Friction: Towards a Post Colonial Pedagogy and Practice in Architecture

Research Symposium Proceedings

Friction: Towards a Post Colonial Pedagogy and Practice in Architecture

edited by Nima Viswanatha, Soumini Raja, Ujjayant Bhattacharyya

Sponsered by Spaceart

Parambalath Building, Golf Link Road, Pachakkil Malaparamba PO, Calicut, Kerala, India

https://www.spaceart.org.in/

Published by

Avani Institute of Design

Ambayathode, Koodathai Post, Thamarassery, Calicut, Kerala, India

https://avani.edu.in

Publication date

January 2024 (Oringinal Publication)

March 2024 (Second Edition)

ISBN 978-93-6128-103-7

Copyright

Paper contributors retain copyright and grant the symposium proceedings right of first publication with the work as simultaneously also licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

advisor

Roger Connah

Convenor’s Note

Acknowledgement Symposium Abstract Symposium Critical Enquiry Thematic Expansion Symposium Schedule

Convenor’s Note

The Avani Annual Research Symposium serves as a platform for conducting rigorous, honest, and fearless investigations, as well as providing opportunities to cultivate original research in contemporary aspects of design and the built environment. With a potential to evolve into globally relevant scholarship, we are thrilled to present the third edition of the Avani Annual Research Symposium proceedings for 2022, which encompassed insightful discussions on the theme of “FRICTION.” These discussions explored topics ranging from memories of friction to the architecture of subaltern and community as a method. Over the course of three days, from September 30 to October 2, 2022, we welcomed 30 young scholars from various parts of the world, along with 10 student researchers and 9 distinguished speakers, to further delve into the discourse on FRICTION. Each paper addressed at least one, if not more, inquiries related to the three core themes of the symposium.

The Avani Annual Symposium is a cornerstone of Avani’s Annual Academic Plans. These themes permeate our studio’s design and overall pedagogical approaches. Furthermore, they provide opportunities to bring together thinkers, pioneers, and scholars to engage with the Avani community, offering critical insights into how we practice, perceive, and teach/learn architecture. The symposium also upholds the core values of collective and sustained shared thinking, diversifying approaches, and integrating other disciplinary perspectives into architectural teaching and learning practices.

The symposium’s discussions commenced with a focus on social politics, sensitivities, and inequalities. It became evident, particularly in these challenging post-pandemic times, that it was crucial to initiate meaningful discourse about the existing societal systems. To seek answers, we believed it was imperative to observe, study, and decode the conflicts that lead to such situations and, in turn, understand the underlying FRICTION. The symposium was designed to explore potential areas of FRICTION in ecology, community, pedagogy, and more. It aimed to encourage fearless inquiries into the causes, nature, and outcomes of FRICTION across different geographies and cultures.

As the convenors of the symposium, we brought our experience from working across multiple design studios and engaging in various disciplines within the Avani community. The issues related to FRICTION had been deliberated in

various forms throughout semesters in both theory and design courses. We were fortunate to have the expertise of Prof. Roger Connah, International Design Chair at AVANI, who generously provided guidance in shaping the symposium’s theme and format.

We sincerely hope that this compilation will pique the interest of readers within and outside the field of architecture academia and practice.

Acknowledgement

The Avani Annual Research Symposium 2022 commenced as a collective endeavor aimed at comprehending the forces that give rise to, and the nature of, inequalities and exclusions in contested and inaccessible settings. What initially began as an informal dialogue among a small group of Avani faculty colleagues, as they shared their common concerns about everyday life and their explorations of Friction, Subaltern, and Community, evolved into a symposium within a span of three months.

The realization of this symposium publication owes much to the generous support extended by numerous colleagues, students, and friends both within and beyond the Avani community. We express our deep gratitude to our mentor, Prof. Roger Connah, for his timely support and guidance in shaping the concept of this symposium. Prof. Connah has been a constant source of encouragement, offering guidance from the very inception of the idea through to its publication.

Our heartfelt thanks go out to the entire Avani community, including the members of the Governing Council, whose consistent encouragement and motivation have been instrumental. We extend our appreciation to our colleagues from the Academic and Administrative spheres, some of whom have also contributed to this publication. We are grateful to our Student Ambassadors for their role in coordinating the symposium, and to the Student contributors who actively engaged in intellectually enriching discussions. We also extend our appreciation to the global community of academics and researchers who actively participated in meaningful discourse during the symposium.

Our sincere thanks are due to all the paper contributors for their patience and unwavering dedication in co-producing this volume. We truly appreciate and extend our deep gratitude to Dr. Biswaroop Das for his generous contribution to the publication. Our sincere gratitude to all three moderators - Ar. Krishnapriya Rajshekar, Ar. Kunjan Garg and Prof. Roger Connah for their contribution during the symposium and for their summary note which is also included in this publication. We acknowledge the valuable contribution of Ms. Sumitra Nair for her copy editing and manuscript improvement efforts. A big shout out to Ms. Hiba Hanif for the symposium poster and the design curation team at Avani; our dear colleagues Ar. Athira Balakrishnan and Ar. Dhaiwat Panchal for their effort to design this

compilation. We genuinely hope that this research symposium proceedings will capture the interest of readers within and beyond the realms of the architectural academy and field-based practice.

Symposium Abstract

As a contemporary response, we have framed this Avani Annual Research Symposium 2022 as FRICTION: Towards a Postcolonial Pedagogy and Practice in Architecture. This is an attempt to expand on the nature of inequalities and exclusions, contested sites and other areas often difficult to access. We are talking of space and a critical spatial practice beyond accepted architectural studies, existing archives, even existing research. We can speak of ‘the subaltern’ within this friction and the friction within the ‘subaltern’; those Invisible, contested, minor and marginalised architectures with uncharted, even unrecognized opportunities. Expanding ideas of tensions and friction, this also speak to “community as method”; how ‘community’ offers collective potential contributing to the complex, social relationships revealed within a subaltern architecture, where marginalisation and community begin to offer ways of (re) making and (re)thinking of architecture. What would our contribution be to an architecture as a direction towards post-colonial pedagogy? How do we ground this in our programmes and our research towards a re-aligned practice of architecture? Whether we choose to overlook, impose or mediate, these subaltern architectures and spatial frictions will define us as the century becomes our present not our future.

Keywords: subaltern – community – friction - public participation – conflictcontested space - compromise – assimilation – mimicry - post-colonial pedagogy .

Symposium Critical Enquiry

We have come to accept architecture’s imperfect encounters with other disciplines especially in this century. We are living with oppositions today which affect our history, our future and put clear pressure on our present. Socio-political, climatic and cultural forces continue to expose the nature of inequalities and exclusions in architecture, often resulting in polarised power struggles and friction within both the academy and practice. FRICTION itself derives from a process where two entities interact and produce a conversation often leading to either compromise or conflict. But friction is also an Indian way of life. A history of oriental subjugation and social inequities see India oscillating wildly between tensions and vulnerabilities in the practice of architecture. In this land of mutuals, exclusives, communities, hierarchies, commons and segregations, our discourse is interrupted, our pedagogies are challenged especially where monologues of academic bias displace any dialogue. In such diversity and complexity, architecture can be seen as a flimsy, ephemeral reflection of society, its nature and behaviour. As a contemporary response, we have framed this Avani Annual Research Symposium 2022 as FRICTION: Towards a Postcolonial Pedagogy and Practice in Architecture. This is an attempt to expand on the nature of inequalities and exclusions, contested sites and other areas often difficult to access. We are talking of space and a critical spatial practice beyond accepted architectural studies, existing archives, even existing research. We can speak of ‘the subaltern’ within this friction and the friction within the ‘subaltern’; those Invisible, contested, minor and marginalised architectures with uncharted, even unrecognized opportunities. Expanding ideas of tensions and friction, this also speak to “community as method”; how ‘community’ offers collective potential contributing to the complex, social relationships revealed within a subaltern architecture, where marginalisation and community begin to offer ways of (re) making and (re)thinking of architecture. If we speak of the ‘subaltern’ as offering alternative architecture focused on communities, we include the marginalised and underprivileged especially in the rural areas; we include the powerless, refugees, the homeless, asylum seekers, the returned, and all migrants to their own land and history. As polarized as we might be today, can we still call for an architecture of common ground where compromise and conflict are re-framed and the ‘subaltern’ memory of friction be one of compromise and

accommodation; not conflict, not unjustly cancelled? How do we situate new spatial values of community and practice within our urban and urbane glossaries of change and agency? How much does our language need re-framing to re-narrate lost histories in former colonies? What potential of drawing can re-draw a subaltern architecture or an architecture of friction? What digital interventions of virtual reach can be re-imagined? What mapping, or relational drawing can approach the invisible, unseen, overlooked spatial practices and understanding of marginal communities, those economically disadvantaged areas falling between the rural and the urban? And how do we propose change and practice whilst remaining cognizant of the soft bias of our own research monologues and the power dynamics they embed? Here we posit a deliberate attempt to inform, decode, disrupt thereby acknowledging the unknown contributions of communities pushed to the edge by political and social forces. How do we approach these ‘voices’ that have been silenced, where whole communities are marginalised in their production of space and production of architectures? What would our contribution be to an architecture as a direction towards post-colonial pedagogy? How do we ground this in our programmes and our research towards a re-aligned practice of architecture? Whether we choose to overlook, impose or mediate, these subaltern architectures and spatial frictions will define us as the century becomes our present not our future.

Thematic Expansion

01 Memories of Friction

Friction is a strong determinant of space in socially, culturally and politically charged nations. Friction is an Indian way of life. With a history of oriental subjugation and social inequities, India wildly oscillates between the ideas of being the land of mutuals, exclusives, communities, hierarchies, commons and segregations. Friction emerges from a process where two entities interact and in that first moment, there is a conversation. But it is this friction which often leads to a situation of compromise, of conflict where discourse becomes a monologue of bias. Architecture is then often translated into a product that becomes a Memory of Friction. How do we engage the architectural memory of friction as compromise or conflict? How can we shape brave methodologies in architectural practice and pedagogy conscious of all forms and translations, conscious of bias, conscious of friction itself. We seek critical responses to friction using spatial memory as a lens to probe into forms of cultural, geographical, social & national frictions.

02 Architecture of the Subaltern

Architecture of the Subaltern is an attempt to expand on the nature of exclusions, vulnerabilities, marginalisation and community; newer ecologies that can offer post- colonial approaches in the thinking, diagramming and making of architecture. Expanding ideas of tension and friction through the lens of the Subaltern, some of these architectures may be forcefully rendered invisible. Whilst contested, they become marginalised, de-territorialized spaces of production. The uncharted, even unrecognized opportunities to re-narrate histories could offer new directions to postcolonial pedagogy. Considering communities whose voices have been silenced and marginalized in the production of space and architecture we seek deliberate attempts to inform, decode and thereby, acknowledge the contributions of communities, especially those pushed to the edges by political forces. How to situate subaltern architecture as a potential tool to de-centre accepted western architectural practice and pedagogy? We invite scholarly and critical responses to study, analyse, theorize, contest and decode architectures as palimpsests revealing visible traces of struggle, apathy and subjugation.

03 Community as Method

Present times, often characterized by social, political, economic and technological complexities, including estrangement, isolation, loss and trauma, have seen the conventional understanding of community as the collective integration of “sameness”. The practice of community - faced with perceptions and experiences of friction, fragmentation, separation and re-assimilation. - depends on contradictory concepts of individual, shared identities and human diversity. By re-situating the intersections between the various complexities of community, can an architectural pedagogy reimagine the possibilities of building a community, inclusive of friction as it opens to a new understanding of collective potential and spatial practice? By reimagining ‘community as method’ we can embrace the differences that could foster generative spaces of human engagement. Can a “pedagogy of community” provide a conscious reorientation of architectural discourse which serves to recognise various narratives in discrete times and places? We ask for innovative papers and other responses to “community as method”, drawing upon lived experiences, and the contextual roles and agencies within community, which could shape an active praxis of the human experience of being together.

Symposium Schedule

Day 01 | 30 September 2022

Memories of friction

Moderator

Krishnapriya Rajshekar Assistant Professor, WCFA, Mysuru

Day 02 | 01 October 2022

Architecture of the Subaltern

Moderator Speakers Speakers

Ar. Kunjan Garg Foundation Studio Lead, SEED, Kochi

Prof. K T Ravindran Professor and Former Head, Urban Design, SPA, New Delhi

Memories of Friction

Dr. Biswaroop Das Former Director, Centre for Social Studies, Surat

Memory, Friction and Space: Few Random Reflections

Prof. Sarover Zaidi Associate Professor of Practice, Jindal School of Art and Architecture, Sonipat

‘Where there is no Architect’: Histories from the native town of Bombay

Dr. Huda Tayob Lecturer, Manchester School of Architecture, UK

Unconfessed architectures of Cape Town

Day 03 | 02 October 2022

Community as Method

Moderator Speakers

Prof. Roger Connah Mentor Advisor, Avani Institute of Design, Calicut

Dr. Aiman Mustafa Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

Community as absent presence: Some notes from Mumbai

Ar. Swati Janu Founder, Social Design Collaborative, Delhi

Design as if People Matter

Moderator Note

Memories of Friction

Krishnapriya Rajshekar Assistant Professor, WCFA, Mysuru

To begin this note, I wish to try to break down the terms memories and friction.

Let’s begin with memories - of 3 fragments that came to my mind when used with the word friction.

Fragment no.01

I visited the Conflictorium in Ahmedabad while on a study trip with students in my first year teaching at an architecture school. Tucked away in a nook of the vibrantly chaotic Mirzapur area, this rather interestingly named Museum is housed in what once used to be the residence of Bachuben Nagarwala, Ahmedabad’s first hairdresser and beautician. The exhibits talk about landmark events in the postColonial history of India & Ahmedabad which were rooted in conflict - between groups of people, places or ideologies; such as the chain of events which led to the abolishing of manual scavenging, among others.The transparent welcome-board put up beneath the calligraphic sign that says Conflictorium, begins by stating : Conflict is integral to life, but how a society manages conflict reveals how mature it is. Total absence of conflict may also not indicate an ideal society.

Fragment no. 02

In 2020, I co-led a housing studio at WCFA, where I teach. The studio was titled The Coexistence of Paradoxes and was centered on the idea of the in-between. Unfortunately or not, that also happened to the semester when the COVID 19 pandemic first broke out. When faced with the never-before-encountered task of having to conduct a studio online, and with barely enough time to reconfigure our lesson plan, the most commensensical thing to do at the time seemed to be to ask our students to start studying their own houses and neighbourhoods - in all their glory, ugliness, comforts and quirks. For a change, attending studio while confined

to our makeshift work desks at home where the neighbour’s pressure-cooker went off in the middle of a lecture, made us feel a lot less in control of situations and a lot more in favour of just praying that the mess in our bedrooms was not being telecast to the entire class while talking about orderly grids. Perhaps it was the unwilled immersion in a world where ‘work’ and ‘life’ collapsed into a twisted heap, that resulted in observations around the notion of ‘home’ being painfully, yet truthfully nuanced. The studio’s provocations evolved into 3 questions, which I hope will be relevant to today’s discussion as well: How do we actually dwell within our domestic spheres, together? What are the workings of the web of interdependencies that allow us to call home, home? And, how do we view conflict and sharing as nonbinary, intrinsic motivations to how we cohabit within a larger community? 1

Fragment No. 3

While going through the book Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities, edited by Jeffrey Hou, I happened to come across an interesting passage: In many Asian cities, public space has been synonymous with spaces that are representing and controlled by the state. In contrast, the everyday and more vibrant urban life tends to occur in the back streets and alleyways, away from the official public domain. Seoul’s [...] ‘Avoid-Horse-Street’, narrow alleys that run parallel to the city’s historic main road Jong-Ro, serve as an example. To avoid repeatedly bowing to the noble-class people riding on horses on Jong-Ro, a requirement back in the days of feudal power, the commoners turned to the back alley, which became a parallel universe and an important part of the vibrant everyday life in the city. 2

In all the fragments that were narrated, conflict has been interpreted as a manifestation of friction, or to paraphrase from the abstract for this panel, a process where two entities interact and from the first moment, there is a conversation. Our memories of friction also manifest differently in our built environments. The Conflictorium becomes a space where memories of friction are memorialisedto serve as a reminder of the fault-lines, in case we forget. We come across these reminders in our museums, our public statues and busts of heroes, encountered in our journeys through the city. The chronological distance between the events and the markers that memorialize them create a speculative disjunction within which observers in the present day situate themselves.

The pandemic resulted in mixed outcomes with respect to how we found ourselves coming to terms with the “new normal”. Now that most of us seem to be inching our way back to the “old normal”once again, it is evident that the “new

Krishnapriya Rajshekar

normal” did expose gaping fissures in the systems within which the world at large operates. From mask-donning protesters taking to the streets in the thousands in Tel Aviv against the government’s inability to handle Israel’s economic crises brought on by the pandemic3 to witnessing migrant workers returning home to Bareilly being hosed down with disinfectant spray en-masse4 , the collisions across societal divisions have become glaringly apparent. Seoul’s back alleys demonstrate historic precedent in the forms of cities transforming in response to conflicts of all manner and scale.

The relevance of this discussion around Memories of Friction in our present day glocal contexts couldn’t be more relevant. Our esteemed panellists for today bring with them a wealth of perspectives from their respective fields of Urban Design & the Social Sciences. Interest in the overlap between Urban Design and Social Studies has witnessed different trajectories of growth and decline in built environment academics and practice, respectively. On the one hand, Public Life Studies as a branch of knowledge within the field of Architecture and Urban Design has been witnessing steady growth since the 1960s. On the other hand, architectural practice is being increasingly subjected to the whimsical trends of privatization. In The Fall of Public Man, [Richard] Sennet argues that public life has become a matter of formal obligation in modern times [...] As streets, neighbourhoods and parks become malls, gated communities and corporate venues, public space becomes subjected to new forms of ownership, commodification and control 5 - the lines of friction keep multiplying. In architecture school, we are often faced with the dilemma of how we respond to the oft-encountered question - are you an architect or a social scientist ? Is the relationship between the two roles fraught with friction ? Is the friction of the nature that invariably leads to compromising one over the other ? Or are there possibilities for previously unacknowledged meanings to emerge from a conversation between the two? Hopefully, today’s discussion would help shed some light on some of these questions.

References

1 Tharakan, J. and Rajshekar, K., n.d. The Coexistence of Paradoxes | Architectural Design Studio Semester 04. [Studio Brief 2019-20] Wadiyar Centre for Architecture, Mysuru.

2 Hou, J., 2010. (Not) your everyday public space. In: J. Hou, ed., Insurgent Public Space : Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities, 1st ed. New York: Routledge, pp.1-17.

3 Hincks, J., 2020. Israelis Just Showed the World What a Socially Distant Protest Looks Like. Time, [online] Available at: <https://time.com/5824133/israel-netanyahu-covid-protest-lapid/

4 The Hindu, 2020. Coronavirus: In Bareilly, migrants returning home sprayed with ‘disinfectant’. [online] Available at: <https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/coronavirus-lockdownbareilly-migrant-workers-disinfected-with-chlorine/articlesh ow/74898179.cms>

5 Hou, J., 2010. (Not) your everyday public space. In: J. Hou, ed., Insurgent Public Space : Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities, 1st ed. New York: Routledge, pp.1-17. In the literature on [the] public realm in recent decades, the erosion and decline of public space and public life have been a predominant theme. In ‘The Fall of Public Man’. Sennet (1992/1978) argues that public life has become a matter of formal obligation in modern times. More importantly, the private and personal have taken precedence over the public and impersonal, as society becomes less interested in public matters and more driven by private interests and personal desires. He further states, the “unbalanced personal life and empty public life” are manifested in the dead public space of modern architecture, with few opportunities for social interactions. [...] Increasingly, to spur economic development, public funds are used to subsidize development of private venues, while developers are generously rewarded for providing spaces with limited public use. As streets, neighbourhoods and parks become malls, gated communities, and corporate venues, public space becomes subjected to new forms of ownership, commodification, and control. Davis (1992 :155) observes, “The ‘public’ space of the new megastructures and supermalls have supplanted traditional streets and disciplined their spontaneity.”

Ar. Kunjan Garg Foundation Studio Lead, SEED, Kochi Architecture of the Subaltern

Subaltern describes a hierarchical relationship. Originally, it described people, but it also extends to describe relationships in ontologies. The non-living is subaltern to the living, the non-human is subaltern to Anthropos, formless is subaltern to form, intuition is subaltern to reason. Modernism grew out of the industrial revolution, which itself emerged from the scientific revolution, the age of enlightenment and the age of colonial empires. One may wonder if the utopian ideal that we imagine with the modernist project was not really there at its origin, but rather thought upon in retrospect. Science is holy only within its limits, and we know of how the limits have been steadily dislodged throughout history – Donna Haraway describes the Copernican wound that dislodged the narcissistic human from the centre of the world, the Darwinian wound that placed the human firmly within the world of lowly animals, the Freudian wound of displacing rationality itself… The age of enlightenment gave us the statistical method. It was a method of the State, etymologically and literally. The statistical method decided what was the greater common good, and thus we had standards. The non-standard is subaltern to the standard. We live in a globalized world, an urbanized world… even nature exists with the boundaries of a conservation, or a sanctuary. What is this experience but the passive acceptance of standards, and it’s spread by entrenchment? The grid is omnipresent; medieval variations in form and material are made subaltern to the concrete frame. And yet, we continue to make homes, to be at home, and make memories of, placefullness. Teddy Cruz says in an interview on power and powerlessness – “I see the vernacular as a functional set of urban operations that allow the transgression of imposed political boundaries and top-down economic models. I see the vernacular not as a noun but as a verb, which detonates traditional notions of site specificity and context into a more complex system of hidden socioeconomic exchanges. I see the vernacular as the urban unwanted, that which is left over after the pristine presence of architecture with capital ‘A’ has been usurped and transformed into the tenuous scaffold for social encounter.” The subaltern as a way of inhabitation. Today, both Prof. Zaidi and Dr. Tayob speak about their work. Prof. Zaidi speaks about the messy heterogenous materiality in this pristine world of architecture, and Dr. Tayob speaks about intuitive fiction as a method in the pristine world of scientific research. They not only speak of the subaltern as a subject, but

demonstrate a subaltern practice. Giancarlo Decarlo says in Architecture’s public, “Architecture produces concrete images of what physical environments would be like if the structure of society were different.” Nothing new can happen in architecture which has not been first invented and elaborated within architecture and in architecture’s own terms. But this new occurrence, if it is really new, really projected towards structural transformation, becomes the ‘material cause’ of the situation in which it is placed, feeding back into the structure of the society and contributing to its transformation. Therefore we cannot just sit passively in the cave of architecture as-it- exists, waiting for social rebirth to generate architecture asit-will-be automatically. We must change the whole range of objects and subjects which participate in the architectural process at present. There is no other way to recover architecture’s historical legitimacy, or indeed, restore its credibility. I warmly invite both Prof. Zaidi and Dr. Tayob to the forum.

Prof. Roger Connah Mentor Advisor, Avani Institute of Design, Calicut Community as Method

We seek the boundaries and limits of our ideas, and this helps us move forwards in our conversations and actions. Expanding ideas of tension and friction in this symposium, we continue exploring resistance. How do we understand actual collisions at the level of community? Here in this session,we address “community as method”. Perhaps the community – our community, any community? - acts as a translator of conflicting ideas. From one language to another, from one design to another, from design to community; our direction out of friction might be through new understandings of site, agency, collaboration. And these can lead to action which us unlike what we have at present. How, we might ask, does ‘community’ offer a collective potential/ How does ‘community’ contribute to the complex, social relationships revealed within, for example, a subaltern architecture. A wider more social approach to architecture? Could not the friction between marginalisation and community, inequality and community begin to offer ways of (re)making and (re)thinking architecture? How do we impose, mediate and temper our own knowledge? How can critical space and spatial friction define us, as this century not the last becomes our present. And what of our future? Dr. Aiman Mustafa from the Department of Sociology at Jamia Millia Islamia will address these issues under the title: Community as absent presence. He offers notes from his work in Mumbai where he has witnessed a rapid decline of a communist politics, centered on issues of inequality and working peoples’ livelihoods. At the same time, he sees the ascendance of what he terms a cultural politics of community. Dr Mustafa will present this in terms of cultural values, beliefs, and practices—”ways of life” where communities are based on different identity markers. Swati Janu, founder of the Social Design Collaborative speaks to the issue under her title: “Design As if People Matter”. More than geographic entity, beyond any design brief, she invites us into potential actions which lie beyond our narrow discourse in architecture. She offers scenarios from her interdisciplinary practice as it engages with underrepresented communities (those typically left out of urban planning processes), as it engages with farmers, street vendors, home based workers, waste pickers and construction workers in Indian cities. She aims to reinterpret and expand the role (and hence relevance) of the architect through diverse modes of what we might consider a ‘critical spatial practice’. As architects, researchers, scholars and

students we sometimes find we must change the language and narrow fields we think we understand. Do we know what it means to talk of a critical spatial practice beyond accepted architectural and sociological discourse? Do we understand the politics of the communities we belong to, and those we don’t? For all the minor and marginalised architectures that exist, we may find we need to invent new vocabularies, new dignity. ‘Community as method’ might offer one such glossary of site, agency, generosity and action.

Invited Paper

Memory, Friction and Space: Few Random Reflections

Dr. Biswaroop Das

Former Director, Centre for Social Studies, Surat

Theme on the ‘Memories of Friction’ in this symposium says that “Friction is an Indian way of Life”... and the country oscillates between the ideas of being the land of mutuals, exclusives, communities, hierarchies, commons and segregations. Such ideas and concepts tend to give a sense of social boundaries. Hence they seem enclosed, autonomous and autarchic. These being classifying words, do not represent the real which is more complex from being amenable to neat categories or classifications. Even the idea of friction between entities assumes separate categories. And within this context, the idea of friction itself remains predicated upon boundaries. Placing boundaries to ideas is to enclose them. Therefore as soon as we privilege the idea of friction we create a forced contour line to social situations that are fluid, overlapping, interconnected and uncertain. Friction can be compared with, albeit metaphorically with a flowing river countering and encountering, navigating and negotiating slopes, obstacles, boulders by pushing its way by meandering across unless embanked or dammed. Lacking any specific boundary, friction appears as a manifestation of what Emma Jackson and Tim Butler (2015) call as to be subdued under ‘social tectonics’. They talk about a habitus operating across a series of fields such as work, leisure, living, homes that together creates a dialectics of spatial and social. Such a dialectic is overlapping, centripetal and centrifugal with a simultaneity creating an ongoing process. This creates a social order of shifting and accumulating power that gets intermingled and appropriated by individuals and groups. For example, when we talk about gentrification in the urban, a space gets appropriated by those who are more affluent. However, this also creates a space for some among the less affluent to gain over the others. The friction here does not become very clear as the boundaries of losers and gainers stand somewhat blurred. Agencies unleashing such processes create a control mechanism that is rigid as well as fluid at the same time. Habitat then becomes segregated with a correspondence of fields where people are likely

to feel comfortable with their material and social conditions. Processes associated with such gentrification are slow and gradual with a vague middle ‘class’ization creating micro level exclusivity and inclusivity. This emerges from acquiring and exhibiting everyday practice and their cumulative causation creating a superficial ‘them’ and ‘us’. Such them and us are not always binarized in opposition as the us gets into them and the them into us. An example is the sites where ‘informal’ settlements in cities house migrants from different regions segregated as similar village groups converging over a space and yet being part of other segregations. The ‘social tectonics’ across such spaces touch each other, interact and overlap, but do not necessarily remain in any perpetual state of exclusivity. This often does not create any friction that can introduce social and spatial rigidities. Contrary to this however is the matter of ‘ghettoization’ where ethnic groups are forced and/or compelled to converge and congregate by a perceived threat or actualisation of marginalizing or standing tall. The internal dynamics within these spaces tend to become more inward looking at times of crisis but otherwise inward centred and fanned outward simultaneously. Indeed this is not only present in the ghettoization of several groups but also among various caste groups within the Indian context. In the countryside, different caste groups live in different streets across many regions. So is true of many urban centres of small, medium and big sizes. There are also ‘gated groups’ who generally consider themselves socially superior. Such spaces are mixed but gentrifying. Together these social spaces appear as patchworks or akin to palimpsests but not necessarily having frictions, for the patches are joined by market forces, wage labour, exchange of services, commodification, support services, etc. In spite of mutual differences in a state of what can be called a kind of ‘social isostasy’; a situation which is exemplified by a broad social order punctuated with its ‘ills’ and ‘wells’. These get disturbed at times of social as well as natural upheavals and disasters.

Few words now about memories. Till the time individual memories become ‘collective’ which get shaped by strengthening identities in terms of trauma, loss, deprivation, maldistribution and neglect, they do not become clearly identifiable. Memories get strengthened and also shaped by repeated recollections of events; are deeply linked with wars, riots, displacements, re-negotiating home making by refugees, uprootedness and belongingness. The emphasis on the type, kind and narration of memory may vary across groups impacted by the same event. It can also vary among men and women, aged and the young. Displays of collective memories may often be selective and may vary mediated by an individual’s own experience of a situation. Memorials therefore reduced and with selective versions

exhibit an aggregated meaning. These are often ‘politicised’ and camouflaged to produce a narrative in the name of remembering the past or heritage in a defined form. Many presentations in the name of memory are truncated versions of history. Thus, constructed memories themselves have potentials of creating space for friction and contestations.

Given these two positions, viz. the idea of friction being fluid and the idea of memory exhibited being more collective, let us take some examples of home making and re-settlement. Here the example of home making comes from the refugees who were deported to the Andamans after Independence during 1950 and thereafter. Arrival of refugees from Eastern India was preceded by its British occupation in 1790 and then in 1824. It was first turned into a penal settlement for convicts to settle into an uneasy and unfamiliar space. British arrival was contested by the Andamanese, who were easily pushed and defeated. There is a long history of settling the convicts, the Japanese occupation of the islands in 1942 and eventual closure of the penal settlement in 1931. Prior to that, Bhanthus, Mapillas and Karens were brought in and settled. Settling refugees from the east and west was a daunting task for the government. In addition to different parts in India, the Andamans became a point of sending Bengali refugees. Since Andamans was a tough terrain with thick tropical and evergreen forests, it was difficult for the refugees to settle. Eventually hardworking agriculturists were sent, with the government giving them cultivable land, homestead and some forest and hilly land. The refugees were left to themselves with the package and some grant. Thankfully, there was less political interference. There were many who couldn’t withstand the tough life of camps, but a large share also collectively created their homes, fields and recreated cultural and social practices in order to make a mini ‘east Bengal’ in the northern Andamans. At one level, they remembered their past trauma of being chased out from their homelands and yet at another level collectively created and shaped homes with attempts to grow the same vegetables, paving, digging small ponds and supporting each other in crisis laden situations. With less intervention by the government or political parties at the ground level, the refugee Bengalis were able to create a milieu akin to what they had left in Bengal. Their houses, surroundings and sharing of crops and vegetables helped re-establishment of a social order not much disturbed by ‘design’ of the spaces by experts. The names of many villages resonated with Bengali settlements (Rampur, Parnashala, Sitapur, Janakpur, Mithila, Dasrathpur, Shabari, Bharatpur, Lakshmanpur, Bakultala, Panchabati, Urmilapur, Shantanu, etc.). The emerging settlements were reflections of planting a collective memory and creating a new spatiality that gradually evolved. The resettlement was difficult, but was more

or less based on past memories of living. By the 1960s, a ‘Bengali’ village in the north Andaman looked similar to a village in Bengal. Growth of these settlements were not devoid of longing to see or talk about their past homes, remembering old days and fear of the new, but these did not create any friction. Indeed, one of the factors that led to creation of such spaces was the compulsion and willingness of many refugees to making the islands their home. They worked hard to maintain their identity while working towards a social construction of a ‘habitus’. A similar process was witnessed in case of Mapillahs, who were brought to the islands for rehabilitation between 1921-26. They tried and created a ‘mini-Malabar’ with many of growing bananas, tapioca, coconuts and naming their settlements as Nilambur, Manjeri, Mallapuram, Calicut - the regions that they came from.

The second set of scenarios relates to shifts of people through development induced displacements. An example of such exercises is the construction of dams and reservoirs. With colonial legacy still persisting, some major dams were built across the country. By the 1980s India had more than 1500 large dams and currently has 3800 large dams. Some of the earlier dams are Hirakund, Bhakra, Nagarjunasagar, Damodar valley etc. The ISI Delhi’s conservative estimates suggest that people displaced by dams so far approximately add up to 15 million. Based on a study of 54 projects, Arundhati Roy estimated the number of displaced people in the last fifty years to be 33 million. Be that as it may, initial projects handed down only meager compensations to the ‘oustees’. Their social order and ‘habitus’ got disturbed and for a few generations many could not create a stable base for themselves. With those ousted from the Sardar Sarovar site, with the situation becoming a major issue particularly after the Morse Commission report, a rehabilitation policy got shaped. But the new settlements for most oustees, especially from the tribal areas, didn’t resonate with their lifestyle, cultivation, minor forest produce, grazing land, forest land, river, fishing, worshiping, temples, marriages, shamans, etc. Re-settling them in different pockets disrupted their lives and the natural and social ecology they were used to. The first generation missed their habitat with many refusing to leave. With new interventions of compensations, resource distribution, appropriation of situations, there were contestations, clashes and frictions among households. An evolved social ecology was subject to be ironed out by the departments. Even if from a governmental perspective these were suitable packages, those were not sensitive enough to the needs and practices of the communities. However this was not as simple, for newer interests too emerged with some getting better plots, houses and locations. The new scenario of displacements and rehabilitation remained a process of contests, compromises and conflicts. The processes emerged

out of a central peg while ignoring human ecology. This was akin to making new and unmaking of old landscapes, breaking old senses of identity and creating newer spaces for navigations and negotiations.

We must not lose sight of the complexities that villages undergo when faced with such situations of being ousted. Certain groups prefer to settle together, away from those that they have dislikes for. This also happens in tribal areas often thought to be socially homogeneous and economically uniform. Their sheer locations and material gains from jobs put some in better positions while bargaining. There were differences across the ‘rock-fill dyke’ villages, villages in the central zone and those in the hilly regions. Rehabilitation programmes visualize houses as structures, land and cattle as commodities, but are not as sensitive regarding creating homes. This creates a serious adjustment problem at least for the initial generations. Clearing slums and informal settlements of the poor by development authorities too resonate with such processes. Many such pockets where different migrant groups create a patchwork of relations and dependence internally and externally get uprooted from socio-economically connected surroundings with demolitions carried out for development. Over time, they get rooted and sustained through availability of work, political patronage, quasi-legal recognitions, small-time ‘care-takers’, money lenders and many informal services. They survive having created a system of their own including formation of agencies dealing with remittances being sent, cooks for groups of workers, etc. Not that they don’t have conflicts, but those do not lead to the collapse of networking and interdependence. Slumlords take advantage of various situations and yet when they are uprooted for projects like riverfront development, metro line and BRTS route building, construction of overbridges, flyovers and underbridges etc., they lose out on their ‘habitus’. Some of them are given compensations, some provided with new houses in far away peripheries of the city and some evicted without being offered an alternative. These processes create chaos and not frictions among themselves while the space is brought under a new use. Some become homeless, some get pushed to the bottom rungs of the economy, some return back and some reorganise themselves.

The story of homes and habitats being broken doesn’t end here. They are also broken by natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. The dwellings created for the poor earthquake victims of Latur were not fit for their living practices. These were centralised, homogenised decisions where contests by people were subverted, political parties and NGOs of different shades trying to take runs, raise funds, blaming one another but hardly trying to understand the history of people’s living practices and their everyday social interactions. Similar was the story of the

Gujarat earthquake where different agencies tried to deal with the situation. Among other things, disasters provide a platform for the government and non government agencies to harvest political and allied gains and in the race of proving their approach to home making emerge as mere target seekers. The story after the tsunami in the Nicobar islands is similar. Not taking proper cognizance of the layout and logic of the settlements, the family system, the GOI first made a prototype of intermediate tin shelters without flooring. The process subverted the basic understanding of social structure, social ‘habitus’, local rainfall and wind patterns. Many were kept in these shelters for more than a year only to be given later what can be called the PWD model (a respondent broke the abbreviation as Perpetually Widening Disaster model). Another called the tin shelters as tinami which was worse than the tsunami. Reconstruction materials were unequally distributed. The village captains and influential individuals got better materials and bigger shares. Free food for two years made a hard working tribe dependent and unhealthy.

The above examples point at (1) that friction is fluid and cannot be bound, (2) collective memories create group identities, (3) selective memories create a dominant narrative that may not resonate with varying individual experiences, (4) dominant singularities continue to thrive only by constantly eating into and subordinating the pluralities creating incongruence and imbalances across systems, (5) subordination of the pluralities at specific contexts gets a fillip after sudden jolts as in a disaster, for that allows established institutions to encroach upon areas that had hitherto resisted such forces, (6) top-down solutions get quick legitimacy and (7) plurality of the concept of place gets slighted by the idea of singularity of space at the cognitive as well as real levels, (8) space emerges clearly as a social product that encompasses inequality and discrimination as well as a container of agencies perpetuating them. Citizenship rights become merely voting rights and not a vehicle for addressing economic insecurities and maladjustments, (9) victims of a disaster or those being pushed out hardly have any say in their rehabilitation and (10) new interests emerge even among victims that dissipate the possibility of creating any pressure groups. This also dilutes spaces for friction. Same is likely to happen with memories. Collectively these create a defined narrative that may not resonate with many individual memories. Therefore, often a constructed collective memory passes as the memory of those who dominate. This leads to subversion of other memories.

Within such a context what should an architect do? She cannot build a space that resonates with the fluidity of friction or a narrative of a memory with biases of consolidation. What therefore is important for designing a spatial structure for a

group is to understand their history, the everyday sociology through methods that prioritizes detailed enquiry with methods that spill over, exposing the intricacies of relationship between families, resources, dependence and their social locations in an otherwise hierarchical context. Institutes teaching space, society and architecture can ‘adopt’ villages and urban regions to comprehend the ‘social’ about the spaces, for they are products of orders and disorders. Few select batches can study such spaces and their extended networks year after year to create a longitudinal understanding. If they find it difficult to translate the complexities, they are doing fine and if they are doing these easily, they are being reductive, responding perhaps only to their ‘syllabus’.

References

Jackson, Emma and Tim Butler. “Revisiting ‘Social Tectonics’: The Middle Classes and Social Mix in Gentrifying Neighbourhoods.” Urban Studies 52, no. 13 (October 2015): 2349-2365.

Kunjan Garg

Kunjan Garg hails from Ahmedabad and completed her undergraduate degree from the reputed School of Architecture at CEPT. While at school, the holistic academic environment allowed her to form gradually through active involvement in theatre, art and literature in addition to the inspiring guidance of reputed Studio tutors like Anant Raje, Kurula Varkey,Miki Desai and Neelkanth Chhaya. She was also fortunate to attend an Urban Studio under Prof Kenneth Warriner at the Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute New York in 2000 while being part of the CEPT International exchange programme.

She has worked with Ar Bijoy Jain at his Alibaug office and completed her student apprenticeship under Ar Kailash Pradhan in Gangtok. She has also assisted Ar Girish Dariyav Karnawat of GDK Designs Collaborative on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Memorial Competition in 2004. Kunjan co-founded the firm Mangrove Architecture Alliance with batch mate Ar Raj Menon in the year 2006. The firm was awarded the Young Designer Award by the Indian Architect and Builder in 2014 and the IIA Kerala State Gold Leaf Award in Residential Architecture in 2014. Mangrove has also curated and facilitated content for The IIA Design Talks [2011-12], the IIA Young Architects’ Festival [2014] and have conceptualized the Living Monsoon program for the IIA Cochin Centre spanning the years 2015-17. In 2011, Mangrove amalgamated with ‘the Design Tree’ of Ar Niranjan Das Sharma to form RGB Architecture Studio, a critical practice that strives to articulate context sensitive architecture amidst emergent conditions.

Kunjan has been actively involved in architectural academics since 2016 and has been consistently striving to articulate the relationship between theory and practice as mutually complimentary. In 2018, she conceptualized and introduced a new Foundation Programme at KMEA Kochi. The work found fresh directions as she joined the newly established SEED Kochi in 2020. Kunjan has been an invited panelist at the prestigious Kurula Varkey Design Forum held at CEPT in 2020. She has enjoyed collaborating with artists in creating spaces for installations and exhibitions.

Roger Connah

Prof. Roger Connah,a writer, an educationist and an independent scholar based in Ruthin, North Wales, with over 40 years of experience in architectural writing, publications, exhibitions. Prof. Connah has taught over three decades in Finland, India, Pakistan, Sweden, Canada, and the United States. He is currently a Visiting Professor and Academic Council Member at Avani Institute of Design, Kerala.

Biswaroop Das

A former Director and Professor at the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, Dr. Das has written on issues related to regional and urban planning, city slums, urban migrants, NGOs, urban poverty, rehabilitation of displaced groups, ethnographic accounts, research methods and impact of micro finance on the poor. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Taleem Research Foundation and the Gujarat Institute of Development Research at Ahmedabad and a Visiting Fellow with the Queen Elizabeth House (International Development Centre) at the University of Oxford, U.K. He has to his credit eleven books (including co-authored and edited volumes), twenty-six research monographs and scores of articles and reviews in academic journals, newspapers and edited volumes. Currently, he is associated with the doctoral programme (Planning and Architecture) of the CEPT University at Ahmedabad.

Krishnapriya Rajshekar

Krishnapriya Rajshekar is an architect and academic based in Mysore. She currently works as Assistant Professor at Wadiyar Centre for Architecture, Mysore. She completed her undergraduate studies from University School of Design Mysore, and went on to major in History, Theory & Criticism during her Masters, which she pursued at CEPT University. An avid reader, sporadic writer and closet illustrator, her chief interests lie in the overlaps between architecture, literature, visual culture and the city, which she explored in her graduate thesis titled The Art Biennale Phenomenon: In Conversation with the City. The courses that she teaches at WCFA have served as fertile ground for exploring the links between the visual, written & spoken mediums when it comes to generating dialogues on lives led in built environments. She continues to examine her interests through teaching and writing.

Akshaya Lakshmi

Akshaya Lakshmi Akshaya Lakshmi Narsimhan is a Bangalore based architect and independent academic. Until recently,and for over 5 years, she was engaged fulltime, as assistant professor at CMR University School ofArchitecture. Akshaya roots her academic practice within the realm of experimental pedagogies, constantly using ideas of non-hierarchical participation and narrative exchange. Her focus on the foundational year of the B.Arch program manifests through studio modules that use a range of material.

Anjali Sreekumar

Anjali Sreekumar is an architect and researcher currently pursuing her masters in History and Research from CEPT University, Ahmedabad. She was an INTACH research scholar for 2020 cycle where she worked on the socio- economic valuation of temple sacred groves in Kerala. Her research interest lies in urban cultural landscapes and environmental behavioural studies.

Athul George

Human.

Zeus Pithawalla

Zeus Pithawalla is a Conservation Architect from Mumbai who currently works at the Center for Heritage Conservation, CEPT Research and Development Foundation. His experience extends to policy, design, and planning interventions for heritage sites through assessments, exhibitions, reports, publications, and short films. Zeus is also a Visiting Faculty at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University. Zeus graduated with an M.Arch from CEPT in 2020. His thesis with the University of York won the best capstone project award. Zeus has worked in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Goa, and Mumbai. Zeus has been researching Ahmedabad’s post colonial education architecture since 2019.

Prakriti Saxena

Prakriti Saxena is an Architect from Mumbai currently practicing at Kakani Associates in Ahmedabad. Her experience extends towards educational infrastructure in both the Public and Private domain. Her areas of interest lie in Resource Conscious Design tying in ideas of material, technology, labour and knowledge systems with the natural environment. She graduated with a Masters in Architectural Design from CEPT University in 2020. She was a Teaching Associate at the University during her Post Graduate program in the Faculty of Design and the Faculty of Architecture.

Ann Brigit Jose

I’m Ann Brigit Jose, B-Arch student at Avani Institute of Design. My interests include cartoon drawing, craft, travel, sports etc. Since childhood I’ve been exploring and experimenting things. Still figuring out my life. Through this platform I want to convey what Kallai was, is and could be on the basis of the studies I did in my semester six studio and how to redefine the nature of community and what community can mean beyond the human realm.

Satyajeet K Sinha

Satyajeet is an architect and urban planner with around 5 years of professional experience in academics and architectural practice. He graduated from Piloo Mody College of Architecture(PMCA), Cuttack in 2014 and worked for around 2 years in Delhi and Bangalore before pursuing post-graduation in Urban Planning from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology(VNIT) Nagpur. After earning his postgraduate degree, he worked as city manager at Swachha Bharat Mission; before starting his teaching career at DSCA, Bangalore. His teaching and research interests revolve around design development, participatory planning, integrated land use, and transportation and urban economics.

Abhirami K

My name is Abhirami K. I’m 22 years old. I am a final-year architecture student at the Avani Institute of Design. Designing is my passion. My other interests include traveling, dancing, cooking, and drawing. I have won prizes at school for dancing competitions. I am known for my kindness, determination, empathy.

Iman Hashim

Iman Hashim is an undergraduate architecture student at Avani Institute of Design, Thamarassery. Her numerous interests include writing, speaking and critical thinking. The vast field of architecture has only added to her love for language and expanded her horizons when it comes to thinking about and conveying design.

Nada Ali

Nada Ali is pursuing her Bachelors in Architecture from Avani Institute of Design, Thamarassery and is currently in the final year. Her interests include designing, critical thinking, organizing and psychology. She is passionate about exploring human-architecture relationships through sustainable community-related projects.

Lekshmi Raj

Lekshmi Raj, is an Architect with Masters in Sustainable architecture from MES School of Architecture Kuttippuram and , and her undergraduate degree from Anna university Chennai. After her master’s, Over the past three years, her academic practice and research have purely interested in sustainable architecture, Green Buildings practices. She has participated in the COA National Awards for Excellence in Post Graduate Thesis in Architecture 2021. She is also an IGBC Accredited professional and now she is practicing as a green building consultant. She presented papers at National and International conferences. Currently, she is pursuing her PG Diploma in Vastu Basic in Govt Sanskrit college Trivandrum. Her areas of interest are following a sustainable lifestyle, Zero waste, and climateresponsive architecture.

Abu Talha Farooqi

Abu Talha Farooqi is an Assistant Professor and the Assistant Dean, Office of Industry Interface at the Jindal School of Art & Architecture, OP Jindal Global University. He has practised and taught architecture for more than a decade and has headed design studios, theory & research courses, as well as courses on sustainable and environmental design. He is a BEE-Certified Master-Trainer of the Energy Conservation Building Code of India, and has been training academics, practitioners, and government officials across India for building energy efficient buildings. Recently, he was awarded the prestigious Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award in the Solar Decathlon India 2021-22 Contest. His research focusses on problematizing modern and anthropocentric ways of architectural thinking and pedagogy, and finding empathetic and ecologically-sensitive ways of including nonhuman and material agencies in architectural thinking and practice.

Aastha Khatri

Aastha Khatri is a fifth-year student, with a major in architecture and a minor in Sociology and Anthropology at the O.P. Jindal Global University. She has worked with multiple organizations including Rethinking the Future, Humanqind, IIT Delhi, and the Jindal Centre for Social Design. She has diversified experiences in the field of the built environment like design work, research work, as well as editorial work. Her interest lies in issues of social design as well as applied research methods, and has been purposefully exploring ways of negotiating design between theory and practice.

Anusha Bellapu

Growing up in diverse socio-cultural contexts inspired Anusha to explore cities through shared life stories, interdependent livelihoods, and civic solidarity. As an architect with two years of professional experience, she has advanced these perspectives through people-centric design and construction. As an Urban Fellow at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore, she examined cities through the economic, socio-political, and regulatory lens in relation to (un)planned geographies. Building on these endeavors, Anusha is interested in working at the intersections of policy, planning, research, and design to advance the discourse on urban informality and equitable practices for inclusive cities.

Ujjayant Bhattacharyya

Ujjayant is an Architect and academic. His interests lie in form study and settlement ecologies. Ujjayant graduated from Piloo Mody College of Architecture, Cuttack(IN) where his thesis on multifaith cemeteries won several awards. He later completed his post graduate studies from the Chandigarh College of Architecture(IN) where he worked on several Government consultancy projects and also got selected to complete an International Habitat Design Studio under the guidance of Ar. B.V. Doshi. Ujjayant also had the opportunity to complete programmes with the Charles Correa Foundation, Goa and RCR Arquitectes, Barcelona. Ujjayant currently leads the Architecture and City studio at AVANI institute of design as an Assistant professor and is the cofounder of a multi award winning collaborative practice,

Priyanka Mukherjee

Priyanka is an Architect who has deep interest in aesthetic study and mapping explorations. Priyanka graduated from Piloo Mody College of Architecture, Cuttack(IN) with first class and a distinction where her research thesis on Linguistic Museums was commended widely. She went on to work extensively in Delhi as a part of ASG Associates in luxury residential and urban commercial projects and later in Hyderabad as Senior Architect of the prestigious CnT Architects under the guidance of Ar. Prem Chandavarkar in several projects that include, townships, urban institutions, residential towers etc. She is also the co-founder and principal of a multi award winning collaborative practice, sthān: where she deals with community projects through meaningful spatial conversations.

Soumini Raja

She is the founding partner and Director of Research at Studio Commune, a collaborative design studio in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, that engages in meaningful conversation between site, research and activism. Soumini brings a deep interest in complex human-nature relationships and their process of co-evolution. In her academic practice as Associate Professor and Head of Department at Avani Institute of Design, Kerala, India, she attempts to see design beyond the linear narrative, and as an on-going process encompassing dialogue and negotiation between society, culture and environment. She has an undergraduate degree in Architecture from College of Engineering Trivandrum and master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from CEPT University Ahmedabad . Her doctoral research at CEPT University addressed sociospatial investigation of human vulnerabilities to disasters in coastal areas through a humannature co-evolutionary framework. Since 2008, she has collaborated with institutions and organizations and has published widely in national and international peer reviewed journals and conferences.

Leon A. Morenas

I am interested in studying and teaching architecture through a science and technology studies perspective. I currently teach at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. I have a PhD in Architectural Sciences from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Master’s in Urban Design from School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi and an Undergraduate degree in Architecture from theThiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai.While not teaching, I love learning a panoply of lessons from my dog Maya and my two daughters, Kleio and Calliope.

Radhika Krishnan

Radhikha Krishnan is a student of architecture currently pursuing her bachelor’s in architecture from Avani Institute of design, Calicut - Kerala. Since childhood she was very passionate about certain things which made her realize that her true calling is Designing buildings. Creating spaces and using those spaces to tell stories is something she has developed over time. Her inherit interest in writing and photography has also helped me to see things in different perspective. There are no restrictions in art or architecture and I think that is the beauty.’

Akshay A

My name is Akshay. I’m an architecture student at the Institute of Design, Kerala. I recently finished the fourth semester. I’ve been interested in designing and deconstructing things from childhood due to this, I decided to take up a course related to design. As I got older this interest motivated me to gain knowledge in various fields of design other than architecture, especially in graphic design. Thereby understanding the values of designing. Business, finance, and sports are fields that interest me other than architecture.

Duncan Schildgen

In addition to being an aspiring academic, Duncan Schildgen is also a design professional with CSO, an architecture firm in Indianapolis, Indiana. Duncan is originally from South- West Michigan, where he was born and raised and eventually attended and graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture and Community Development, where he earned both his Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in Architecture. During his time at the university, Duncan focused his studies on pursuing and questioning the methodology implemented to educate the students. This focus led to his eventual thesis study, analyzing the school of architecture and community development pedagogy.

Akhila Therese Bigi

Akhila Therese Bigi is a 5th year architecture student from Avani Institute of Design, Calicut, Kerala. She is interested in the topics of politics of space, contested land and sacred spaces

Fathima Jilna

Fathima Jilna is a Psychologist with a specialization in Clinical Psychology. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Jyoti Nivas College, Bengaluru and a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Her research interest currently orbits around the built environment and well-being and the role of gender schema in everyday life. Her Master’s thesis on “Environmental Quality of Institution and Emotional Regulation of Orphans’ explores the impact of the environment on enhancing human emotions.

Nima Viswanatha

An engineer, planner and academic with over 8 years of academic experience, Nima Viswanatha graduated from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering following which she went on to pursue her masters in urban planning at the University of Melbourne where her primary area of specialisation was on integrated land use development and sustainability. Her research interests include resilient diasporas and governance.

Reshma Mathew

Reshma Mathew is an architect and urban designer with over ten years of experience spanning industry practice and She completed graduation from the University School of Design, Mysore and holds a Masters degree with distinction in Architectural and Urban Design from the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research interests include speculations on “Ecological Urbanism” and gender based constructs of space. Her Master’s thesis based on Kolkata, “The Idol City: A Study of Temporality and Permanence” explored manifestations of resilient, regenerative realisations of a metropolitan landscape for the post-colonial Indian city.

Vidya Ajith

Vidya is a second year student of architecture at Avani institute of design. Her interests include speaking,writing and exploring topics that create thoughts and invoke solutions. She has been trying to delve into topics that intrigue her and has been interested in topics related to gender and questions of accessibility.

Shail Bajaria

Shail Bajaria is an architect-researcher interested in built environments, ecologies, climate change and social equity. Apart from running an independent architecture and design practice, he teaches at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture & Environmental Studies, where he has been a research fellow in the past. Following an undergraduate degree in architecture, he has studied theory and humanities at Jnanapravaha Mumbai, and later at BICAR, accruing a postgraduate diploma and assisting on an architectural theory course. Currently, he is also involved with Citizens for Public Leadership as a CPL fellow, and with Pani Haq Samiti, as a research-volunteer.

Abhirami Prabhakaran R K

Abhirami Prabhakaran R K is the founder of W9 – workshop nine creations, Calicut and Associate architect at K-associate, Trivandrum. Having a broad scope of arts, architecture, and design, both the firm caters to a variety of levels of design from urban spatial planning to tiny art installations. She is involved in both academics and practice. Her academic experience spans over five years which helps her think critically and analytically.

Krishna Salim

Krishna Salim is the founder and director of Krishna Salim Associates, Trivandrum. Her firm mainly focuses on architecture, interior design, and literature. She firmly believes that “Architecture can evoke emotions in people and that every structure has a story to unfold”. This is something that is very evident both from her teaching and practice. Currently, she is working as an assistant professor at Avani Institute of Design, Calicut. She has been published in a few anthologies and is also a published author of poetry book titled “Breathe”.

Priyanka Rachael Mathews

Priyanka Rachael Mathews works as an associate professor at Savitha Institute of Technology, Chennai. She is a pure academician and as established herself as a catalyst in innovative and collaborative processes. She produces cross-disciplinary exchanges between industries, educational institutes and design practices. These

exchanges are focused on the development of creative processes and are based on innovative design approaches, strategic scenario techniques, cross-cultural collaborations and decision-making methods.

Bhakti Sawant Salunke

Prof. Bhakti Sawant Salunke, Assistant Professor at Department of Architecture, LTIADS, Navi Mumbai. Studied Master’s in Environmental architecture, enjoys writing, documentation, photography, travel and Indian classical dance. After working in a corporate industry for several years, i inclined towards Teaching profession as I enjoy passing on my learning’s to young minds who find Architecture is a diverse pedagogy.

Jyothi Kumari Yadalam

Prof.Jyothi Kumari Yadalam, Associate Professor at Department of Architecture, LTIADS, Navi Mumbai , is having an interesting and creative journey from working as a freelancer to large scale corporate firms . Slowly, I drifted into my present job of teaching undergraduates of Architecture . This path of architecture from corporates to teaching has always been fun filled with knowledge and sharing of experiences.

Dharshini A

A second year architecture student at Avani Institute of Design. Her research interests mainly center around the fabric of cities and urban planning. Among other pursuits, she aspires to improve her experience in the field of curation.

Elza D’Cruz

Elza D’Cruz is a doctoral candidate at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, Karnataka and is associated with Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru as a Ph.D. student. Elza’s Ph.D. research explores the practice of making public gardens in the city of Bangalore, India between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. She was one of ten participants to be trained at the 2021 Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies workshop and the recipient of 2021-22 Routledge Round Table Commonwealth studentship grant

for her ongoing PhD research. She has previously trained as an architect (B.Arch University of Kerala, 2003) and urban designer (M.Arch Visvesvaraya Technological University, 2010).

M Sanjay Kumar

Sanjay is the co-founding architect of Firsthand Practice, a conducive online practice that aims to collate the processes of inhabitation in architecture. He graduated from SPA, Vijayawada and continued to pursue professional practice. During the five years of his professional tenure, he has associated with practices like CnT Architects, Zero Studio, Insight Architects, SJA and Aambit Architects on various projects that span diversely in scale and prospects, which sets the foundation for his professional caliber. In pedagogy, Sanjay extends his interest in phenomenology and sensorial design to sculpt the character and methodology of his approach.

Athira Balakrishnan

Athira Balakrishnan is a graduate of the M.Arch in Architectural Design program from CEPT Ahmedabad, and holds an undergraduate degree from NIT, Trichy. Athira is the cofounding architect of Firsthand Practice, a conducive online practice that aims to collate the processes of inhabitation in architecture. Athira finds her interest in exploring the evocative potential of architecture, wherein she believes in the prime importance of both academic discourses, to be in the constant churn of theories and ideas alongside extending an ideologically grounded architectural practice.

Aneez Mohammed

Aneez Mohammed is a fifth year B.Arch student at Avani Institute of Design, Calicut, Kerala. With a keen interest in architectural pedagogy, he has contested in various design competitions and has mentored students for the same and conducted a series of workshops. He currently sits as the Student Ambassador for the Avani Annual Symposium 2022 for the batch of 2018. His interests include urban design and sociology and he hopes to practice in the field as an academician.

Annapoorna M

Annapoorna M is a fifth year undergraduate architectural student at Avani Institute

of Design, Calicut, Kerala. Her view of architecture is as an evolution of a systemic process. Her interests include urban design and community architecture.

Sourav Jith K

Sourav Jith K is a fifth year B.Arch student at Avani Institute of Design, Calicut , Kerala. His interests are in architecture & art , and Landscape Design.

Khadeeja Zayan

Khadeeja Zayan is a recent graduate from Avani Institute of Design. Arts drawn to art-to-meetpeople’s- needs led her to be an architect at a point.

Meenakshi Dubey

Meenakshi Dubey is an architect by training ,specialized in the Conservation of Cultural heritage from the School of Planning & Architecture New Delhi -a keen enthusiast working towards bridging the gap between architectural design and Heritage education, through practicing alternative pedagogical models . Currently an Independent Researcher based in Delhi ,with a teaching and working experience of more than a decade, She is pursuing her interests that currently orbits around Gender and Urban historic districts , Future of Urban Heritage , Politics and Jurisprudence.

Ashwini Deshpande

Ashwini is an architect and researcher specialising in the subject of architectural history. She’s currently working as a Junior Archivist at CEPT Archives. She has worked as a Teaching Associate at CEPT University. She is also a co-founder of the organization ‘Prayogshala Collaboratives’, an initiative developed towards experimental research, pedagogical dialogues, workshops, and architecture practice. Ashwini completed her architectural studies at Mumbai University and received her master’s degree in Architectural History and Theory from CEPT University, Ahmedabad. She aims to develop her research focusing on contested urban realities and visual cultural studies with multidisciplinary approaches.

Adwait Adke

Adwait Adke is an architect, researcher, and an academic. His interest includes questions about natural and built environments informed by socio-cultural imprints. He currently works as a teaching faculty at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture & Environmental Studies, where he was a Research Fellow (2019-20) studying the evolutionary ecological histories of the landscape region of/ around Mumbai. Additionally, he was affiliated with the Charles Correa Foundation as a Fellow (2021-22). He holds an undergraduate degree (B.Arch) from Mumbai University and a postgraduate diploma in critical theory, aesthetics and practice from Jnanapravaha Mumbai.

Convenors

Er. Nima Viswanatha, Ex-Assistant Professor, Avani Institute of Design

Dr. Soumini Raja, Professor and HOD, Avani Institute of Design

Ar. Ujjayant Bhattacharyya, Ex - Assistant Professor, Avani Institute of Design

Advisor

Prof. Roger Connah, Academic Advisor, Avani Institute of Design

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Biswaroop Das, Former Director, Centre for Social Studies, Surat

Prof. K.T. Ravindran, Professor and Former Head of Urban Design, SPA New Delhi

Prof. Sarover Zaidi, Associate Professor of Practice, Jindal School of Art and Architecture

Dr. Huda Tayub, Lecturer, Manchester School of Architecture

Dr. Aiman Mustafa, Scholar, Emory University, Atlanta

Ar. Swati Janu, Founder Social Design Collaborative

Moderators

Ar. Krishnapriya Rajshekar, Assistant Professor, WCFA Mysuru

Ar. Kunjan Garg, Lead-Foundation Studio, SEED Kochi

Prof. Roger Connah, Academic Advisor, Avani Institute of Design

Graphics, Publications and Social Media Team

Ar. Athira Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor, Avani Institute of Design

Ar. Dhaiwat Panchal, Teaching Assistant, Avani Institute of Design

Ar. Anjali Sujat, Assistant Professor, Avani Institute of Design

Dharshini A, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Hibah Hanif, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Aneez Mohammed Kooliyattayil, Graduate, Avani Institute of Design

Copy Editor

Sumitra Nair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ashoka University

Student Ambassadors

Dharshini A, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Athul George, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Michelle Mariam Manoj, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Jishna V B, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Radhika Krishnan, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Aneez Mohammed Kooliyattayil, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Amith Thomas Varghese, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Prarthana Prabhakar, Student, Avani Institute of Design

Admin Team

Adv C,N John, Ex - Administration Manager

Ms. Anishka Benny, HR Manager

Mr. Dipin John, Accounts Manager

Mr. Sajeendran, IT Support

Mr. Sanu and team, Infrastructure Support

Ms Nabeela and Ms Fouziya, House keeping

Mr Arjun A and Mr. Nikhil Sunny, General Coordination

Book and Cover Design

Athira Balakrishnan and Dhaivat Panchal

Contributors

Roger Connah

Soumini Raja

Nima Viswanatha

Ujjayant Bhattacharyya

Krishnapriya Rajshekar

Biswaroop Das

Kunjan Garg

Abhirami Prabhakaran

Krishna Salim

Priyanka Rachel Mathews

Akhila Therese Bigi

Akshaya Lakshmi Narsimhan

Aneez Mohammed Kooliyattayil

Annapoorna M

Sourav Jith K

Anjali Sreekumar

Ashwini Deshpande

Elza D’Cruz

Meenakshi Dubey

Khadeeja Zayan

Satyajeet K Sinha

Zeus Pithawalla

Prakriti Saxena

Abu Talha Farooqi

Aastha Khatri

Adwait Adke

Shail Bajaria

ISBN 978-93-6128-103-7

Anusha Bellapu

Athul George

Fathima Jilna

Reshma Mathew

Minu Joseph

Priyanka Mukherjee

Vidya Ajith

Abhirami K

Iman Hashim

Nada Ali

Ann Brigit Jose

Dharshini A

Mary Ann Mathew

Duncan Schildgen

Lekshmi Raj

Neha Korade

Prachi Bhavsar

Shalini Sheoran

Radhika Krishnan

Akshay A

M Sanjay Kumar

Athira Balakrishnan

Leon A. Morenas

Gopika Gopan

Bhakti Sawant Salunke

Jyothi Kumari Yadalam