IIA to Host Natcon 2016 in Bengaluru from December 1-3, 2016

The Indian Institute of Architects (IIA), Karnataka Chapter will host NATCON 2016 at The Lalit Ashok, Bengaluru from, December 1-3, 2016. IIA is also celebrating its 100^th year in India. Over 1,000 including some prominent speakers including Rahul Mehrotra, Prof of Urban Planning, Harvard University; Alfredo Brillembourg, Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, ETH Zurich, Neelkanth Chhaya, Former Dean of Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University among others are expected to participate over the next three days.

NATCON will commence with the inaugural session on December 1, 2016 and Suresh Heblikar, Kannada filmmaker, director and also a well known environmentalist will inaugurate the event.

IIA NATCON 2016 is intended to provoke architects and our industry partners to think outside of what is termed as a ‘Global City’, and to think instead of an ‘Indian City’ that still aspires towards knowledge, creativity, and good living.

This year’s event will debate on the on the "Indian City” - India is urbanising rapidly and the future lies in the success with which the country urbanises. IIA NATCON 2016 is intended to provoke architects and our industry partners to think at a fundamental level on what the Indian city should be, and to act as an agent of positive change. Against the backdrop of rapid urbanisation, IIA NATCON 2016 will champion on the idea of the Indian City to set course for the future of our urban conglomerations.

Throughout time, architecture has persisted as one of the most profoundly important reflections of culture. Whether we consider monumental structures or modern icons, we see built spaces reflecting the story of time, and how that iteration of culture wished to project itself to the future. Architecture also persists through our infrastructure from bridges to public spaces and even the very layout of our cities themselves. In this sense, architects are the arbiters of our future history and are central to our experience of being human.

The antecedents of contemporary architecture and architectural education in India go back about 200 years and the colonization of the country. That decisive, but problematic encounter with the West set into motion the process of modernisation. In this sense the modernisation ideals are alien to India since they were introduced through the agency of colonisation. But they have become indigenous in the sense that they have been adopted and adapted by the intellectual elites, who in turn, have endeavoured to diffuse them to society at large through state-directed interventionist policies, particularly during the last sixty years after Independence.

For Indian architecture, the path is promising, but there are caveats. Recent events, taken together, point to a complex picture where opportunities coexist with obstacles. Architects must ‘simultaneously and with an open mind engage with research, practice, collaboration and advocacy if they are serious about converting opportunities to meaningful change’. As much as there are numerous bright possibilities in India, the promise is entangled with paradox. Much of the future of Indian architecture will depend on how architects and society navigate these challenges.