As an architectural researcher and thinker, one encountered and worked with the exhibition as a mode of expression of one’s research content and material as well as thought processes. The task of the researcher or theorist shifted from the natural mode of writing to the special format of the exhibition – as a three-dimensional and spatial composition of the text, the image, the thoughts, and the processes. The role of the curator was a default one, rather than the one adopted or self-anointed. The role as a researcher or a theorist remained primary and the exhibition a way of thinking and reprocessing. Discussing certain important moments through exhibitions in the past few years, one will explore what is means to be an architectural thinker in the contemporary world/India.

Kaiwan Mehta PhD
Architect, Academic, and Researcher
Author: Alice in Bhuleshwar: Navigating a Mumbai Neighbourhood (Yoda Press. New Delhi: 2009); The Architecture of I M Kadri (Niyogi Books. New Delhi: 2016)
(A view from ‘Ornament: Design Debates Indianness’ curated by Kaiwan Mehta as part of a larger exhibition on 100 years of Bauhaus curated by Hans Christ and Iris Dressler at WKV, Stuttgart (4 May to 23 September, 2018), titled 50 Years after “50 Years of the Bauhaus 1968”)

DEAN – Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, SVKM’s NMIMS (deemed to be) University

Managing Editor – DOMUS India (Spenta Multimedia)

Former associations:
Professor (Adjunct) and Chair of Doctoral Programme (Faculty of Architecture): CEPT University.
Jury Chairman: Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany) 2015-2017 & 2017-2019.
Charles Correa Chair professor (June – November 2017)

Other previous associations – Jnanapravaha (Mumbai) as Course Director – Art, Criticism and Theory & Course Tutor – Indian Aesthetics (2007 – 2016); ISDI – Parsons Mumbai as Director – Academic Affairs (2013-2014) & Arbour: Research Initiatives in Architecture as co-founder and director (2010-2013)