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To do larger good: Timba; the restoration of an abandoned and derelict basalt quarry (inset) into a self-sustaining forest system.
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Aniket Bhagwat introduced Karan Grover and went on to share his ideas about responsible design and what should consume the Indian architect today.

When one studies the preoccupations of the designer in any age, he seems to be guided by a range of political, cultural and economic influences that shape that age. History will bear this out.

India has been no different, as a quick investigation of the post-Independence decades reveal.
 

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In the 1940s, the imperative to shape a new nation was paramount – one that broke the shackles of its past, and emerged as a phoenix. Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh and structures like the Bhakra Nangal Dam epitomised this period.

Soon enough, the simmering socialist thought conquered the nation’s imagination. And what began as a series of experiments in the late 1960s, fructified as social housing schemes along with government-funded institutions that were in sync with the protectionist economic regime.

Doshi’s Aranya Housing at Indore, or Correa’s Housing at Belapur, exemplified this thought. The designer was, however, already restless, and his identity seemed at peril.

Investigations in the vernacular, the ancient ways of building, found their echo in buildings such as Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, and in Laurie Baker’s learning and interpretations of the vernacular.

By the ’80s, the economy had begun to open up – and, powered by the IT industry, it was paramount to seem global. Sure enough, the architect responded by building steel and glass edifices that seemed to be part of an extended, albeit rootless, family that had overrun the world.

Today, with global concern about sustainability, the architect has focused all his energies on demonstrating “energy responsible” ways of building.

The question is not whether one period was right or wrong. It is not about judgment, as much as it is about recognising that designers will, like all strata of society, respond to that which seems the dominant influencing imperative. And today that imperative is energy sustainability.

Unfortunately, some fundamental lessons seem to be forgotten each day.

Design, which was influenced by culture, the arts, the social habits, the intellectual and physical context, now seems to rely for its credibility, only on being certified as “green”.