The Vision Thing

Keeping people and their needs at the centre of all design projects is the guiding principle at the Department of Architecture, IIT Roorkee

- M. Riyaz Hashmi

American architect Frank Lloyd Wright once famously said, “A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.”

At the Department of Architecture and Planning, IIT Roorkee, though, they are bracing to present solutions to much bigger challenges. To the scientists here, people, not building, are the priority. For students and researchers here, Vaastu is not an art form, but a science; architecture is not just about lifeless buildings but the development of a civilisation, including its natural heritage.

The world conducts social and economic audits, but the department today is auditing ‘human access’, as it were, to buildings and premises. The enginee ring department at IIT Roorkee is studying human beings, looking at what is required, and asking questions: what needs to be conserved, what future answers do we seek as the wheels of modernity grind on. The role of the architect in the future will be multifarious—from designer to planner to social and legal advisor. To this end, the institute offers hundreds of subjects that students and researchers can choose from according to their interests.