UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS: INDIA, AUSTRALIA AND THE CHANGING DIVISION OF LABOUR IN ‘OFFSHORE’ ARCHITECTURAL PRODUCTION AND EDUCATION
- Publication Type:
- Article
- Issue Date:
- 2007-10-05T02:08:53Z
Open Access
Copyright Clearance Process
- Recently Added
- In Progress
- Open Access
This item is open access.
As with many other ‘industries’ routinely engaged in the digital production and exchange of
information, global interconnectivity is driving a worldwide relocation of architectural design
production and documentation facilities from higher-wage to lower-wage regions. With common
professional and linguistic legacies from the colonial past, India is emerging as a key provider to
Australia in this emerging market of offshore architectural services. Conversely, India is also one
of Australia’s most important emerging consumers of architectural education. Until recently, a
‘foreign-returned’ Indian architect with a degree from an overseas university could anticipate
architectural employment in an ‘upstairs’ position of responsibility and prestige. Overseas
qualifications typically entailed overseas work experience as well, and the enhanced
professional judgement these implied to perform the higher order ‘symbolic analysis’ of a
designer or project leader. It was the ‘downstairs’ staff of locally trained drafters and technicians
who did the ‘routine production’ and were paid accordingly. With the rapidly increasing volume
and sophistication of ‘offshore’ architectural work now being ‘outsourced’ to Indian firms,
however, the old ‘upstairs-downstairs’ division of labour and expertise is no longer clear.
This paper interprets relevant findings from the Indian case study of a larger comparative study
of the changing geography of architectural work. Here we question what an Australian
architectural degree is actually worth, or should be, to an Indian graduate architect when locally
trained architectural technicians based in Delhi, Mumbai, and even provincial Kanpur are
routinely working on major projects around the Globe as remote digital collaborators with some
of the largest architectural firms in the world.
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: