the city has been irreversibly transformed as large tracts of agricultural land are converted to industrial centers, peripheral townships and housing, often bereft of social amenities such as cultural centers, schools and recreation.

Rejecting chronological trajectories, creating repositories of practices and projects within such transformational contexts becomes a barometer for architects, universities and civic society. “Architectures of diversity” imply the co-existence of multiple, contradictory trajectories.

Several questions emerge when seeking to make sense of the environment around us, both “culturally and historically”, and “between chaos and order”.

The Paradox of Contextual Challenges

How can architectural practice respond to diverse aspirations? Can it redefine itself to respond to the stark inequity of the Indic city? Can it transcend inherent gender biases? How can practices rediscover fluidity and flexibility in the nature of spatial creativity? Liminal temporalities rise and dissolve within the shifting boundaries between urban design, architecture, engineering and the arts.

While some of these concerns may be generic, many are specific to cultural contexts and geographic location. Depending on the nature of patronage and support, younger practices are often imbued with the agency to delve into the nuances of smaller-scaled, community projects. The liminal nature of inhabitation questions the privileges of the permanence of materials like concrete compared with the temporariness of bamboo, clay, prefabricated steel and slate.

The creation of such a repository enables both praxes and scholarship to address a lacuna in the discourse of architecture and urbanism in India. This lacuna was more evident when the fifth edition of professor Kenneth Frampton’s magnum opus Modern Architecture: A Critical History was published. The section on practices in the Global South and India endeavors to reframe the boundaries of earlier Euro-centric paradigms. Rahul Mehrotra alludes to the fact that most often, the early modernist phase between 1947-85 is discussed. A lack of systematic documentation regarding projects and practices over the last three decades (1990 till date) characterizes the zeitgeist of such projects’ transitory nature.
This issue took on a deeper personal significance following an invitation from Frampton to provide a discourse on the five editions of Modern Architecture from the 1980s to date. His scholarship endeavors to recognize inherent contradictions in documenting, researching and archiving repositories of architecture. As part of an ethos of diversity and a multiplicity of co-existing perspectives, distilling meanings and relevance with a sense of objectivity becomes a tenuous and, at times, impossible task.

An invitation from THE PLAN, featuring an introduction from Peter Rich, created a context in which to revisit the geographical and temporal landscape of architectural practice in India across time. The objective is to understand the generative programs, context, patrons and motivations that inspire these projects.

Early projects by Didi Contractor, Laurie Baker, Brinda Somaya, Nari Gandhi, Charles Correa, Achyut Kanvinde, B.V. Doshi, Raj Rewal and the first generation of Indian architects continue in many ways to pervade the discourse. An aspiration to question relationships with nature, natural materials and passive energy systems has found expression in projects at Auroville, in South India. Practices like Studio Mumbai have provided a contextual grounding for younger architects to explore and take in new directions.

Diversity has had many manifestations. The creations of Didi Contractor – dwellings built from slate, clay and bamboo – convey a deeper reverence for nature. The tribal museum designed by Revathi Kamat is immersed in indigenous construction practices, as are many of her other projects. Projects by Samira Rathod, Chitra Vishwanath, Suhasini Aiyer, Anupama Kundoo and Mona Doctor delve into a reflective understanding of the relationship between inhabitation, materials and climatic context.

Caravanserais, community centers built of bamboo, farmsteads, rural schools, as well as self-build community participatory processes all broaden the contemporaneous context. These projects invite renewed scholarship that challenges categorization. In such a transformative context, the option of responding to building humanitarian and social institutions creates alternative practices. Emerging technologies regarding natural materials, wood and steel are re-shaping construction practices.

Architectures of diversity characterize the contemporary context. Diversity lends itself to a greater degree of spontaneous expression and open-endedness in both planning and construction. The inherent challenges of documenting such diversity imply that the building of repositories and archives be a gradual, collaborative process. Broadening the scope of architectural creativity, a commitment to diversity lends itself to inclusive scholarship and insights.

Complementing the emergence of diversity requires reimagining the formation of an architect, inviting a paradigm shift in architecture education: experiential pedagogies imbued with a deeper understanding of praxes, ecologies, liberal arts, history, technology and changing social aspirations, with a pragmatic grounding on the science of construction.

History and Amnesia

Like many other regions, modern architecture in India resonated as a vehicle of social change, embodying the spirit of a free nation (1947). While Le Corbusier and Chandigarh shaped the new creativity of the first generation of architects, plans for new cities derived their geometry from erstwhile British townscapes. Institutionally, Louis Kahn’s Indian Institute of Management (IIM) referenced the monastery as a place of learning. Designed by Raymond Antonin and George Nakashima, the Golconda House in Pondicherry (1935), recognized as one of the first concrete buildings, did however predate Chandigarh and IIM. Drawing inspiration from the life of Gandhi, Charles Correa’s design for the Gandhi Memorial at Sabarmati Ashram to a certain extent provided insights into the trajectory Indian architecture would follow. B.V. Doshi drew on indigenous architecture and appropriated a sense of building craft. For both the Aranya housing in Indore and his studio and home, he drew his inspirations from the vernacular.

In an attempt to invoke a lost history, the Vistara exposition (mid 1980’s) by Carmen Kagal, Correa and colleagues proved to be a significant inflection point in this trajectory, documenting monuments across the geographies of the Indian landscape, as well as indigenous settlements and towns. Functionalist, modern architecture was critiqued within the context of invoking history and cultural notions of mythic imagery, belief systems and practices.

Liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s disrupted these processes, bringing in aspirations to create software parks. This socioeconomic disruption was reflected in architecture through precincts built within hermetically sealed, air-conditioned, glass curtain walls. Incredulous transformations of Indian cities and architecture practice continue to pervade the Indic landscape. Complexities and contradictions between the need for large infrastructure and sustainable architecture continue to characterize the architectural discourse, as we attempt to make sense of choices we have made in our “imaginations of inhabitation”. Architecture practices emerged during this period with a stronger discourse. Kathpalia, Aniket Bhagwat, Sanjay Prakash, Opolis, Hunnarshala, Mandala, Girish Doshi, Kanade, Sanjay Mohe (Mindspace Architects), Soumitro Ghosh and Nisha Mathew, Malik Architecture, Matharoo Associates, Flying Elephant and Sthapati are some of the many practices that responded to the changing landscape.

I would reiterate that agnostic empathy for architectures of diversity provides a mindscape for scholarship to understand the underlying motivations of recent projects, and to re-examine a pluralistic and layered history.

A repository of architectures of diversity from the Indic subcontinent generates renewed scholarship to reimagine and introspect on the discipline of architecture and its relevance to the environment and community aspirations.