Rediscovering Architecture With a Sense of History

This book explores the connection between architecture and history, presenting a rich variety of examples from different cultures that have made human settlements, architecture, and cities. It demonstrates that histories of settlement patterns conserve natural and human sources and symbiotic living with nature, animals, vegetation, and communities that are on the move and explores how the knowledge of materials and techniques of making are integral to architecture.

The book discusses the social, ecological, textual, philosophical, material, and interpretative processes that are reflected in the making of architecture and cities through history. It emphasises how the traditions of making buildings and human habitats involve people of all social strata. It also argues that the histories of architecture cannot be of durable and fixed structures alone but should also closely examine how buildings are extended, sustained, and the processes of their dissolution.

This book is a must-read for students of architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture. It will also be a valuable resource for students of other disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, history, environment and ecology and cultural studies. Additionally, it would be helpful for engineers, administrators, decision makers, and economists involved in deciding growth priorities for cities to balance the dependence on technology with the concern for sustainable human habitats.

Narendra Dengle is an architect, author, artist, and educator based in Pune. Over the last five decades, his projects have been executed in India and the Sultanate of Oman. He has delivered lectures in India and at universities in the United States, Tokyo, South Africa, Taiwan, and Norway. He is a faculty at the Building Beauty Program in Sorrento, Italy. Exhibitions of his works have been held in India and Europe. His practice reflects his deep concern for the wholeness of life, the connections with ancient wisdom, and the processes of its manifestation in art and architecture. He has authored several books including The Discovery of Architecture: A Contemporary Treatise on Ancient Values and Indigenous Reality (New Delhi: GREHA, 2013), and Dialogues with Indian Master Architects (Mumbai: Marg, 2015). He also edited the two-volume Architecture in Maharashtra: Tradition and Journey (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Board for Literature and Culture, 2024), which was published in both English and Marathi.

Savyasaachi has worked in the fields of political ecology, indigenous people, development, social movements, and conservation architecture. He has taught social anthropology to students of conservation architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. At the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, he has conducted week-long Science and Liberal Arts (SLA) courses on Indian society and culture and guided textile students on ways of doing fieldwork and craft documentation. His publications include The Gift of Guru ki Maseet – Celebrating the Exemplary on the Frontiers of Social Sciences (2016); in Mahuya Bandopadhyay and Ritambhara Hebbar (eds), Towards a New Sociology in India (New Delhi, Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd); "Hand-Crafted: Foundational Value, Creativity and Work, in Threads of Change – Textile Cultures of North East India" (Symposium Papers, IGNCA Delhi and NID Ahmedabad); "Five Aspects of Epistemological Trust in Jauhar", Vol. 6, Issue 1 (July–September 2016); "Craft Architecture and History: Labour, Time and the Future" (2015), in History of Architecture – Towards Writing from an Indigenous Perspective (Proceedings of the Workshop, 18–20 September 2015. Bhopal, School of Planning and Architecture).