Anant National University Hosts Delhi Symposium to Drive Sustainable Reform in India’s Architectural Education

Anant National University’s School of Architecture and the Centre for Public Policy Research and Design hosted a symposium titled ‘Integrating Sustainability into Architecture Education to Transform Professional Practice’ at the Magnolia Hall, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The event brought together educators, policymakers, industry leaders and students to examine how sustainability can be meaningfully embedded within architectural education and practice in India.

The symposium highlighted how contemporary challenges facing our country, such as urban expansion, changing climate, urban flooding and ongoing shortages of key resources like freshwater and quality housing, make the idea of sustainability central to how we imagine, teach and practice architecture. It served as a platform for dialogue on strengthening sustainability within the curriculum and culture of architecture schools. Through focused discussions and expert insights, participants explored ways to translate sustainability from academic frameworks into real-world professional practice.

The symposium featured three thematic panel discussions that addressed critical dimensions of sustainability in architectural education. These included wide-ranging topics, such as campuses serving as living laboratories for sustainability, strengthening industry-academia collaborations to effectively apply sustainability principles in the built environment and innovative teaching approaches and curriculum reforms to equip future architects with the knowledge and skills required to address environmental challenges.

The discussions brought together a distinguished group of practitioners, educators and policy experts. These included Manisha Agarwal, Founding Partner, MO-OF Architects/Mobile Offices; Anurag Tamhankar, Director, Biome Environmental Solutions; Dr Benny Kuriakose, Principal Architect, Benny Kuriakose and Architects; Gurneet Singh, Director, Environmental Design Solutions; Prasad Vaidya, Director, Solar Decathlon India; Dr Vishal Garg, Director, Indorama Ventures Centre for Clean Energy, Plaksha University; Rahul Pachori, Director, Ministry of Education; Apporv Vij, Senior Director, Technical Development, Green Building Council India; Habeeb Khan, Former President, Council of Architecture, Ministry of Education; Jabeen Zacharias, Principal Architect, Jabeen Zacharias Architects; Dr Sanjeev Vidyarthi, Provost, Anant National University; and Zeenat Niazi, Chief Advisor, Development Alternatives.

Talking about sustainability in education, Ar. Jabeen Zacharias, Chief Architect at Jabeen Zacharias Architects and Former President of IIID elucidates, ‘’Education shouldn't be confined to just universities. Sustainability is a lived experience that you find when you step out, travel and see how communities actually survive and thrive.”

Agreeing to the same, Dr Sanjeev Vidyarthi, Provost, Anant National University says, ‘’ Sustainability in architectural education in India must extend beyond abstract awareness to becoming an integral part of how we conceive, teach and practice architecture. Our educational framework today has notable strengths, such as a robust, time-tested curriculum. However, seeing imaginative studio work being translated into a society-wide embrace of sustainability, shaping the country’s built landscape in meaningful ways, has remained a long-standing aspiration.”

Taking the conversation further, Mr. Habeeb Khan, Director, Priyadarshini Institute of Architecture and Design Studies, Nagpur; Chairman, BoG, SPA Delhi and MNIT Jaipur; Former President Council of Architecture, Ministry of Education, explains, “NEP 2020 will liberate architecture education to a great extent. Architecture is a healthy combination of technology, arts, sciences, humanities and commerce. Everything is involved in architectural learning. So, NEP 2020 opens the possibility that a student will then have the opportunity to pursue their own interests and strengths through flexible courses.

Apart from the technical challenges, the tangible challenge that we will have to address is how we look at credit systems, credit transfers, credit equality and banking of credits. Additionally, the intangible aspect that we will have to work on is how we work with a heterogeneous classroom.”

Concluding the same, Ar. Kritika Juneja, Editor Interior Exterior magazine says, “Today, we are lost in a hollow perception of urbanism where sustainability is marketed as a luxury. But true sustainability is not an elite commodity, it is a problem-solving process that must be the core of every building. As architects, we must take the step to stop imitating western trends and start creating structures that breathe, using the frugality of our tradition to design a future that is both affordable and human. This symposium by Anant National University has been vital in taking up the conversation with professionals and policy makers so that we can move beyond mere theory.’’ 

Across the sessions, speakers reflected on the urgent need to integrate sustainability as a core component of architectural education rather than treating it as a supplementary subject. Conversations highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary learning, experiential pedagogy and stronger engagement among academia, industry and policymakers to prepare architects capable of addressing complex environmental and urban challenges.

By convening voices from diverse domains, the symposium fostered a collaborative dialogue on shaping the future of architectural education in India. It reinforced the importance of designing curricula that respond to ecological realities while equipping students with the skills to translate sustainability into tangible outcomes in professional practice.

Through initiatives like these, Anant National University continues to advance conversations at the intersection of design, policy and sustainability, creating platforms where academic inquiry, professional practice and public policy converge to address pressing challenges of the built environment.