What design in India needs is radical thinking

A recent seminar in one of Mumbai’s fancy hotels was titled ‘Transformative Design – the Future of Architecture’. Including speakers from India, Dubai and Singapore, its glowing internationalism upheld ideals of conservation, materiality, spatial confluence, green envelopes, curtain walling systems, shade and environmental protection, energy harnessing, waste management, electrical grid and distribution systems, design for the differently-abled, façade and elevation treatments, and building face lifts. The large audience of designers, students and practising architects filed in dutifully behind meeting room banners that proclaimed in bold type, ‘Urban Transformations in Regional Contexts’, ‘Biospheric Conservation’ and ‘Ecological Constructs’. A couple of years ago, Rajesh Advani, a young architect, reacting precisely to such a call, advanced an elaborate initiative called Unbuilt India — an active search for a collective of architectural ideas that could change the country. An overwhelming response from students and professionals gathered a vast array of designs: from constructing high-rise parks in dense neighbourhoods, covering roads with vegetable gardens, reviving water sources in drought-hit areas, inserting housing for the homeless under flyovers, pedestrianising polluted urban centres, designs for tree houses, and stacked tunnel houses saving city land, among others.