Shaping a Critical Space: Patwant Singh and Writings on Architecture and Design in India

This article analyzes how the India-based professional journal Design (1957–88) and its editor, Patwant Singh (1925–2009), initiated and sustained an English-language critical discourse on architecture and design in postcolonial India. It argues that Singh’s ideas and the content in Design not only drew from contemporaneous architectural thought and practice in India and elsewhere but were also situated at the crossroads of historiographic and interpretive problems that ensued from the very spatial-aesthetic criteria that Singh used to evaluate past and present architecture. Through close reference to published content and unpublished archival materials, and through reconstruction of the discussions that took place among Singh and his professional associates, including Indrani Rahman, Habib Rahman, and Aditya Prakash, the article shows how the writings in and around Design and those that involved Singh present compelling vantage points from which to gauge the architectural and design culture of postcolonial India.