Emergent Practices in South Asia
Curated by Rahul Mehrotra, Devashree Shah, and Pranav Thole
Exhibition: Jan 07 - 12 | 11 am - 8:00 pm IST
Venue: Bangalore International Center
A travelling exhibition that displays the works of 41 emergent architectural practices in South Asia that have engaged in the making of architecture, landscape, and infrastructure in the public realm. The research offers insights into patronage, methodologies, emergent technologies, and construction techniques and also sheds light on how the humane and social aspects of architecture characterized by participatory frameworks—are being approached by practitioners today. It attempts to highlight modes of engagement as well as transgressions and synergies between disparate cultures, ways of representation, and knowledge accumulation and production. It is designed in a manner to test the knowledge and insights put together through the preceding components of the project, and along each stop and in each country, will involve local discussion, adding to and building upon the intellectual provocations and framings.
The first edition of the exhibition was displayed at the India International Centre, New Delhi in December 2023 and the second one at the Alliance Francaise Chennai in Aug 2024.
For complex projects in the public realm or at the scale of the city, actors become clearly differentiated, and hence the building of constituencies becomes crucial to engage different stakeholders in any project. This is often done through various media to put across ideas, and it is here that research and writing to communicate ideas of the city become an important part of the practice. In retrospect, publications become a way of creating partnerships, collaborations and friendships which serve to keep alive the conversations on the issues at hand and engagement with the work we do. Similarly, these publications then go out into the world beyond the project and have a life of their own. But, most critically, in hindsight they allowed us to expand our ‘sphere of influence’ and equipped us to speculate about the future, simultaneously creating an archive of the present. The acts of archiving and reflecting, as well as simultaneously speculating and being propositional, are critical for us to gain agency as a profession. For, by committing in writing, drawing our speculations, or even in discerning the patterns that surround us gives us agency as professionals in society. If we do not have agency or find ways to establish an agency, we will break down as a profession.
This lecture will cover 30 years of Rahul Mehrotra’s research and writings in the context of his engagement as a practitioner as well as advocate for various issues concerning Architecture and Urbanism in India.
In South Asia, architectural practice is characterized by a rich pluralism of approaches. This event brings together leading studios—CollectiveProject, Kamat and Rozario Architecture, M9 Design Studio, and Made in Earth Collective—for a panel discussion moderated by Pranav Thole and Ela Singhal. The conversation aims to explore the evolving landscapes of practice, focusing on forms of patronage, methodologies, emerging technologies, innovative construction techniques, and the architect’s role as a social catalyst.