We are not Superheroes.

 “What used to remain unquestioned has been taken up as a design problem to be solved...”

While architecture has migrated from the exclusive realm of monumental mansions, palaces and fortresses into the realm of the everyday (ordinary), the way we practice architecture has not changed much.

Since architecture has pervaded all aspects of our life (home, school, college, office, workplaces), every situation is treated as a problem that must be solved. And innovation on part of the architect is called to the front. We envision ourselves as being the superheroes that will solve everything. But is it really so?

People used to function in a perfectly well-organized (almost beautiful) manner before architects invaded the ordinary spectrum of daily life. People in Almora (across generations) have created a settlement for themselves in a perfectly logical way and designed their houses to completely blend in to the topography, catch maximum sunlight on the southward slope of the mountains and use locally available stone and wood to make master-piece residences. Did they need an architect? Nope. The perfect arrangement of these clusters of houses forming smaller courtyards, winter and summer community areas for the people, bigger open spaces closer to civic buildings… these are ideas we would aspire to have in our projects and yet it is already a part of the vernacular fabric in a corner of India untouched by the architectural professional.

Almora portfolio, NASA, Louis I Kahn trophy, Academy of Architecture (2009)

Even in the industrial port district of Darukhana in Mumbai, there is an intricate pattern to the arrangement of office spaces, warehouses, service routes, associated residences. On further analysis, the network of agencies required to sustain these environments begin to emerge and this is truly something that we as architects/ planners could never account for within our projects.

Now that we are part of a movement where the architect is viewed as a requirement to designing the built environment, how do we become more effective at creating an architecture that learns from the existing, without demanding a clean slate and responds to the people? Simultaneously, do we relinquish control of certain aspects which may be better designed (and redesigned) by the user himself?

If we aim to achieve these levels of efficiency and complexities within what we design as “solutions” for our clients, do we need to become more open to observing the ordinary and collaborating with different agencies which might help us better understand the intricacies of the context/ environment we are designing for? How do we as architects widen our visions to encompass other influences that are ubiquitous and as yet, not part of our design constraints?