We, the Pune conclave of concerned practitioners, educationists, young professionals and others working in allied fields, held on 16 & 17 November 2019 at MIT World Peace University to initiate a dialogue on the state of architectural education and practice in India today, do hereby Declare: 

There is an urgent need to radically overhaul the practice of architecture in our country because, barring a few exceptions, the dominant trends in the profession have been complicit in reproducing and promoting a no-limits-to-growth, resource-extracting, profit-maximising and coercive socio-economic system that is pushing the planet and society rapidly down the slope of socio-political, socio-cultural and ecological breakdown; 

Architecture today is disconnected from its ethical foundations of being the profession that accepts responsibility for the stewardship of built environments, and is mired in a self-absorbed pursuit of personal glory and material acquisition instead of offering widespread and equitable value to nature and culture;

The growing contradictions of a profession largely divorced from the moral responsibilities to which it must be obliged are mirrored in its detachment from :

• multiple and overlapping global crises such as the climate emergency, spiraling inequality, violence and loss of cultural diversity, societal and institutional breakdown and shrinking spaces for dialogue, dissent or autonomy;
• Accelerating environmental degradation in the country in the form of denuded water resources, rivers suffering biological death, devastating air and solid waste pollution, severe energy imbalances and the unthinking privileging of profit-seeking enterprise to the point of scant consideration for the destruction of ecological balance and diversity or the displacement of subsistence livelihoods and vernacular building practices, deepening hunger, poverty and driving migration;
• collapsing urban systems and dysfunctional cities fueling increasing levels of stress from exploding congestion, dwindling water and power resources, mushrooming pollution and unemployment, seriously compromised public transport, housing and open/nature spaces, criminalizing the poor and threatening the security and dignity of women, children and other marginalized groups, while urban growth projections indicate that half our population will be living in towns and cities by 2050;
• a system of commissioning and deploying architectural and planning services at all levels of the public and private sector that is seldom oriented towards eliciting quality and rarely directed towards the locus of needs, prompting the profession to distance itself from public housing or urban development initiatives; 
• a majority of urban dwellers and the entirety of our rural population remaining outside the ambit of professional architectural or other building services, condemned to survive in environments that cannot offer a basic quality of life.

These insights were distilled from discussions that focussed on:

• A prevailing trend within the profession that pursues visual impact and novelty for personal gain, and the crying need for an architecture that affirms the fundamentals of life. The need for practice that upholds a soul-affirming architecture of simplicity and goodness, where the hunger for instant gratification sought in monumentality or novelty is replaced by a healthy respect for nature, basic human needs and culture, thereby igniting a passion in young professionals and students for building in ways that promote wellbeing through nurturing qualities of the head, heart and hand;
• The compelling need for a culture of practice and education that recognises the ethical and political dimension of the profession so that it reorients itself to place cultural value rooted in ecological and social justice concerns at the heart of pedagogy and praxis. 
• The challenges posed by a rapidly urbanizing India including the threat to exacerbate warming, environmental degradation and inequality if current paradigms are unthinkingly expanded and extended, especially in view of the massive investments planned by the state and private sector in infrastructure and housing;
• The need for architectural education to focus on value orientation and pedagogy instead of the current emphasis on content or skills, beginning with select centres geared to cultivate excellence through prioritising autonomy, the production of knowledge through broader and deeper engagement with community and environment and continuous research and validation through rigorous review;
• The potential for vernacular and non-conventional building practices to steward the environment, while catering to the basic needs of communities of humans and contributing to local economies, identity and autonomy, as a rich repository of and architecture of life-affirming responses;
• The need for an inclusive and equitable spatial imagination of urban and rural settlements that eschews the currently dominant paradigm seduced by superficial and fashion-driven imagery of form to connect with the fundamentals of life and nature; and
• The serious lack of representation of the concerns of students of architecture and young professionals who will face the brunt of the overlapping and exploding ecological and socio-political crises actively promoted and reinforced by the current dominant trends in architectural education and practice and who shall therefore have to shoulder a disproportionate part of the burden of carrying forward any proposals.

Given this opportunity, we the participants at the Pune conclave, do jointly and solemnly resolve: 

1. To see this as a beginning in a series of long-term initiatives to work towards systemic and fundamental alternatives in architectural education and practice in the broader context of the climate emergency, ecological and socio-political crises confronting our species and threatening our very survival;
2. To strive to keep the focus of our efforts on the magnitude and complexity of the challenges we are facing as human beings and will continue to face into the foreseeable future, seeking therefore a fundamental reorganization of the role of architecture and architectural education in social relations defined by its humane, compassionate and life-affirming praxis;
3. To be ever mindful of the processes through which change is sought to be accomplished especially in the context of prevailing power asymmetries within and without the discipline, and conscious therefore of the need to establish norms that will allow for the voices and agency of students and young professionals of architecture to permeate our actions;
4. To carry forward this initiative with the vigour and urgency it demands, sparing no effort or opportunity to widen and deepen the discussion, forge alliances and promote actions in broad agreement with the concerns and priorities raised here, whether collectively or autonomously determined or whether inside or outside the profession and

We call upon all members of the architectural community – professionals, teachers, researchers, students and fellow-travellers – to join us in this critical effort by endorsing this Declaration and commit:

1. To set up working groups of students, faculty and concerned professionals working with schools of architecture and planning and practices across India, to publish a response to this call and give form and life to the resolutions contained in it;
2. To lobby our national architectural, planning and building professional associations and certification bodies to recast their standards guiding professional practice and education to place autonomy and socio-cultural and ecological concerns at the core of their policies and action and
3. To build bridges between the profession and society so that meaningful engagement replaces the inward looking self-referential culture that currently dominates the profession of architecture.
4. To form alliances and networks across schools and professional bodies to conduct annual reviews of our individual and collective efforts at various levels, so that we lead by example, integrating our autonomously determined priorities and standards in our studios and practices, turning the tide in favour of life and community.