SPATIAL THEORY
2025-26
2025-26
This course introduces various frameworks of spatial thinking and orients students towards an understanding of space historically and phenomenologically.
Course Instructor - Rupali Gupte and Richa Shah
Concepts and Tools to analyze and critique space: Typological studies, Phenomenology, Semiotics, Affordances, Modernity, Regionalism, Gendering, Difference etc.
Abilities to read critical texts, to visually read spaces, to diagram and read architecture towards a critical appreciation.
Shetty, Prasad. “Humanising Architecture.” In First Questions. Mumbai: School of Environment and Architecture, 2020.(Full chapter)
Pallasma, Juhani, & Laurent Stadler. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. 3rd edition. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2012 (11-15) (Suggested 1-72)
Zumthor Peter, Atmospheres. Architectural Environments. Surrounding Objects. Birkhauser Boston 2006 (10-72)
Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford, 2015. (viii to xIiv; 381-391; 740-745)
Habraken, N. John. Type as a social agreement, in Proceedings of the Asian Congress of Architects, Seoul, 1988. (1-18)
Gibson, James J.. The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2013 (Chapter 8. 119 - 135 )
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Hill and Wang. 2014.
Leach, Neil. Rethinking Architecture.1997 (Pg 329-357)
Omvedt, Gail. “The Downtrodden among the Downtrodden, An interview with a dalit Agricultural Labourer.” Edited by Anupama Rao. In Issues in Contemporary Indian feminism, Gender and Caste. New York: Zed Books Ltd, 2003.
Frampton, Kenneth. "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance." In The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster, 16–30. Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983.
Loos, Adolf. "Ornament and Crime." In Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, edited by Ulrich Conrads, translated by Michael Bullock, 19–24. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.(Original work published 1908).
Phenomenology: Body as measure; proportions/scale; behaviour
Psycho-social dimensions; Power & Space,
Structure of Architecture: Pattern Language, Affordances, Evaluating Architecture
Modernity Thinking tools, Technologies, social life and spatiality
Critical Regionalism and Alternative Modernities
Articulations from Art Practices 1: 20th Century trajectories and impact on spatiality
Articulations from Art and Architectural practices: Contemporary trajectories and impact on spatiality: Digital, Environment, Community, Urban
The Questions of Difference: caste and gender questions in architecture. (Rohit Mujumdar)
Visual Culture - The Idea, mechanics & politics of image, Semiotics in Architecture (Apurva Talpade)
Introduction to Understanding space & ideas of Space across different traditions (Prasad Shetty)