However Indian cities have a clear demarcation in terms of the urban aesthetics when looked at within the time frame of the last century.

The big four metros, all cities in existence for at least 400 years have an evolved sense of architecture and urban aesthetic that spans from the Mughal times to the British Raj. Each city got its own distinct version of style and look. However this sense of aesthetic took a nosedive post-Independence.

All of a sudden, for every great piece of architecture, there were 100 examples of very banal, characterless buildings. Entire sections of cities, or even entire small cities grew up with no sense of architectural character and style.

This anomaly, compounded with a complete lack of urban planning and vision, created a mish-mash of architectural style that is in most cases a visual nightmare. Things took a turn for the better in the early 90’s when the opening up of the markets brought transformation into India in all sectors. IT Parks, Techology campuses and the supporting housing, retail and commercial needs brought about an architectural boom that has been on a continuous steady rise over the last two decades.

However a total lack of a masterplan and vision for the entire city has created a new jigsaw of competing styles, materials, designs, that somehow don’t fit in all together.

Below is an article by an architect elaborating on the missed opportunity of enhanced infrastructure that would have brought about a disciplined design aesthetic in Indian cities.

What are your thoughts?

Making sense of aesthetics in Indian cities

Srinivas Murthy G, | Times of India, Hyderabad Edition

About three years ago I decided to make Hyderabad my home. I was living in Delhi, city of my birth and education, before moving to this city.

I have been designing projects in and around Hyderabad for the last decade and have been part of its growth story in many ways. It was a strange realisation that only after relocating myself here I started thinking about its existing as a living organism and not just as another destination for business purpose.

Two things that struck me most (or rather absence of them) and probably affect me in many ways are the so called cultural scene that one is so used to in Delhi and secondly, how the architectural sensibilities of people of this historic city changed due to the fast paced development. While the first one is more specific to this city given its strong historical and cultural background that it once boasted of, the second one is about the built environment of Hyderabad, though nothing unusual as many other cities have gone though the same fate during the same timeline. I will reserve the first one for another time and write about the second one first, as being an architect by profession, this moves me both in personal and professional spectrums.

During the last decade or two, many Indian cities have witnessed stupendous growth due to the IT boom abroad and also due to the new era of liberalised economy. Hyderabad’s growth has been watched very keenly and closely by other neighbouring big cities. The city is in many ways like Delhi, more particularly on architectural front. It has an equally important architectural heritage and does not stay too behind in display of wealth and affluence. It has its own South Delhi charms that you can feel while moving around in Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills with large villas and bungalows dotting the landscape.

Importance is given more to the size and grandeur than the aesthetics of architectural design. To borrow from Gautam Bhatia’s comments on architectural scene in Delhi, the Punjabi Baroque is replaced by a hugely Greek, Corinthian and Roman Renaissance styles and if this was not enough, completed it with riot of coloured facades and glass facades to add to fetish to show off.

This is so much different from how Bangalore and Pune responded during their growth years. While Bangalore is known for its small and well built designer homes, Pune has some of the earliest and finest examples of housing in multi-storied apartment type buildings. Architectural professional gained respectability very soon in these cities much to surprise of many even in Delhi and Mumbai. And now the so called newer parts of the city, which incidentally are not more than a decade and half old, still lack some of the basic facilities. No pedestrian safety and footpaths, no decent greenery and plantation, overcrowded and congested roads, no streetlights, and signage is something which one can only dream of, are regular features of these supposedly happening places.

Public utilities like bus shelter and drinking water for commuters, underpasses for pedestrians, drainage channels and communication and electrical services ducts, and the list of requirements appears to be never ending. And on the architectural front, there is a complete sense of chaos and absurdness of design elements. There is no architecture at all. They are all covered with huge and brightly coloured hoardings that make the skyline of the city and glaringly tell you that nobody cares for the aesthetical composition of the street.

It is the rich of the world, who with their huge budgets for advertising are responsible for such ghastly act of taking pleasantness out of our cities. I for one will be very eagerly waiting to see a hoarding on top of one of their spacious high rise villas designed by probably one of the best imported architects of the world.

I always wondered if we needed huge amounts of money or technological knowhow or just simple willingness to provide for some of the basic amenities that make many other cities world over, truly world class. Just one look at any of the cities in the US or Europe, for that matter nearer home, Putrajaya City on the outskirts of KL, Malaysia, or Chinese Cities, we will learn that it is a matter of simple attitude. When will our planning and urban development bodies understand the real meaning of development? When will we, the citizens of our country, get some of the basic facilities? Secondly most of us are not even aware of what we should have and deserve, not only in terms of list of amenities but even the required or desired standards for it, in order to demand these from our system. I for one believe that everything has a demand and supply equation.

As the demand for more features and facility increases, the suppliers will make those things available and at a very affordable price. Isn’t this true in real estate sector? Compared to the demands two decade ago, look at the facilities that every developer is offering today. More aware and educated buyers are at the core of ever improving supply chain system.

And that is where the solution lies. We need initiatives that help people understand the need and importance to improved and aesthetically sensitive built environment through the collaboration of professionals, designers, leaders and local communities. It should strive to promote and encourage the best in contemporary urban planning and development and bring modern architecture, traditional craft and design closer to people. And with such initiatives, the day may not be far, when we will start rejecting a city the way we do our films or music albums if they are not good.

(Author is a practising architect based in Hyderabad and writes on design and architecture in India

The Amtek Office Building proposal for New Delhi at first glance looks like an Archigram-esque living organism sited on a street

Introducing traditional Indian science of construction, the “Vaastu Shastra,” to modern architecture, the Amtek Office Building with its entrance facing the East seems to bring the flow of energy in building designs. [design.fr]

From their website:

Located on the popular commercial strip in New Delhi, Tolstoy Marg, Amtek is distinctively outstanding even from afar. The concept of Amtek Office Building came about upon client’s request of wanting an iconic building with flexible space. This resulted in Amtek’s oval-shaped, glass-cladded facade and it is built in contrast to New Delhi’s traditional urban setting.

The external façade is fully cladded with glass to allow for maximum exposure and clarity from inside. Alumininum shading devices in the form of “armours” are cleverly constructed on the exterior to shield against its extreme climate. There is a separate lift for the sky restaurant which creates a vertical silhouette against an otherwise annular shape.

Corbusier was not the only architectural giant to leave his stamp on India. Louis Kahn, his contemporary also worked in India around the same time and would design and influence future generations of architects in India.

While Corbusier got the opportunity to design the masterplan and the important architectural pieces of Chandigarh, Kahn, did not get to do it in India. He did design the capital complex of Bangladesh, which then was a new country taking birth.

Paul John writes a very interesting article “With Kahn magic Gandhinagar would have  rivalled Chandigarh” that speaks about the missed opportunity for India and Kahn to design Gandhinagar, the new capital of the new state of Guarat.

If Chandigarh is Le Corbusier’s city, Bhubaneswar bears the German Otto Koenigsberger’s signature, Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar could have had American yogi Louis Kahn’s imprint — a strong rival to Corbusier’s Chandigarh — had the Indian and Gujarat governments allowed Kahn to design the capitol buildings.

Kahn wanted Gandhinagar to be vibrant, symbolising the integration of village and industry, unlike the dull status it suffers today. The stage was all set in August 1964, when Kahn agreed to the honorarium fees to be paid in rupees after being persuaded by architect BV Doshi and industrialist Kasturbhai Lalbhai. Kahn had principally accepted the proposal to design the master plan for Gandhinagar. But he got a rude shock when the chief engineer for roads and buildings KM Kantawala wrote to Kahn that he would not be allowed to design the secretariat, the legislative assembly, the governor’s palace, high court and other related buildings.

There was tremendous political pressure to make Gandhinagar a stoic symbol of Gandhi’s principles of ‘India’s enterprise’. This would have been defeated if the city was designed by a foreign hand.

Kahn declined the offer instantly by writing back an emotionally charged letter stating, “City planning and building planning are one unified art. A city of good buildings reflecting design principles that are understood and followed in subsequent construction grows in beauty and importance.”

For Gandhinagar, Kahn had ambitious plans, something he had not tried elsewhere in the world. Kahn desired that Gandhinagar symbolise integration of land, civic services and buildings as one architecture. Finally in January 1965, the Cornell-educated HK Mewada who worked as a trainee under Le Corbusier on the Chandigarh project and a staunch Gandhian clinched the job.

The mill owners in Ahmedabad led by Kasturbhai Lalbhai and supported by architects like BV Doshi, Anant Raje, Achyut Kanvinde, Charles Correa and AR Prabhawalker wanted Kahn to build Gandhinagar to rival Chandigarh. This episode in history is vividly mentioned in Ravi Kalia’s book ‘Gandhinagar-building national identity in post colonial India.’

Countries have come out with their best architectural foot forward and some of the national pavilions are stunning examples of the contemporary architectural vocabulary of those countries. However all attempts to get a better look at the Indian Pavilion at the Expo has been a disappointing task.

The above picture is one of the few official ones that have been released by the Chinese Expo Authority. And the Director of the Indian Pavilion Rajesh Kumar, can be seen here talking about the design.

Ganesh Ramachandran at UrbanSlate critiques the pavilion:

The pavilion designs for India …for the oncoming Shanghai Expo is a multi million dollar incongruity at the expense of  the countries’ tax payers. The theme of expo is “Better city, Better life”, a very timely theme indeed  when more than half the world’s population live in cities. To which……… the Indian design team answers the call with a design that resembles a  burial mound for Buddhist relics from 3rd century BC – the Sanchi Stupa. [link]

However the Indian media is either ignorant of this event and the pavilion, or in the case where they do talk about it, they completely miss the point.

In this self-congratulatory story The Hindu writes

Sandwiched between the two most expensive pavilions is India’s, which, perhaps, is the structure that most represents the Expo’s now almost-forgotten theme — “better city, better life,” a call for sustainable urban development.

Last week, Indian designers and Chinese engineers were working to put finishing touches to the $9-million pavilion, which will be unveiled next month.

The design is inspired by the Sanchi Stupa. It’s defining feature is a 35 metre-wide dome which will be the world’s biggest bamboo structure.

The design, conceived by D.R. Naidu of Design C, seeks to make a green statement, “expounding harmonious living as a way of life.”

“What we want to convey through this pavilion is [not only] a message for sustainable development, but also India’s own sense of harmony, through the ages,” said Arindam Ryan Roy Chowdhury, a project manager for Design C at the Expo site. [link]

Joe Drury at China Briefing has an interesting account of the pavilion design.

India is home to over 2,000 ethnic groups, speaking over 1,600 languages and dialects and worshipping every major religion. At the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, India’s 4,000 square meter pavilion stands as a monument to its ability to forge a sense of harmony and national unity from this disparate society despite the contradictions and sometimes violent differences that naturally arise in such an environment.

With the theme “Cities of Harmony,” the pavilion by extension also projects an international message of global unity, especially relevant to India as the country experiences the natural growing pains of greater influence in Asia and abroad. [link]

Many would today question the very idea of a World Expo. It started in the late 19th Century as a way of bringing the world as a microcosm to a distant place. However in today’s day and age of instant imagery and media, a lot of the original purpose of the mega events is somehow lost. Countries spend millions of dollars to one-up each other and these pavilions may land up being giant billboards of a country.

In this scenario, where do you think India’s pavilion stands? If you have had a chance to visit the Pavilion, please express your thoughts.

British retail giant Tesco is outsourcing preliminary design and surveying to architects in India. The article below in Building UK, raises concerns about lost opportunity and jobs.

As the world recovers from an economic slump, its comes as no surprise that corporations are moving tasks to countries that prove to be more cost effective.

Tesco sends design and QS work to India

By Sophie Griffiths / Building UK

Fears raised over future of UK supply chain as supermarket giant outsources early project work

Tesco has started training Indian architects and QSs to work on its UK projects, Building has learned.The retailer flew the workers to Britain last year, where they were trained in UK architecture and quantity surveying skills.

A source in Tesco’s supply chain said the firm was only using Indian consultants for the beginnings of projects, and that when developments reached planning permission stage, the work was transferred to Britain.

An architect that works with Tesco said: “There is a worry this will spread beyond the planning stage, and Tesco will try to do more of the project in India. It doesn’t operate like a traditional client – I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

A Tesco spokesperson said: “We use Tesco staff to carry out feasibility studies on our new stores. These staff have been trained by Tesco and some are based in India.”

“It is only a matter of time before tesco outsources other parts of the supply chain”

source at rival supermarket

A source at a rival supermarket said it had decided not to go down the same route because “it wasn’t right”. The source said: “The savings are potentially massive. Given how keen Tesco have been in outsourcing other areas of the business to India, such as IT, it is only a matter of time before they do the same with other parts of the construction supply chain. This could mean a lot less work for British construction.”

It comes as research released this week by the Construction Industry Council and Construction Skills showed that consultants are continuing to suffer in the downturn. Of 300 practices surveyed, 54% said their income had

fallen in the 12 months to October 2009. About 46% said they had made redundancies over the period.

Read more: http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=29&storycode=3159674&c=0#ixzz0j77ws1Uy

Mario Botta: Swiss architect who designed TCS offices

By Ishani Duttagupta & Neha Dewan, ET Bureau

For well-known Swiss architect and urban designer Mario Botta, India has definitely been among the shaping influences of his style. “The past is very important for my work and so is the environment and climate of a place. All this translates into a modern architectural genre,” says Botta who has worked on various urban architecture projects around the world. The past, he says, makes up 95% of the current place in which we stay.

“But it doesn’t imply that we should reproduce the past but rather be inspired by it,” he says assertively. He adheres to a philosophy of historical determinism in which architecture acts as a mirror of its times and some of his most important work includes the SFMOMA museum in San Francisco, the cathedral in Evry, the museum Jean Tinguely in Basel, the Cymbalista synagogue and Jewish heritage centre in Tel Aviv, the municipal library in Dortmund and the Kyobo tower and the Leeum museum in Seoul.

In India, Botta has designed Tata Consultancy Services offices in Hyderabad and Noida. “For the Noida TCS office, a double skinned wall ensures a system of natural ventilation for the internal spaces of the office. The south walls have no apertures, and thus form a screen against the direct and strong sunlight. A portico shaped space on the ground floor reveals the presence beyond of a vast green area. These are features which are inspired by old buildings in India,” says Mr Botta.

The TCS office in Hyderabad is located in the technology hub of High Tech City. The underlying intention of the design for the offices is to present a monolithic element hollowed out on the inside and open towards the city. “While one of the offices is on the outskirts of the city, the other is located in the hub. The two different locations have helped shape the different architectural styles,” says Botta.

He confesses to being fascinated by the history of India. “The old and new co-exist in India which is an interesting interplay. I hope to have some influence of India in my designs!”

There are a lot of things that Botta feels are significant to consider as an architect. “Firstly, one needs to understand his surrroundings and create dialogue. The building should not be isolated. It is also important that the buildings are environment-friendly which can help to control the temperature. Lastly, one must understand the culture of a place and translate it into a modern way,” he says.

By Ashoak Upadhyay / Business Line

Builders do not erect an apartment block or two; they build cities within cities; rows upon rows of residential towers peppered with landscaped gardens, swimming pool, jogging track and clubhouse. The customer does not come home simply to four walls enclosing space; he enters arcadia.

But what about the house itself? Can the artifice of landscaped gardens and swimming pools built on the graveyards of mangrove swamps and nature’s waterways compensate for the banality of mass housing architecture? The dreariness of Mumbai’s Cuffe Parade high-rises is matched by the lifelessness uniformity of building facades or interior layouts in the newer colonies at Powai and Andheri.

Catalyst for new style

Mumbai’s building ethos wasn’t always so predictable. Leave alone the Gothic and Indo-Saracenic structures that dot south Mumbai; the gentle arc of Art Deco buildings on Marine Drive and in the Fort area or P.M Road, in the Backbay reclamation are now justly famous for their contribution to the city’s skyline and topography, exuberant monuments to heterogeneity-as-lifestyle. Equally, they are also a tribute to the first push for modernity.

From about 1930 and well into the 1950s, the Art Deco style, accommodating a rich variedness of interior styles and facades set the tone for middle class housing in a distinctive break from the past’s ornate opulence of garden bungalows or town houses of rich merchants and the drab constriction of working class chawls — one room tenements. The multi-storeyed apartment block was to alter mass housing all across the country in the years to come.

A series of new devices from the late 1920s made that transition from the grand structures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries possible; the introduction of reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and the widespread use of the electric fan and other appliances.

Debating styles

But the most important catalyst for the growth of the new style, whose shabby descendents now pierce Mumbai’s skyline, was the expansion of the architectural profession in the country, the epicentre of which was Bombay. From 1930s on, Indian architects and their firms, some with British partners, began to dominate the scene; they also wanted to define it anew. So they began to search for style that broke with the past.

The return to Indian traditional architectural styles, an Indian Revival, found ardent supporters among prominent British architects like Claude Batley and Patrick Geddes, head of the Sociology Department of Bombay University and a sprinkling of Indians. But Europe offered two rather competing Modernist styles in the mid-1930s.

The most ardent supporter of the Bauhaus school of stark geometrical lines, evident in Le Corbusier’s housing project at Passac was a Poona engineer who converted from the traditionalist view after a trip to Europe in the 1930s.

Deshpande wrote a series of pamphlets praising the functionalism and simplicity of the International Style or Bauhaus. An Indian architect, H.J. Billimoria did not, however, share Deshpande’s enthusiasm for the new aesthetics; another British architect, A.G. Shoosmith predicted the stark geometry would find few takers in India.

Another Modernist trend evident since the late 1920s finally won the day as it offered the best of both worlds, firmly rooted in the Modernist tradition that most Indian architects were searching for.

Varied designs

Art Deco combined exuberance and elegance in style thus, moving away from the bleakness of Bauhaus and functionality based on varied designs.

Even though the movement died in the 1940s in Europe, it gripped the imagination of Bombay-based architects; the birth of sound in film altered movie-making and viewing and heralded the age of the cinema halls. Not surprisingly, the first Art Deco building was the Eros theatre, followed by the Regal, then the Metro. The most abiding legacy of the movement, of course, remains the long line of residential buildings on the Marine Drive, and in the Backbay Reclamation that by the late 1940s had become the densest location of the most varied styles of facades and interiors for residential and commercial purposes.

But not all architects found favour with Art Deco; well into the World War II Claude Batley bemoaned the fondness for the Modern against the traditional Indian. But there was no going back; the city had moved away from the Victorian into the modern age and its architects, through their contesting visions, often articulated through the city-based Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects, based in the city, had helped in no small measure.

“What will happen to our cities after 20 years? We have no public realm, no urban development, no museums, no civic spaces and no institutions to inspire us,” the Padmashri awardee lamented while speaking at an interactive session organised by Ambuja Realty at the CII Suresh Neotia Centre of Excellence for Leadership on Tuesday evening.

Doshi gave the city its first “large-format, socio-economically tiered” housing in the shape of Udayan, The Condoville. The architect, who had worked for four years (1951-54) with Le Corbusier as senior designer in Paris, and then in India to supervise Corbusier’s projects in Ahmedabad and Chandigarh, felt modern India wasn’t creating any architectural heritage we could be proud of 20 years on.

“We should have more mixed-use clusters instead of segregated commercial, residential and administrative districts,” Doshi said. He called upon students in the audience to draw inspiration from our ancient architecture, which “was sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the people”

Original article here.

“My career has been nothing less than an adventure,” declares James Law, Chairman and Chief Cybertect of James Law Cybertecture International. This company founded in 2001 offers services including architecture, master planning, interiors, multimedia, information technology and strategic planning, based on a first-of-its-kind platform called Cybertecture. Excerpts from an exclusive interview with DH Realty.

On his journey

I believe that in the limited time we are here we should be lucky to find our innate talent and use it to improve others’ lives by designing buildings and cities. Post my studies at UK, I went to Japan at the beginning of the 90s and began to realise that using a creative mind and technology would be the way forward. My aim is to be a visionary and an innovator and offer a new way of doing things and changing the old order. 

In fact, I started my company on January 1, 2001 – a date 01/01/01 to signify a new millennium and a new way of thinking. Today we have offices in Hong Kong, Dubai and Mumbai. When I started there were challenges as no one was willing to give me a project but I was clear that we must plan for the future. However the challenge to translate ideas into action and reach out to a critical mass is what makes this journey thoroughly enjoyable.

Concept of Cybertecture

In the old days construction material was glass, wood, stone and concrete. Today’s new age world has changed with invisible information, interactivity with Information technology (IT), information on the Internet and the collective power of new sciences.

I really see no difference between an iPhone and a building or why a building cannot keep us safe.

Hence we need to merge architecture and technology to a level that has not been achieved before to experience Cybertecture.  Cybertecture represents a new direction in architecture that involves the concept of bringing people together in a “Live The Future” lifestyle, using the latest technology and architectural designs. 

On architectural trends

Today the global community of architects and technologists are pushing their boundaries and I am part of this group, so I keep abreast of the latest trends by sharing ideas.

The three key trends of the future according to me are how buildings and cities will be sustainable, how cybertecture will make people happier and healthier. 

Sustainability can be achieved when we make buildings that do not destroy nature.

Planetary cybertecture is achieved when the building has the technology to recycle its resources and balance with the earth. Likewise happiness is at the centre of human civilisation and the building must help us to stay in touch with our family and friends.

In fact, the view outside a building can be customised through dislocated reality to be what you want – it can also be something you see outside your room at home!  Likewise in spite of the bravado about advancement in many senses, new diseases like swine flu seem to be getting the better of us.

Hence we have the concept of a bathroom mirror, that can be fitted in any bathroom across the world that monitors and diagnoses your health and synchronises this with your personal profile on the Internet that can be shared with your doctor and ensure that any changes to your body weight and balance can be managed better to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

The Pad Tower in Dubai, is the ‘World’s first Cybertecture Residential Tower’ and in a way allows you to live in the future. This building has won four awards in the CNBC Arabian Property Awards 2007 and the ‘Best International Apartment’ at the CNBC International Property Awards 2007. Also the iconic building ‘Technosphere’ for the Technopark in Dubai, reflects the state of Planet Earth in the present and future times. 

In fact, this building has been designed to mimic the planet and can have 25,000 people occupy the premises almost like a mini city.

My project in Mumbai, Cybertecture Egg is again a unique design and is built without a single column. Am also working on several residential and commercial projects in Mumbai and will start work at Chennai soon. We are also discussing projects in Delhi.

On India

India is destined to become one of the most advanced countries in the world given its energy, international exposure, experience and financial clout to take the country to an advanced and innovative state.

In fact being one of the largest English speaking countries in the world, India is poised to germinate new projects and its people have a burning hunger to improve the quality of their lives.

Smarter and hard working people and access to technology is going to make India a global leader.

On Bangalore and its architecture

This is my third trip to the city and I have seen a lot of advances technologically. As Bangalore has reasonably good infrastructure, a good airport, a great mix of talent from across the country, I plan to do projects and design some of the most advanced spaces here.

As a symbol of innovation and new economy, Bangalore is representative of advances in cyber technology.

With the global recession and slowdown, realty has taken a hit but with the burgeoning population, the long-term outlook is positive.

The current blip is only a re-adjustment and it is important to be aware of the real estate bubble and make investments in sound projects founded in correct policies.

By Shilpa Raina for Thaindian.

He is the man who recreated the luxurious living experience of America’s Beverly Hills with the famous Aamby Valley project in Maharashtra. But Bobby Mukherji believes that post-independence Indian architecture has little to be proud of.

“We have shown people enough monuments and architecture from history, but what have we done after independence? Nothing! If you look around, we lure the West with monuments made in the Moghul era. After that it’s zilch,” Mukherji, who is in his 30s, told IANS.

“I would like to do something for today,” he said.

Perhaps he already has – by designing the master plan of Aamby Valley in Lonavala, Maharashtra, which is spread over 10,000 acres of land and offers all facets of luxury living. It took shape during 1998-2003.

“It was one of my most challenging assignments because the whole idea was to build a high-end residential area in a hilly and unexplored terrain. At that time we didn’t have Google earth to navigate, hence we had to take help from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to source satellite images,” said Mukherji in an interview.

“I still remember that we had to pay them Rs.40,000 for a picture and we took around eight pictures from them to finalise where to build houses, dams, lakes, etc.,” he added.

Based in Mumbai, he was in the capital on a business visit.

Mukherji started his design consultancy Bobby Mukherji and Associates (BMA) in 1993 and he has ever since been associated with many high-end luxury projects like Le Meridien hotel in Delhi and Lalit Group of hotels.

Talking about the Indian architecture industry, Mukherji said the scene is very “sad”.

“Unfortunately, the scene is very sad and one can blame the education system because the design courses that are offered in the country are not at all up to the mark. Also, they are very expensive courses and not everyone can afford it,” elaborates Mukherji who passed out of the Academy College of Architecture, Mumbai.

“To compete with international standards, one has to go out and explore. You can’t just make designs unless you have seen some great work. And the problem is that we don’t have such great work that would inspire young people to excel. We still have a long way to go,” he added.

Mukherji who has been in this business for over 15 years reveals that international architects still hold monopoly in the Indian market when it comes to major projects in the hotel industry.

“Today around 90 percent of big infrastructure projects are done by foreign architects because when someone is investing millions in a project, they want to get the returns as well. If the design aspect of their project is poor, they face losses. This has happened in the past; hence companies stay away from Indian architects,” Mukherji explained.

“These architects are mainly from Singapore, London, Los Angeles, New York. Even though it costs like crazy to communicate and coordinate with them as they are sitting miles away, for a major project you can’t take a chance,” he said.

Mukherji also emphasised that a client has to have trust in an architect’s work and design aesthetics.

“There are times when I give crazy ideas to my clients and they are skeptical about it. But they trust me blindly and when they see the final product, they are happy. Today I am here because my clients trusted me and gave me the freedom to experiment,” he said.

“They understood the designer’s language and that is what helps in building world-class projects,” he added.