With this issue, we enter our tenthannual cycle of DOMUS India. The last nine years have seen crucial dialoguesand discussions around architecture and the built environment in India. Thismagazine has indeed played a crucial role in producing the many criticaldiscussion, reflections, and theses on architecture in contemporary India, aswell the nature of the contemporary in India vis-à-vis the visual and builtenvironment especially. In unequal societies, how can we raise basic livingstandards? In a collapsing natural environment, how can we make planetarychanges? In an increasingly globalised world, how do we define local identity?The ability to understand the role of the built environment at ever greater andever finer scales is a skill our profession depends on for its survival. SaskiaSassen begins the “Agenda” section by considering how the abstract dynamics ofthe global economy are “rescaling” our spatial units.

We are using the “Practice” section toprovoke a reflection on the ways in which the architectural profession can orshould engage with the ever expanding issues of social inequality andenvironmental degradation – brought more sharply into focus by the pandemic –in our world today. In the context of this conversation and these questions, wespecially visit two projects by architect Revathi Kamath, from our archives, asa tribute to an architect from India who really expanded the role of thearchitect and the reach of architecture through her practice and her beliefs incertain processes of working and thinking; Revathi Kamath passed away in Julythis year and there remains much for us to learn from her projects, her ways ofworking, and the way she approached architecture.

With this issue, we begin a new journeyof looking at aesthetics in India - one with letters; a letter opens up a themeor a subject for us and we view the various imaginations that have producedthat theme/subject, given it visual wings, and created a microcosm of ideas andimaginations. We look at the works of artist Sameer Kulavoor who is using hislong-running interest in drawing and documenting public life in his own uniqueway, to understand cities.