The Crisis of Architectural Education in India – II

An Epistemological Inquiry into Three Questions on pedagogy

The absence of philosophical grounding for architectural academics often pushes the architectural education to margins of normative practice. This is a critical discussion, and it resonates with the broader challenge of architectural education being caught between normative and method. The absence of a philosophical grounding in architectural academics results in multiple consequences, especially in relation to its relevance to the profession.

1. Architecture as a Marginalized Academic Discipline

• Unlike philosophy, sociology, or even art history, architecture in academia often struggles to establish a cohesive theoretical foundation beyond the rational concerns of practice.
• Many architecture schools focus on skills, tools, and outdated aesthetics learnngs (basic design), without critically engaging with the underlying epistemological and ontological questions that shape the discipline.
• This lack of grounding in fundamental philosophical debates—such as those on space – time, context/region, and human agency—prevents architectural knowledge from being recognized as an independent intellectual pursuit.

2. Fragmentation of Architectural Education

• Without strong philosophical foundations, architectural education often falls into a fragmented mix of technical training, established design methods, and historical appreciation/documentation, rather than a deep intellectual inquiry into the nature of built environments, history & interdisciplinary architectural discourse.
• The result is a disconnect between academics and performative space, where students are trained in normative formal methods or digital proficiency but lack a critical framework to interrogate the role of architecture in shaping societies

3. Marginalization from critical methods

• The emphasis on proficient syllabus teaching—often focused on technical skills and predefined design methods—tends to reduce education to a training model rather than fostering a deep intellectual engagement with architecture.
• The stagnation in architectural academia, especially in institutions where knowledge production does not evolve with contemporary discourses. The absence of updated mode of thinking about architecture and the built environment, combined with a disconnect from global trends, results in a lack of self-evaluation and critical discourse within institutions.

What next

Re-integrating philosophy | Interdisciplinarity | Re-thinking pedagogical methods

Imgae Credit: Manoj Parmar Architects