Events
The KRVIA is host to a platform for multidisciplinary events all around the year. It aims at creating a holistic learning experience for the students.
Electives 2022 - June 2022-2023
EL 01: A POINT/(S) OF VIEW
Kunal Sharma | Level 1 & 2
EL 02: Economics for Architects
Shantanu Khandkar | Level 1 & 2
EL 03: What the Folly!
Lorenzo Fernandes | Level 1 & 2
EL 04: Mapping the Unseen
Ankush Chandran | Level 1 & 2
“Reality is a question of perspective” – Salman Rushdie.
You’re climbing up the staircase and upon reaching the mid landing you catch a glimpse of a rather distorted, chaotic graphic. It looks like someone had tried to paint a scene but everything is off proportionally. As you continue walking, the scene starts transforming and suddenly you can see the graphic clearly. From this angle, it makes perfect sense: that’s your vantage point. This is Anamorphosis art.
Anamorphosis, by definition, is an ingenious perspective technique that gives a distorted image of the subject represented in a picture when seen from the usual viewpoint but so executed that if viewed from a particular angle the distortion disappears and the image in the picture appears normal. The technique empowers flat surfaces with three dimensional properties. Although at the end it’s all an illusion.
The elective begins with an introduction to examples of Anamorphosis in visual arts and
architecture, its construction theories followed by a manual process of mapping and tracing the projections over multiple planes and eventually fine tuning the legibility of the graphic. These sessions would require students to come together and build a full-scale anamorphic graphic.
Economics is described variously as the study of how scarce resources are used, as the study of how goods and services are created, how people respond to incentives, and even how societies are structured. As a discipline it straddles, inter alia, sociology, psychology, history, and politics. At its core, economics is the study of people. It investigates how people try to fulfill their needs and wants, and how they make choices. Architecture is also concerned with some of the same questions. It does not exist outside of the economy. On the contrary, what we build, how we build and why we build it are crucial questions, the answers to which affect and are affected by the economy. Architecture sits at the intersection of various disciplines. It is therefore important for architects to learn the language and understand the basic concepts of those disciplines.
The course aims to acquaint students with the fundamentals of economics. Apart from the obvious link between architecture and economics in terms of real estate and finance, the study of these fundamentals will help the student better understand and analyze historical and current events and better equip them to think critically about issues and challenges they attempt to address as architects. The course will also help students read and analyze data and to
construct logical arguments from premises based on factual information.
The course will follow two simultaneous tracks. The first track will consist of lectures and discussions regarding basic concepts in economics. These concepts will be applied in the second track. The second track will consist of a short research project. The project will be an investigation into the variables which drive demand for housing, using housing prices as a signalling mechanism. Students will work in teams to map certain precincts in Mumbai. The mapping will serve to generate data that will then be analyzed to understand the factors which affect housing prices.
Let’s explore architecture as a device to add some playfulness / drama / imperfections / disorder to its context. The elective provides a space for designers to experiment with basic geometries and aid in formulating them as a folly in its own urban context.
The folly is an architectural form which grew out of well-manicured landscapes in 18th-century Europe. Typically, follies were created primarily as forms of decoration, and often served no functional purpose. A lot of their designs were purely sculptural, or even out of place within their context; their scale and proportions were arbitrary. Today, the role of contemporary follies have transformed into the urban context along with its own take on different approaches towards tradition. Collectively, they embrace the ability of architecture to create beauty, wonder and whimsy in our lives.
This elective is focused on both: ‘Formal Explorations’ and ‘Graphical Representation of the Built’. Students will be encouraged to think and design in 3D (basics of 3D modelling will be introduced), and then guided to experiment with any medium that displays their architecture intentions visually
The intention of this elective is to question each individuals’ existing methods of design
production and maybe open them up to discover a newer/different methodology. This space is experimental! I encourage y’all to break your own rules here!
What we map is what we acknowledge. In the design fields, what we map often determines what, and how, we design. The lived experience is the outcome of various sensory stimuli, acting in congruence with the meanings and associations that the self carries. Quite often, exercises in mapping the lived realm fail to acknowledge this large range of vectors, instead limiting themselves to mapping/ codifying ocular and apparent parameters, like form, geography, volume, style and benchmarks.
The elective aims to engage with the acknowledgment, mapping and representation of non-visual vectors of spatial experience. It works at the intersection of phenomenological cartography, graphic design and data-gathering techniques. This involves the creation of multi-sensory maps, illustration through metaphors and synesthetic representations and the study of graphic design techniques that enable a more nuanced illustration of the unseen.
The elective is expected to produce visual representations (both spatial and non-spatial) of the unseen vectors of our environments, in order to articulate the complexity and pluralistic nature of the lived experience.
EL 05: Reading Urban Spaces: Memory and Identity
Andre Baptista | Level 1 & 2
EL 06: Architecture as/is/of NOT Buildings
Aastha D. | Level 2
EL 07: (De) Globalization and Cities
Dr. Binti Singh | Level 2
EL 08: About Us: People and Heritage
Sanaeya Vandrewala | Level 2
Rapid Urbanisation in Mumbai in the last decade or so has once again churned up debates about preserving the city’s architectural heritage, which, more often than not, falls victim to an ever growing skyline. The city is soon losing elements that stand testament to its genesis, its subsequent historical journey, and that have largely come to define Mumbai’s visual character.
Markers of the many ‘Big Events’ that shaped the city’s identity are silently tucked away in its barely surviving residential spaces of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The families that have resided in these spaces for generations hold in their unassuming personal archives, their memories and their stories a unique perspective of Mumbai’s journey. From these, a ‘People-of-Mumbai’ vantage can lend itself in the creation of a narrative of the space and have it represent a microcosm of Mumbai’s urban history.
This elective aims to introduce participants to the ‘power of the story’ and how it can be applied to assess and promote the significance of heritage precincts. Through a series of lectures, interactive sessions/workshops, and with the heritage precinct of Khotachiwadi as a case study and the East Indian Community in particular, this elective will use built heritage, object histories and personal memories to create a sense of identity for a space in the overall scheme of Mumbai City.
Five themes will unpack architecture by speaking of everything architecture, except buildings.
These points of speculation and argument will be—Rituals of spaces; Abolishing Beauty;
Instagram, Neologism, and Culture; To be or not to be ‘Woke’; and Who are the Sites of Knowledge. Students will be encouraged to articulate what they See. Read. Write while always asserting the will to Incubate-Incubate-Incubate. As complexities of the world come to infringe upon humanity with sheer visibility of consciousness, consequences, and inequalities, the designers of the future cannot afford to look away. The course will encourage discourse around biases by identifying and questioning them, rather than striving for ‘objectivity/neutrality’ (a fallacy like many other western notions of rhetoric and academic rigour). Through debate anchored in critical thinking, students will be urged to sit with their discomforts, watch biases shift and move, and look at the world with a curiosity rather than cynicism or even unchecked optimism.
The format will include readings (provided by conductor), discussions, presentations, and a final mixed-format essay (a combination of images and words).
Globalization is often understood as an economic phenomenon marked by economic
restructuring, primacy of the market, dispersal of production, and internationalization of labour.
Thus, while shopping for international brands like Zara, Mango or H&M, it’s not surprising to find labels that read as Made in Bangladesh or Made in Vietnam. The globalized economic order and post-Fordist mode of production makes this possible. Sociologically, globalization is understood as compassing all those processes by which people are incorporated into one singular, global society characterized by compression of time and space, greater interconnections and interdependencies, increased cultural and social interactions, a growing network of multiple players consisting of multinational corporations and transnational organizations. Globalization is often critiqued as Americanization given the American domination of world markets, political patronage and media control and now the all-pervasive social media epitomized by Facebook and WhatsApp, again gifts from America. The Macdonaldization of society, a phrase used by Ritzer in 2000, still holds good for aspiring global societies hankering for the Nike shoes, Mac Notebook, and Mac cosmetics like never. This colonization of popular culture is often described as new imperialism that dominates through production of specific images, symbols, representations and language that permeate the cultural realm of all societies that are in the throes of globalization.
That practically includes every society in the world today (Source: Singh, Culture, Place, Branding and Activism 2018: pp4). Year 2020 changed everything. The walls that protect us now confine us; the streets that free us now expose us; the amenities that serve us now desert us. The city outside is now a fragment outside our window, a phantom, an idea that we can think about but never wholly experience. It was solid once, it has now melted into air. Given this backdrop, this elective situates India as undergoing a period of extraordinary urban transformation accelerated by the forces of globalization (economic, technological, political and socio-cultural). The pandemic has triggered a differential response: “de-globalization”, look for local responses to pressing global problems.
Overnight, our definition of globalization has changed. India remains resilient, a key player in global supply chains, with a greater focus on home grown responses and solutions and a call towards “atmanirbhar bharat”.
Cities (big and small) that were already in the throes of economic and cultural globalization are at the crossroads of dialects- how much to be global and how much to remain local? The term glocalization, coined a decade ago, seems to solve this dialectics. With the help of real examples from cities across India, this elective examines some of these questions. Some facts: For the first time in modern Indian history, the rate of urban growth is higher than that of the rural. Material transformations – freeways and tollways, malls and gated communities, changing work patterns and new forms of consumerism are also accompanied by social and cultural changes. What is also of enormous significance is that accelerated urbanism is not just a facet of life in large metropolises. It is also transforming lives in the towns and cities across India beyond those cities that have been the usual focus of scholars of urbanism.
The pedagogic intent of this elective is to understand
1. India as an urban locale of extraordinary historical importance and one that is undergoing tremendous urban upheaval.
2. In what ways do global social, cultural and economic forces produce new imaginaries of city life?
3. How do Indian cities respond to global cultural influences?
4. What is the role of technology?
5. What visions do they produce of urban futures and how do governments and ordinary citizens engage with these visions?
6. How does a city’s past influence visions of the future?
These are just some of the valuable questions that will provide an indispensable guide to a form of urbanism which cannot simply be written upon a blank slate, but must deal with the deeply embedded histories of quotidian sociality as well as powerful contemporary processes of change.
Based on ICCROM’s People Centric Approaches to heritage conservation, the programme shall cover a range of concepts within the field of heritage and provide outcomes and learnings based on people centric solutions to heritage related issues. The elective provides understanding the process as being dynamic in nature by increasing participation within the management systems and promoting mutually beneficial role of heritage in the society. Multidisciplinary & Collaborative approach with well informed and sustainable
nature of interventions based on inclusive stakeholder participation is at the core of the
conservation practice. The students shall understand various concepts associated with heritage conservation, learn its applicability and achieve its larger understanding within their design interventions, thesis proposals, studios etc. The elective shall cover various methods and concepts within the heritage conservation discourse in order to better equip participants to understand, assess and intervene in historic environments.
EL 09: A SENSE OF LOCATION : WAYFINDING & SIGNAGE
Indrajit Sen | Level 2
EL 10: POP CULTURE AND SEMIOTICS: Multi-Disciplinary Discourse
Manoj Parmar | Level 2
EL 11: Democratizing the Geo-spatial
Abhijit Ekbote | Level 2
EL 12: Integrated Design and the Architecture of Sustainability
Ashok Lal | Level 2
A sense of any place is derived from the ease with which any user can navigate and utilize the space – instead of having to suffer from asking people the way or struggling with even a google map. This is true for entire cities as it is for any public spaces like transit hubs – airports/railway stations/bus termini, healthcare facilities, offices buildings, exhibition / trade fair spaces, sports venues, museums, religious centers, et al. Principles of wayfinding provide orientation that are key for user-friendly design of public spaces. Signages are physical manifestations for wayfinding and therefore become an important tool to know about. 21 st century has also opened up urban design as a critical means of branding and creating destinations to be marketed to tourists and prospective residents to raise revenues. And “commercial signage” – or advertisement signage – has become a focus of interest as an unique way of urban branding.
This course “A Sense of Location: Wayfinding and Signage” expounds on wayfinding theory and principles, demystifies technology of signage and clarifies advertising signage – reasons for its importance and ways to control its use. All this will be imparted through presentations, case studies and project assignments which can be completed within the assigned time
We live in a world in which aspects of post-modernity are in constant tension with aspects of modernity and pre-modern existence. A world that is both industrial and postindustrial, in which many of the qualities that characterized modernity i: e the speeding up of time and compression of space that resulted in part from urbanization, industrialization, and automation that have become conditions in post-modernity alongside and in relation to virtual technologies and the flows of capital, information, and media in the era of globalization.
The postmodern is distinguished by the idea that there is not one but many truths and that the notions of truth are culturally and historically relative constructions. In a postmodern world where old uncertainties are undermined and identities are fragmented, the way forward for those working with popular culture has become less clear. In such conditions the elective tries to locate the pop culture tendencies in our everyday life and identifies its influences in our built environment.
Geospatial technology is one of the mediums through which the State exerts its power over
geographies. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has now formally attained a ‘standard’ way in which the state can systematically control / manipulate its natural and human-made resources and thereby create its own ‘realities’.
Hence it becomes important to be aware of these systems and learn more about how GIS can offer possibilities for mapping, analysis and representation which assists in triggering community participation through participatory mapping, democratic representation of spatial information, analysis and its dissemination and incorporating the learnings towards a strategic bottom-up planning.
This course explores the making of architecture through the principles of Sustainability.
We discuss and understand the critical relationship between the built environment and the activity of constructing buildings with ecological balance and natural resources. We extend this understanding to the level of the city and the notions of urbanism.
We understand the fundamental principles of Climate Responsive, Energy Efficient and Resource Efficient building design We see examples of beautiful and evocative architecture that is Future Ready and Future Proof.
We set up a design process that responds to these principles and try our hand at designing a building We discover and create our own architecture of Sustainability
EL 13: What if : Ways of seeing 2
Teja Gavankar | Level 1
EL 14: Wood workshop
Dharmesh Mewada | Level 1
EL 15: Photogrammetry and 3D scanning technique
Katsushi Goto | Level 1
EL 16: Semantics + Tectonics + Architecture
Ainsley Lewis | Level 1
We share a common reality.
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown. The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. Reality is space and time. We cannot change reality. But we can always imagine. The way we do in our dreams.
Dreams are based on reality but not the actual one. In this module, we will explore these terms: Real vs unreal/altered/distorted/unusual/unexpected/unknown. And ultimately, we will explore building our own reality by altering space and time. Through mediums like drawing, photographing.
As Marvel Studios’ first animated series “What If…?” flips the script on the MCU, reimagining
famous events from the films in unexpected ways.
Follow me and dare to face the unknown.
Ponder the question …what if?
Model making and furniture making as a craft are a fundamental process in Architecture and design curriculum. Often students end up outsourcing models and the end result is entirely based on the skills of a third party and the tools available to them.
This workshop aims at introducing hand tools and joineries as a medium in wood to assist students and promote them to develop their own skills in creating models and furniture as an outcome. All of this will be done utilizing the workshop and tools at the institute itself and also promote the use of workshops as an integral part of the curriculum.
The end result will be a prototype furniture product made out of joineries. This course shall train an individual to make their own models on various scales and a full scale product. Rough estimate – Maximum Rs. 2000/- per group for wood and related hardware
With the rise of the ‘Digital twin’ in the last decade, methods and equipment to acquire spatial and 3D data of the built environment have become relatively cheap and more varied. While traditional documentation methods, measured drawing, sketches and so on, hold relevance in the discipline of architecture and urbanism, such spatial and 3D data have versatility in various applications and the ability to re-create the spatial experience. In this circumstance, the methods of 3D scanning must be part of the early stage of architectural education.
The elective explores the idea of semantics and tectonics that architects employ to manifest architecture. The elective articulates an understanding of semantics that results in the tectonic.
A case study approach along with an analysis of the design will focus on a curated set of contemporary architects and their projects. The architects are selected from the book ‘Conversations with Architect’ authored by Vladimir Belogolovsky the founder of the New York-based Intercontinental Curatorial Project, which focuses on organizing, curating, and designing architectural exhibitions worldwide.
EL 17: Image | Music | Time | Film | City
Avijit Mukul Kishore | Level 1
EL 18: Image | Music | Text
Sonal Sundararajan | Level 1
EL 19: The Power of (Individual) Storytelling: Visual and Textual
Krupa Shah | Level 1
Music and film are temporal arts, i.e. they exist in time. Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky referred to the act of making films as ‘Sculpting in Time’, as if time was a block of stone or wood from which you sculpted cinema as an art work. This elective course will look at the structural element of time in music and cinema, with a special focus on the city film. There will be extensive music listening and film viewing sessions, analysis of image-making, montage, sound design and music, to make meaning of cinematic images from key films made in different genres.
Each day will be structured around studying the element of time through music and its use in film, in effect creating a plethora of associations and meanings through narrative and experience. Students will be given exercises in music and temporality.
The elective will involve listening, watching and reading sessions to discuss the relationship between form, expression and signification in Music, Text and Image. The final work will be individual explorations of these media, in the form of experimental images /sound pieces or texts
“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
This elective will explore the power of (individual) storytelling and also the danger of a single story.
We are all storytellers. We are impressionable and vulnerable in the face of a story, especially a great story. Stories stir imagination, they open up new worlds for us but these same stories also shape our view
of the world. Textual or visual, stories can empower or disempower depending on how they are told, who tells them, when they’re told and how many stories are told.
This elective, through multiple interactions, discussions and references will introduce students to storytelling and how stories can be used to form narratives beyond the stereotypes and how these stories engage with places and people.
Students will be encouraged to craft or reimagine a story that is unique and engaging through the various lenses discovered in the elective. The stories can be crafted through a medium of their choice – visual, textual, verbal or a mix of multiple mediums.
Special Lecture: First year B.Arch
Manoj Parmar
KRMLS 2022
We all are born with sense of what to do. Within our singular limit we know instinctively that, given an opportunity to put the ideas into practice, we know what to do almost instantaneously, if what we do is true to our singularity. The title of the presentation is the title of a book written by Louis Kahn, where he begins to unfold the sense of singularity within ourselves but with high degree of awareness of “what has always been”, that is inherent quality of space, nature and living beings. We practice our singularity with our knowledge & awareness about “what has always been”. Sense of singularity is to be free from our own biases, that’s freedom.
Dissertation Colloquium 2022 (Batch of 2021)
KRMLS 2022
Thesis Workshop 2021-2022
The thesis workshop is intended to help students frame and consolidate their areas of interest as potential thesis ideas. The workshop is planned over 3 days from 13th to 15th May 2021 and comprises input lectures and discussions and culminates with the students submitting a written abstract on three topics of their choice
Encounters
Encounters: Thinking with the Exhibition
KRVIA Encounters Dr. Kaiwan Mehta As an architectural researcher and thinker, one encountered and worked with the exhibition as a mode of expression of one’s
