TA: Yashasvi BrahmbhattTowards a Critical Project and a Project of Critique
The prevalent discourse on architecture positions the architectural project as a singular act made separate from the continuity and collective condition of the environment which we are (still) in obligation to share. The studio challenges this distancing through iconization within our disciplinary discourse. By reclaiming a critical intimacy with the iconic through a systematic inquiry into the conditions and consequences of its design, its limitations and viability, followed by augmentations in response to this understanding, the studio recasts architectural critique as a practice of relevance.
Through the discovery of relevant questions beyond the familiarity of established narratives of success, the students will critically investigate a modern icon. Problems inherent in its existing design by way of vital relationships left unconsidered will be identified and resolved by subtle yet profound interventions. Shifting emphasis from design solutions derived primarily from the expression of form to that of solving problems of relevance, we will rekindle the continuity of the built environment, and engender an understanding of what constitutes critical architecture in service of responsibility over mere reputation.
Conceived with, and mentored by, Kevin Low from 2020-23, the studio will be guided by Shubhra Raje, with lectures by invited critics.
Studio Unit
Proposed ATIRA Masterplan imagined as connected clearings within the existing wilderness. Mixed media drawing in pen, ink and charcoal.
Existing conditions, and studio interventions.
The analysis would dwell upon two fundamentally related architectural conditions:
1) The spatial, where we will examine the concept of a detail, across scales, as a place of meeting
2) The temporal, would articulate the phenomenon of weathering, across duration, as the many afterlives that make a detail sensible, legible and meaningful.
Planmaking, with a focus on circulation as the architectural device to reorient relationships.
Placemaking, with a focus on the ‘garden room’ (Low, Kevin. 2010) - a bounded space without a roof - that is open to change, and cycles of the sun and the moon, to growth and to decay; where the built prioritises the enclosure of context over the enclosure of merely space.
