Graduates’ Forum 2022-23
Graduate Symposium
5:00 to 7:00 pm
“In doubting, you create provisions for many people to participate.”
Provisions (2019), Raqs Media Collective
A generation after the economic liberalization since the 1990s, the architectural profession in India looms in a starkly polarised built environment. On the one hand, architects offer service to the elite patrons, and more recently, the practice has remained concerned with spatio-social disparities of class, caste, gender in the built environment. A graduating professional of architecture is often expected to choose a clear path between the above two: either one tries to quickly “fit into” a category of practicing architecture defined principally by the market – as a commercial, residential, sustainable, high rise etc. expert, or left to “figure out” a form of practice that may demand interrogation of these very established roles in order to base a relevant and revised ethics of working within the contemporary.
In the process of maintaining vocational expertise, the young architect is susceptible to lose one’s sense of intellectual agency – an ability and will to locate within the politics of contemporary practice. The expectation to perform this expertise in the field often pushes young graduates to imagine their roles as mere service providers to (more often than not,) an elite clientele who dictates the market by virtue of money. While laden with uncertainties, many succumb to the competitive forces of the capital driven market rather than figuring meaningful methods of addressing contemporary spatial concerns.
‘Doubts’ is an invitation to young graduates of architecture to channel their contemplative inner voice in an emphatic manner towards articulating a relevant mode of practice in the contemporary times. This symposium aims to bring recent graduates of architecture together to share not only their doubts around practice having stepped outside the safe space of the institution, but also to unpack what could be made uncertain about the seemingly settled architectural profession? What are the ways in which we may destabilize established ways of spatial practice that reproduce hierarchies of social inequity, caste, gender or even aesthetic hegemonies of form that are closely linked to spatial access? How does one create a mode and means of relevant practice in architecture?
A doubting profession could be more agile and tolerant that could offer innovative directions of occupying and inhabiting the world. To doubt is to resist norms while still being engaged with the social order. To doubt is to look out for what’s next, to doubt is to thus remain alert and open for the new. In doubting, we expand a community of thinking individuals. In ambiguity lies the possibility of an alternative future, a way of being relevant and contemporary.
DOUBTS
8th February, 20235:00 to 7:00 pm
“In doubting, you create provisions for many people to participate.”
Provisions (2019), Raqs Media Collective
A generation after the economic liberalization since the 1990s, the architectural profession in India looms in a starkly polarised built environment. On the one hand, architects offer service to the elite patrons, and more recently, the practice has remained concerned with spatio-social disparities of class, caste, gender in the built environment. A graduating professional of architecture is often expected to choose a clear path between the above two: either one tries to quickly “fit into” a category of practicing architecture defined principally by the market – as a commercial, residential, sustainable, high rise etc. expert, or left to “figure out” a form of practice that may demand interrogation of these very established roles in order to base a relevant and revised ethics of working within the contemporary.
In the process of maintaining vocational expertise, the young architect is susceptible to lose one’s sense of intellectual agency – an ability and will to locate within the politics of contemporary practice. The expectation to perform this expertise in the field often pushes young graduates to imagine their roles as mere service providers to (more often than not,) an elite clientele who dictates the market by virtue of money. While laden with uncertainties, many succumb to the competitive forces of the capital driven market rather than figuring meaningful methods of addressing contemporary spatial concerns.
‘Doubts’ is an invitation to young graduates of architecture to channel their contemplative inner voice in an emphatic manner towards articulating a relevant mode of practice in the contemporary times. This symposium aims to bring recent graduates of architecture together to share not only their doubts around practice having stepped outside the safe space of the institution, but also to unpack what could be made uncertain about the seemingly settled architectural profession? What are the ways in which we may destabilize established ways of spatial practice that reproduce hierarchies of social inequity, caste, gender or even aesthetic hegemonies of form that are closely linked to spatial access? How does one create a mode and means of relevant practice in architecture?
A doubting profession could be more agile and tolerant that could offer innovative directions of occupying and inhabiting the world. To doubt is to resist norms while still being engaged with the social order. To doubt is to look out for what’s next, to doubt is to thus remain alert and open for the new. In doubting, we expand a community of thinking individuals. In ambiguity lies the possibility of an alternative future, a way of being relevant and contemporary.