Initiatives in Educating Future Architects in Earthquake Resistant Design Practices

Abstract

India has suffered the effects of a number of earthquakes in the recent past in which the poor seismic performance of the built environment emerged as a key area of concern. A number of initiatives have been taken in India to address this problem and these include, among others, revision and strengthening of the codes of practice, drafting of development regulations and building bylaws to take seismic safety into account, sensitization and awareness building in the community, and capacity‐building efforts directed at various stakeholders in the building delivery process. Architects, as initiators of projects, coordinate the team of professionals responsible for the building‐delivery process. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reach out directly to tomorrow’s architects through sensitization in seismic safety issues to better prepare them for their professional roles. Earthquake‐resistant architecture has fairly recently been included in the academic curriculum of undergraduate colleges of architecture. To supplement and strengthen this, a unique initiative was launched in India in 2008 to directly reach the undergraduate students of architecture through an Annual Workshop Series that is now in its sixth year. Through these workshops, nearly three hundred undergraduate students of architecture have been trained in concepts of the earthquake resistance of buildings. The objective of the series is to sensitize students of architecture in earthquake‐resistant design practices through technical lectures followed by design studios in which they are given hands‐on guidance in earthquake‐resistant design by working on an architectural design project in the Time Sketch format that they are familiar with. This paper presents a brief overview of this activity. India is located in one of the most earthquake‐prone regions of the world. The entire Himalayan belt is prone to earthquakes of magnitude exceeding 8.0, and in a relatively short span of about 55 years, four such earthquakes had occurred: 1897 …