The State of Architecture
Practices and Processes in India 
A Research Framework

State of Architecture is a vibrant and ongoing process of inquiry into the practice of architecture in the Indian subcontinent: its conditions, urgencies, and responses to a world caught up in large-scale economic, social, cultural, political and ecological change. The convenors of State of Architecture have felt that, for too long, the profession of architecture in India has remained aloof of discussions in adjacent fields, and that it has slipped into a complacency induced by conventional forms of patronage. Their process of inquiry originated in the desire to build solidarities of hope and to nurture a new intellectual commons.

One of the key aims of the State of Architecture process is to develop a framework for research that emphasises the connections between architectural practice and a spectrum of adjacent fields - including sociology, public health, literature, cinema, law, activism, philosophy, and climate science - in order to correct its prevailing emphasis on the technologies of efficiency and the economics of scale.

This book bears witness to the forms of research, discussion and publication through which State of Architecture has provoked fresh thinking in the architectural profession in India and influenced the tenor of debate. It revisits the exhibition-conference constellation, State of Architecture: Practices and Processes in India (2016), a decade down the line. As well, it collates the experiences and conversations associated with sequel exhibitions and projects such as State of Housing: Aspirations, Imaginaries, and Realities in India (2018-20) and Architectures of Transition: Emergent Practices in South Asia (2023-26).

It proposes an encyclopaedic yet thoughtfully curated review of the arc of architectural practice in India from Independence, through the early postcolonial period and the emergence of a new nation-state through key phases such as the Emergency and the Liberalisation, to the bewildering present.

The State of Architecture research framework is not a template for ready use, but an invitation to frame challenging conversations within and around the profession, to engage continuously with the architectural object as well as the larger poetics and politics of being, making and dwelling, in which it finds its most significant articulation. The book documents the research and the conversations that emerged during the exhibition. It will also convey structures of reflection and research on contemporary architecture through the mode of the exhibition. This new publication will include a recent conversation with the curators reflecting on the decade since the exhibition.

The book is available for purchase at the Architecture Foundation, write to us at info@architecturefoundationindia.org for further details.