The pedagogical ambition of the Specialisation & Allied Studies courses is to question existing assumptions about the institution. It is an invitation to rethink the architectural institution as largely concerned with producing individuals with capacities to build, towards perceiving it as a collaborative of heterogeneous, distinct and autonomous directions within architecture that inform each other and draw out the merit in each other. The course aims to provide space for such an expanded idea of spatial design, where the design of the self and design of life itself become the key objectives. The courses are structured such that each faculty member anchors a studio that centres the questions that their individual practices seek to investigate. These questions raise a longue durée engagement and are deeply connected to philosophical processes. The course takes place during the Monsoon Semester and is four weeks long, and offered to all students. Each student becomes a collaborator and a companion in the practice of the teacher, bringing their insights and personal experiments to the processes set up by the course. Each teacher defines the pedagogic objectives for the students, and uses the objectives to set up new frames of thinking. It is important to consider that the courses 11 are less concerned with the production of superficial manifestations of learnings (rather, the courses refute traditional ideas of production) than with creating conceptual anchors through cross pollinating processes of questioning - reading - investigating - making that stay with the student as approaches towards spatial thinking and design. SEA recognises that the field of spatial design is more than the building-making process and the Specialised and Allied Studies courses aim at actively fostering a space to hold this expanded idea. Students are familiarised with the possibilities of spatial design practices beyond building making. It is both hoped and expected that the process of building-making itself will encounter and incorporate unhackneyed and inventive modes of imagination through such forays in architectural pedagogy