Eminent architect and educator, Professor Rahul Mehrotra, has called upon the architectural community to re-orient its craft and discipline to meet the changing urban and rural needs of the 21st century India.
Delivering the Second Jhabvala Memorial Lecture yesterday in New Delhi, Professor Mehrotra lamented that 99% of the professional narrative was devoted to catering to the fancies and preferences of one percent affluent clients.
According to him this bias was producing ‘an architecture of indulgence,’ ignoring the issues of inequality, pluralism, conservation and ecology.
Professor Mehrotra, who is Professor of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, noted that at the time of Independence there was only one school of architecture and now India could boast of 426 accredited schools.
This proliferation in the professional schools and architects was reinforcing the ‘indulgence’ bias.
(Source: www.uniindia.com)
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