Architects have to urgently re-engage with housing: Rahul Mehrotra

The architect, urban planner and educator raises pertinent questions about the ideology behind contemporary built environments

Rahul Mehrotra is principal founder of RMA Architects, and professor of Urban Design and Planning at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. His practice, in Mumbai and Boston, works on conservation, new buildings, social development projects, as well as international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale. Mehrotra’s latest book, Working in Mumbai, reflects on his praxis of the past three decades through the lens and context of Mumbai. Excerpts from a conversation: Conservation is a planning tool that allows society to modulate the rate of change. If change is not modulated, the impact can range from effects on built environments to the loss of memory and identity. Identity formation is an evolutionary process and architecture and its modulations must be in sync with the rate at which every generation makes that change or shifts in its own identity construction as a society. It’s unfortunate that this process of conservation has now become a silo in itself. Our work has really focused on re-making this connection. We are asking how this impulse to conserve can be embedded in the broader planning process.