Field Studio - Varanasi

Building on the first semester, which is highly  structured, the field studio offers the challenge of  freedom. Over the course of six days in Varanasi,  the students make initial observations, recorded  through annotated sketches, photographs and  videos, capturing stories of spaces and the ways  in which they are inhabited. These are detailed  through gauged drawings, plans and elevations, as  questions lead to public and more intimate spaces  and to interactions with local people, tourists and  pilgrims to the city.  The fragments of the stories collected in Varanasi  are organized into a narrative after returning to  Ahmedabad. The layers come together as visual  representation and text, to capture acts of daily living  in specific spaces; symbols and colours; religious  and mundane rituals; architectural elements. The  students make choices regarding the manner of  representation which would best communicate  their narratives, and in the process develop their  own interpretation of a new space and their own  voices.