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Challenging Trends

2019-09-01

CW DESIGN BUILD looks into recent trends in the building and architectural fraternity, and explores their impact on the industry.

Today, there are about 111,350 registered architects in India. ?Compared to the past two to three years, the number of architects would have increased to an average of 14,000 a year,? reckons Vijay Garg, President, Council of Architecture. That said, he emphasises upon the dearth of architects in the country. ?If you see the population and the quantum of construction being done in India, we need anything between 10 lakh and

20 lakh architects. And we are far below the required number.?

However, several trends have been emerging in recent times, which could be a result of this shortage.

The ?in-house? trend

Today, several leading builders and developers have an in-house design team to plan their projects. Could this pose a challenge to independent architectural firms?

Garg disagrees, saying, ?In-house architects (architects within the developer company) are mostly involved in coordination jobs. And considering the number of jobs available out there, apart from builder/developer projects, independent architectural firms would be occupied doing their own work.?

Gaurav Sanghavi, Co-Founder, Pentaspace Design Studio, is in agreement.

?The skill set of a conceptual architect (independent architect) is different from an architect looking after the execution of the project (in-house architect). An independent architect brings fresh ideas, creativity and innovation to a project. And in close coordination with the in-house architectural team, the project can be executed better.?

Anjan Gupta, Principal, Anjan Gupta Architects, comments, ?Most developers I know in Kolkata have in-house architects but they do not do the main design. They check all the drawings and co-draw with the independent architects.? In many cases, budding architects who do not get a chance to work with renowned architects join the design team of developer companies. ?Through this, they get to work with large independent architectural firms, whose drawing they just follow for a particular assigned project.?

A defined role

It is increasingly evident that several builders and developers, especially large companies, have a chief design head incharge of upcoming projects. There certainly could be some additional benefits to having an in-house team.

For a builder/developer, anything that is designed has to make business sense. And, there are multiple functions that go along with architecture that need to be integrated and work in sync for the building to perform. Apart from the aesthetic intent an independent architectural firm brings to the table, they may not be involved or aware of the implications when it comes to cost, time or logistics of execution. For instance,

Atul Date, Project Group Head, Rustomjee Group, shares, ?An architect would prefer having large aluminium windows. But is it possible to bring those windows up at site? Get them installed? What is the size of the openings? Is there a possibility of lifting arrangement? All these things is where we come in and give our vital inputs.?

He further explains, ?We outsource the creative part of the design to external architects. What the external firms unfortunately tend to miss out on is the analytical part of design such as costing, integrated coordination and price of individual items.? He adds that independent firms generally look predominantly at aesthetics rather than smaller aspects of cost procurement or maybe material characteristics.

This is what the in-house team takes