Mass rural-to-urban migration in India will put pressure on the country’s architects in the coming years, Morphogenesis co-founder Sonali Rastogi tells Dezeen in this interview.
The world’s most populous country is experiencing a shift from a largely agrarian economy to an increasingly industrialised one – with ambitions set by prime minister Narendra Modi for India to become a developed economy by 2047.
According to the World Bank, towns and cities in India are expected to house 40 per cent of the country’s population by 2036 – equivalent to 600 million people – up from 31 per cent in 2011.
Architects to face “huge responsibility”
Almost 70 per cent of the urban infrastructure needed for these cities is yet to be built, and Rastogi believes the responsibility for making sure it gets delivered will fall predominantly onto architects.
“For the first time, I feel anxious,” Rastogi said. “[Architects] are going to be the nation-builders, so to achieve this number I think we have a huge responsibility.”
In less than three decades since being established in 1996, Morphogenesis has grown to more than 200 people and now stands as one of India’s most commercially successful architecture firms.
Even so, for Rastogi the challenge ahead over the next few decades is a daunting one.
“I think I know how to do it, but I don’t think I know how to do it at that scale,” Rastogi said. “I’m only a small, small, tiny player.”
“Going forward from here, it’s not just about building that next star-architect image for [Morphogenesis],” she added. “It is to think about what is the fundamental change we have to bring for this massive amount of building to be done.”
“And how we are going to get to that race is, I think, a primary architectural responsibility.”
Rastogi studied at the Architectural Association in London, where she met her partner and fellow Morphogenesis co-founder Manit Rastogi.
It was during her studies that Rastogi noticed a lack of discourse regarding Indian architecture – aside from globally recognised Indian architects such as Charles Correa.
According to Rastogi, a lack of narrative and direction in Indian architecture had led the country to “disappear for around three to four decades”.
As skyscrapers began appearing in the West throughout the 20th century, Rastogi recalls a national pressure to design skyscrapers in order to be recognised on a global stage.
“In India, it’s always a little bit harder for a building to get attention than say in London or New York or somewhere like that,” she said. “There was no real narrative.”
Architecture in India “was a little lost”
Keen to propose a new narrative for contemporary architecture in India, Rastogi returned following her studies, where she and her partner established Morphogenesis at a time when the country was beginning to emerge as a global economic power.
“When we came back to India, we were on the cusp of a mostly socialistic approach [shifting] to a largely capitalistic approach, so we were in that changeover period,” she recalled.
“I think architecture, for a while, was a little lost,” she added. “So we played our part in building the narrative of where Indian architecture was going, and it got attention.”
This “narrative” sought to deliver buildings that had a closer relationship with their immediate context, and the resulting differences in aesthetics from project to project remains a feature of Morphogenesis’ work.
“This narrative then reflected in our buildings [and] I think also somewhat shaped the narrative of the entire generation,” said Rastogi.
“I’m not taking full responsibility for it, but I think it gave creative people something to identify with, versus nothing to identify with… other than a Western mode of growth.”
Integral this approach for the Rastogis was the integration of traditional knowledge and craft into the buildings themselves.
“I still believe that India has a bespoke advantage, because we still have craft, we still have skills, and these skills are languishing, and they’re there in millions of people,” she said.
“I can still hand craft part of the world’s largest building, and I can bring that sensibility, and I can bring that inclusivity and also the vision to be sustainable, but on Indian terms.”
“So nowhere else in the world can [buildings] look the way they do here,” Rastogi added.
“We don’t have room to make mistakes”
Climate change is another major challenge for India as it develops. It is currently the world’s third-largest polluter after China and the US – responsible for emitting 2.9-billion metric tonnes of CO2 in 2023.
Like many other countries, it is also dealing with the implications of climate change, such as extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels.
Construction demands only pose additional sustainability challenges for the country unless radical changes to building methods are put in place.
Meanwhile, an additional issue highlighted by Rastogi is the transfer of skills and knowledge as populations equipped with agricultural skills must transfer their expertise to an urban context.
In combination, these issues present a unique challenge to create infrastructure that not only meets the country’s rapidly growing demands, but is also environmentally and socially sustainable.
“This is a time where I think a lot of thought has to go into sustainability,” Rastogi said.
“A lot of thought has to go into inclusiveness because, within our country, the population is going to go from primarily agrarian to urbanised in the next 10 years and will come with skill sets which are extremely traditional.”
“If we do not include them in the skills they bring, then we’ll be losing out on generations of wealth and wisdom,” she added.
“And if we do not improvise our systems of building so that buildings can be designed and built in a qualitative manner, meeting sustainability targets, then it’s not something we can recover from. We don’t have room to make mistakes.”
In 2009, Morphogenesis’ work gained its first global attention after winning the World’s Best Learning Building Award at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) for The Pearl Academy of Fashion in Jaipur, India.
Since then, the studio has grown significantly in scale, though it continues to work predominantly in India. Last year it completed the Surat Diamond Bourse, the largest office building in the world.
Other notable projects include The Lalit Hospitality Institute in Faridabad, the Institute for Integrated Learning in Management in Greater Noida and The Lodsi Community Project.
“At no point can I say the journey has disappointed me,” Rastogi said of her career so far.
“It’s been hard,” she added. “I cannot say I haven’t burnt the midnight oil, I have, and I still do, but it’s been an extremely rewarding journey – much more than I could have ever imagined.”
The photography is courtesy of Morphogenesis unless otherwise stated.
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