The Crisis of Architectural Education in India – I

An Epistemological Inquiry into Three Questions

Misplaced Pedagogy: The “misplacement” suggests a pedagogical imbalance—where architecture is taught as a set of normative responses rather than a field of evolving questions. The emphasis on technique over an inquiry in architectural education often leads to a system where students master reproduction and construction skills but lack the intellectual framework to question the discipline’s role in society. This, in turn, shapes a professional mindset that privileges architectural services & execution over exploration.

Misplaced Studio Debate: The fundamental misalignment in how architectural discourse unfolds, particularly within the design studio. The dominance of functional concerns—efficiency, optimization, and performance—often sidelines the deeper, more abstract questions about meaning, symbolism, and cultural narratives. When social, cultural, and environmental inquiries are treated as secondary or even inconsequential, and the discipline risks reducing architecture to a problem-solving exercise rather than an intellectual and cultural project.

This raises a critical question: Is this misplaced debate a consequence of the increasing technicalization of architectural pedagogy, or does it reflect a broader shift in the profession’s priorities toward market-driven concerns? Would repositioning the studio as a space for “semantic debate” require a fundamental restructuring of how design is taught and evaluated?

Misplaced History of Architecture: This critique underscores the way architectural history is often reduced to a linear progression of styles, movements, and formal shifts, rather than being understood as an active and collaborative incubator of ideas. By confining architectural history to a timeline-based, stylistic categorization, it loses its potential as an interpretive and interdisciplinary field—one that can intersect with philosophy, art, music, and literature to generate new ways of thinking about space, form, and inhabitation.

This limitation arises from the institutionalization of history as a rigid academic discipline, and it is tied to the professionalization of architectural education, where history is seen merely as a reference rather than a critical tool. The question is how we might reframe architectural history to function as an incubator rather than just a passive archive material.

Imgae Credit: Manoj Parmar Architects