Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Farhat Afzal
In architectural education of South Asia, Eurocentric narratives had long been perpetuated through architectural history surveys written by western scholars, many of which emerged during the colonial expansion of the British Empire in India. One such narrative is Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture. However, since the 1980s, scholars have criticized these Eurocentric approaches, with much of it being done through the lenses of Orientalism and postcolonial theory, as popularized by Edward Said and others. While Said’s Orientalism establishes the starting point for critically looking at Eurocentric approaches adopted by Western historians like Fletcher, it does not delve deeply into the metaphysical dimension of art and architecture, particularly as found in South Asian art and architecture. The point that Fletcher fails to acknowledge is that, to grasp the intricacies of non-western architecture, it is necessary to have knowledge about that particular culture. This is the gap which can be filled by investigating art and aesthetics of a specific culture, which this research does by analyzing the philosophy of Indian art and architecture, through the perspectives of Ananda Coomaraswamy. Through his writings, Coomaraswamy explores the cultural and philosophical differences between Western and Indian worldviews (although it must be noted that both the West and the East possess several different worldviews, thereby resisting a simple binary). He criticizes Eurocentric perspectives, which results in the misrepresen¬tations of non-Western art, philosophies, and civilizations. Coomaraswamy’s perspectives challenge the rupture caused by the Eurocentrism of Fletcher and his contemporary followers. Moreover, they overcome the limitations of Said’s postcolonial theory while seeking to understand global architecture history. In all, this research aims to repair the rupture in architectural education, so that future accounts of global architectural history consider the intrinsic worth of non- Western traditions.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.113.64
Volume Editors
Sara Jensen Carr & Rubén García Rubio
ISBN
978-1-944214-48-7
