Beyond the building block

The short supply of good architects could be a real dampener on the construction boom.

A construction boom might be sweeping across India, but there is a real shortage of architects in the country.

The order books of most decent architectural firms are overflowing, with the result that projects are getting delayed and quality is suffering. According to industry sources, this is the fate of 75-80 per cent of projects across India.

Vimal Mody, general manager, business development and operations at JLL-Meghraj, says "Firms are busy replicating designs from one city to another. All designs do not fit everywhere."

"Today, there is pressure like never before," says S K Sayal, CEO, AlphaG Corp, adding, "We do face problems with deliveries sometimes."

One opinion is that the shortage is of "good" architects, not architects in general. The top architects are all fully booked, though there is no problem getting run-of-the-mill ones, says Sayal. Kartik Ram, principal architect, Jurong India agrees.

"It's more about the quality. This is such a field where you cannot train a person "" 75 per cent is a person's innate creativity and the rest is experience," he says, adding: "Jurong is a big company but even then we don't get good architects. Only 25 per cent of the people who join are good."

There are 40,000 registered architects in India, of which only 30,000 odd are practising "" 80 per cent of these in the 10 large cities. The number of seats across the around 140 architecture schools across India has increased to around 6,500 but it is still not sufficient.

"The way things are going, we would need at least six lakh more architects in the next five years," says Vijay Sohoni, president, Council of Architecture and director Vidya Vardhan's Institute of Design Environment and Architecture.

Ashok Lall, architect and dean of studies at the TVB School of Habitat Studies, points to another problem "" architects doing outsourced work for international architectural firms. "A lot of freshers choose this because that is definitely a more lucrative option."

Sonmoy Chatterjee, studio director at one such architectural outsourcing company, Ananta Satellier, says the firm's present employee strength of 350 will go up to 1,000 in the next two years.

"There are American architects who train freshers joining straight after architecture school. In a way, this gives them experience in new techonology and styles which helps them when they plan to get out into real architecture."

For architect Bobby Mukherji, poaching by big developers and large retailers is a big problem. "The salaries that these companies give are much higher than we can afford. Only if I can charge more can I pay more," he says. "We get applications from people dissatisfied with their outsourcing jobs. Again, the issue is how to match the salaries," he rues.

Mukherjee is clear that the country has only half the supply of architects that it needs for the many malls, residential complexes, integrated township, office buildings that are coming up all over. Till that gap is bridged, we will see mostly mediocre work, sprinkled with the few good ones.