ROOM -for Architecture-

There are a few wonderful and also useful things about the London tour that CEPT organizes for its employees. As a tutor I was not only able to see the summer exhibitions of some of the most cutting edge architecture and arts schools in the UK but, more importantly, I was able to get a sense of what are the broad directions and approaches at work in these leading schools. I will start my notes…

This is the last lecture of this course and this semester. For this lecture we will be looking at three very short texts, written by and for three different architecture offices, and surprisingly, all these offices have two partners. Following are the texts on which we will comment today and from which we will learn about some of the 21st preoccupations about form and content in housing design:…

Lineage of the title and the content of The Architecture and the city  Let us begin today’s lecture by linking the title of the book by Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, which was published in Italian in the year 1966. I have repeated the following points several times in the duration of this course, but I think it is worth repeating the point once again, for clarifications sake. The…

Since we are meeting after a gap of two weeks for this lecture, a quick recap would be helpful.  In the first session we saw how different philosophers have discussed the idea of form and content. The discussion of form and content, can also be considered as a broader discussion of the idea of whole and parts and their interaction. One of the technical names for such a study is called mereology,…

M24, MHD Course, FA, CEPT University About the Book Let us begin by understanding the structure of the book. The book is about 367 pages long and is roughly A5 paper size big, and roughly 1.5 inches thick. The editor of the book have done a great job in producing a wonderful book with its type setting, the cover page, page layouts, and even adding some of the scans from the original manuscript.…

M24MHD CourseFACEPT UniversityDate: 30th August 2024 About the Author:  What we learn from this book is that Patrick Geddes was born in 1854, in Edinburgh. Geddes was a polymath and also an auto-didact (a person who has the capacity for self learning). He spent time in studying geology, botany, physiology, humanities, sociology, but all on his own terms and interest, without necessarily earning…

M24, MHD Course, FA, CEPT University Date: 23rd August 2024 Author: Le Corbusier Year: French (1923) English (1927)  Publisher: Dover Publications, New York Translator: Frederick Etchells About the book: Some general remarks about the book would be helpful for those reading it carefully. First thing to note is that it is a text written from a place where modern technology was at its…

Course: MHD, Monsoon 2024, CEPT UniversityAugust 2024 [These are my lecture notes for the opening session of this course. This is a work in progress text and absolutely unedited. so read it with a pinch of salt. I am trying to create a series of such long notes for most of the lectures this semester. I will try my best to post them as regularly as possible.] The intention of this course is to…

The project revolves around the idea of playfulness. The reason to bring the notion of playfulness to this project is largely because community buildings as a subset of public buildings work best if they are memorable, approachable, and engaging enough to be part of their everyday routine. To that extent, the project is imagined as a set of playful forms which are loosely joined together by a…

The project works with two kinds of materials to be reused. The first is the range of materials that are sourced from demolition and dismantling sites and secondly the range of ideas from architecture’s internal discipline –which is being drawn into question more and more recently, with the growing climate crisis. The pavilion is imagined as a hybrid public gathering place, a bus stop, a micro…

(NOTE: posting another part of my ongoing dissertation. This is part of an unedited and working chapter, there are gaps and this text at the moment, which I am editing as I am posting this.) Since this study raises the question of the ontological models behind the architectural theories of style, it is important that I explicate what is ontology, and also what is object-oriented ontology or OOO,…

REALISM: FROM THING-IN-ITSELF BEYOND THOUGHT THING-IN-ITSELF BEYOND ALL RELATIONS “Realism, which is the generally accepted position until the twelfth century, maintains that the universals are res, things. The adherents of the extreme form of realism believe that the universals are present in all the individuals that fall under their headings (for instance, the universal “man” would be present…

1. ON IMMANENCE: REALIST AND IDEALIST It would not be wrong or shorthanded then to conclude that all philosophies that are a partisan of absolute existence are, like Deleuze shows, immanent philosophies. The basic assumption here is the one put forward by Parmenides: there is nothing outside existence or there is nothing outside being. Everything, every change, is but only immanent inside the…

An artist couple wanted us to complete their ongoing project, of which the footing and column rebaring was completed. The project had already changed hands with a few architects. The program changed from a simple art gallery in the suburbs to a gallery, studio, and a complete family house, during the process of construction. A new staircase is being proposed while we make this post. Our…

As part of SPARE, the research side of sP+a, Mumbai we put together a study of Mumbai’s building regulations and its impact on the production of housing. More information can be found in the links below: IF.BE Covered in The Hindu Worldarchitecture.org Question of Cities Camp