Five Conversations on Contemporary Architecture, A Symposium
February 8, 2020
Worli, Mumbai 400 018
India
Ongoing public debates tell us that we live in a turbulent world, whose future is uncertain. In these debates, vivid representations of extreme events draw our attention to tsunamis, civil wars, food and water crises that annihilate populations. Financial graphs quiver as human prospects crumble under debt-mountains; long trails of refugees cross borders; silent strokes of a pen reposition the sovereignty of large populations on shaky foundations; feeble notes in a post-truth media reinforce and destabilize powers; intelligent algorithms cast fears of the extinction of the human species. Turbulence, in today’s world appears to mark its presence in the spheres of nature, economy, society, technology and community.
Architectural practices have stood on both sides of the debate, as they have either contributed to the creation of unsustainable landscapes or shepherded environmental movements; created gated enclaves or championed for mass housing; endorsed urban renewal or advocated for heritage conservation; provided form to organizations of power or collaborated with marginalized communities to resist resource appropriation; embraced artificial intelligence or revived ancient logics. Turbulence however is not new to humanity. Turbulent energies of the past have created the world that we live in today: they have not only produced crises, breakdown and catastrophe but also innovation and promise of achieving the cherished ideals of justice, freedom and equality.
The question to be asked is, how can architects reconceptualize the energies of turbulence and engage them in the making of places? How can we think with turbulence; of environments beyond crises, cities beyond contests and narratives of lack, difference beyond discrimination, technologies beyond fear and annihilation, and communities along with all their diversities? How can we also privilege serendipity in riding a turbulent storm that never offers certainties of knowing or making things, all at once? How can we narrate stories, recite poems and sing songs of our engagements with the experiences of turbulence? In short, how can we come to learn and practice architecture amidst turbulence? And when we do that, what will our architecture be?
Over the course of the past five years, the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA) has been engaged in articulating questions of the contemporary and exploring architectural responses to it. The symposium frames some of the questions that have emerged along our journey. It draws the experiences and provocations of five diversely situated practices into conversation with practitioners at SEA with the hope that the ensuing dialogue will open new ways to think about engagements with our world. The invited practitioners have made long-standing commitments to environmental issues, urban conditions, questions on difference, technological imperatives and communitarian agendas.
Programme
Reconceptualising Environment: Dilip da Cunha | architect, planner and environmentalist | Co-Director, Risk and Resilience Master in Design Studies, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Boston & Adjunct Professor at the GSAPP, Columbia University, New York in conversation with Ravindra Punde | architect & planner | Director, SEA, Mumbai
Speculations on Emerging Urban Society: Juan Du | architect and urbanist | Associate Professor, Department of Architecture & Associate Dean, International and Mainland China Affairs, of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Hong Kong in conversation with Rupali Gupte | architect, urbanist, curator & artist | Professor, SEA, Mumbai
Articulations on the Question of Difference: Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi | architectural historian and theorist | Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture & Affiliated Faculty, Department of Art History, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York in conversation with Rohit Mujumdar | architect & planner | Assistant Professor, SEA, Mumbai
Thinking Through Material Ecologies: Zuzana Gombošová | material researcher and designer |Co-Founder at Malai Biomaterials Design in conversation with Dushyant Asher | architect, designer & computational thinker | Assistant Professor, SEA, Mumbai
Responding to Emerging Cultural Contexts: Marina Tabassum | architect and urbanist | Principal Architect, Marina Tabassum Architects & Visiting Professor, BRAC University, Dhaka in conversation with Anuj Daga | architect, writer & curator | Assistant Professor, SEA, Mumbai
Symposium venue: Nehru Science Centre Auditorium, Dr. E. Moses Road, Worli, Mumbai 400 018
School of Environment and Architecture (SEA) is a research based architectural institution in Mumbai.
Contact: School of Environment and Architecture, Eksar Road, Near C.K.P. Colony, Borivali West, Mumbai 400 091
Phone: +91 86550 02156 / 91 22 2899 2228 Email: contact@sea.edu.in
Kindly RSVP to contact@sea.edu.in by January 15, 2020.
