Architecture in India is in crisis. Its details are elaborate to get into but rest assured things are in a mess. The profession was always in a state of disarray but these days it’s messier than previously recognized. There are also a lot more architects than even 10years back therefore a lot more versions of architecture. Architecture is an art after all. Previously everything (all architectural theoretical knowledge) architecture was in books. And you could say magazines too. Even exhibitions about architecture were very limited and almost inaccessible. In this context, you have the internet as a space of unfettered access to any kind of information on what architecture is or could be. Anyone can publish anything about their imagination of what architecture is imagined as. Reading architecture was something we were almost taught. We were shown various kinds of books and taught how that material was applied to think about spatial production and formulating various strategies. It is an almost skill that the internet content consumption culture has destroyed. What this culture of consumption has done is made access to simpler ideas of what spatial building practices are easier. Simpler means accessible ideas. Commonly read ideas are available in plentiful. The intellectual culture which the profession had, at least just before social media is now lost. Ways to think about what architectural books and their reading is necessary? There are different patterns to reading that books on architecture can differ from. To know how to access and work within these patterns is the first step in improving thinking about architecture than it is prevalent today. Traditions on discussing architectural books are broadly distributed between book lists and youtube videos. Collecting pdfs of books is another but it falls more in the culture of accumulating. Right now, this state of affairs is a brief gap in knowledge about thinking architectural discourse. The club sits here in all of this.
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