What is ? 

Genealogies & Ontologies 

This course becomes important for students as they understand that architecture is an intrinsic part of culture, informed by historic processes of architectural production as well as contemporary everyday practices. It asks ontological questions around modern institutions and their programmes that have come to principally shape the nature of our lived experiences in the last two centuries. This studio takes up one contemporary institutional programme that has emerged historically over the years and asks students to trace its genealogy. Architecturally it traces different spatial configurations that have developed across history under the same programme through case studies. With the help of these case studies students are asked to speculate on the societal structures for each spatial configuration, establishing the relationship between societal structure, programme of the institution and spatial configuration. Through this analysis students learn to ask the question ‘What is?’  What is the genesis of the programme? What is the deep structure of space? Was this configuration produced by the society? Did it produce the particular society? What is a home? What is a clinic? What is a factory have been some questions that previous studios have engaged in. Through the course of the studio students ask, Where did these programmes come from? What is the next stage in their development?)

Instead of starting from a given programme through precedent studies, and standards, the studio through its What is? provocation asks students to critically understand the programme and its relationship to the institution’s deep spatial structure in order to be able to rethink the configuration for a new idea of an institution and a more egalitarian spatial structure. From the above analysis and a study of a contemporary site, students are asked to speculate on possible emerging societal structures and develop a corresponding new type for the institution. This design process will be undertaken through exploratory drawings and models, drawing on the genealogical studies. 

A parallel seminar course will take students through texts in art and architecture theory that ask ontological questions about institutions, power structures and the psycho spatial dimensions of architecture. 

Objectives 

The course will focus on enabling students: 

1.   To ask ontological questions about an architectural program. 

2.   To understand how to take up genealogical studies from secondary source studies of an architectural programme and speculate on its   

  relationship with contemporary societal structures.

3.   To analyse and design in pairs so as to develop a discursive process of design thinking.

4.   To take up ethnographic studies on site and connect it to spatial ethnography. 

5.   To be able to speculate on possible future societal structures and corresponding spatial structures for a given institution.

6.   To be able to craft a design programme  from the above speculation.

7.   To design a relevant type from the design provocation that has rich interpretative qualities.

8.   To craft a new typology with informed ideas of material assemblies and their phenomenological dimensions. 

9.   To develop exploratory drawings that are able to establish the relationship between speculative models of societal structures and the proposed   

  type, its deep structures and its pyscho-social properties.

What is a Market? 

This year the studio will focus on the question, ‘What is a market?’. It will undertake genealogical studies of key shifts on the structures of markets and their resultant typologies. Through an analysis of these shifts, the studio will approach a given swatch of city in Borivali West Mumbai at the intersection of various market conditions; the Borivali Municipal market, the hybrid conditions of malls and shopping centres and natural markets that have emerged as informal transactions. Through an ethnographic study of the different sections of this site, students will arrive at  relevant contemporary programmes for markets. Through a process of diagraming and pattern analysis from the genealogical studies, students will develop a spatial diagram for the new market condition. This diagram will be further detailed into an architectural strategy with material assemblies that produce a new aesthetic imagination for the market.