TML Front Page

The List

The Takshila Lecture on Architecture & Society

Publication

Valediction

The Jury, while debating on the project selections for the 2018-19 Merit List, inferred that although the eleven projects in the final list represent a cross-section of quality contemporary architecture, these ‘Special Mention’ projects exemplify commendable approaches towards resolution of critical concerns that contemporary architecture must address and in their wake, raise critical issues worth discussing in the larger forum. With this intent, The Merit List attempts to articulate the core issues raised by the Special Mention projects and their relevance in the discussion on practice and pedagogy of architecture in India. The clusters chronicled here are an attempt to provoke thought and discussion on the ambition of architecture practice in India.

Soumitro Ghosh

Nachiket Patwardhan

Amritha Ballal

Randhir Singh

Rupali Gupte

View the Interviews with the Jury

Underpinning TML is a dire need of a serious commitment to create a culture of excellence, establish a peer-peer review and form a community of professional exchange in order to critique and celebrate consequential works of architecture in India. The TML process seeks to institute a line of inquiry that traverses typology to make place for exceptional ideas in design irrespective of typology and scale. With intent to evaluate each project in its own context and judge the merit of each against the programme it deals with, The Merit List intends to outline a set of critical discussion points as a reflection on the state of affairs in contemporary architecture.

Architectural practice today is pushed to the peripheries of society it claims to serve. After two cycles of rigorously reviewing contemporary architecture from a diverse pool of practices, The Merit List strives to bring forth pertinent discussions on critical issues to a larger audience. The Merit List Jury over the past cycles has been able to articulate some immediate and urgent concerns that the fraternity of Architects and Designers in India must confront. The Takshila Lecture on Architecture and Society is delivered by an eminent professional / academician that addresses growing disparity between the practice and pedagogy of Architecture in India, and the realities of our social, cultural and economic contexts. The lecture and the following dialogue aims to challenge the status-quo with a conviction that an open and honest conversation on the state of practice will instigate positive change.

The 2018 Takshila Lecture on Architecture and Society
Prof Neelkanth Chhaya in conversation with Bijoy Ramachandran
14^th August 2018 I NGMA, Mumbai

S

10-150sqm

M

151-1000sqm

L

1001-10,000sqm

XL

10,001sqm and above

1000

About 1000 studios in India frame the critical content of work and thought. These studios contribute substantially the architectural identity of contemporary India.

100

About 100 projects: products of work from these studios become essential case-studies in the concerns, issues, semantics and ethos of practice in India. These projects are rich in content and should have a significant impact on the discourse – professional and academic – in future.

10

About 10 projects from this set transcend the framework of the probable and surprise us with ideas that deserve chronicling. These projects represent the promise of things to come: the work that is valuable and must be discussed in order to calibrate the trajectory of status-quo.

This is THE MERIT LIST