The fourth year in architectural education is one where preliminary intentions and final designs have more similarities than differences. The preceding three years of architectural education has brought an understanding of issues in architecture, which is to be nurtured and brought forth both by faculty and students. This programme will showcase fourth-year work from different colleges which will be presented by students in front of a student jury and a participative student and faculty audience.

The Students presenting their design projects are:
Harshal Ajani Sir J. J College of Architecture Project – Commercial Complex at Malad.
Abdul Rehman Kapadia L B.H.S.S College of Architecture Project – Residential Cum Shopping Complex at Dadar.
Sunanda Satwah Rizvi College of Architecture Project – Revitalisation of Ghat Gate at Jaipur.
Suketu Shah K. R. V. I. College of Architecture Project – Housing Project at Goa.

Otcober 18, 2013 | 5.00 pm
Coomaraswamy Hall, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai

Inauguration of the Charles Correa Archives, Film Screening and Book Release

The event launched the book, The Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown and other works by Charles Correa, and the Charles Correa Archives, a digitized collection of the renowned architect’s work. This unique resource, located in the UDRI resource centre, consists of over 6000 sketch designs and drawings, along with photographs, essays and media reports, covering more than fifty years of architecture and planning.

January 9, 2011 | 4.00 pm 
Little Theatre, National Centre for Performing Arts, Mumbai

As TJ Demos has argued in his essay Sabotaging the Future: The Essay Films of The Otolith Group (2009), Otolith 1 (2003), Otolith II (2007) and Otolith III (2009) (Otolith Trilogy) constitute a ‘remarkable series of essay films that engage the uncertain interval between aesthetic and political commitments.’ The Otolith Trilogy proposes temporal deconstruction that folds together past present and future’ thereby opening a route ‘to challenge the current unfolding of globalization, particularly its outcome presumed to be the result of historical inevitability’ The screenings will be followed by a discussion between the artists Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sager, curator Chus Martinez and critic Shanay Jhaveri. The Otolith Group’s exhibition ‘Westfailure’ will be on view at Project 88 from January 11 – 31, 2012.

The Otolith Group, based in London, UK., is an award winning artist led collective and organisation founded by Anjalika Sager and Kodwo Eshun in 2002 that integrates film and video making, artists writing, workshops, exhibition curation, publication and developing public platforms for the close readings of the image in contemporary society. The Group’s work is formally engaged with research led projects exploring the legacies and potentialities of artists led proposals around the document and the essay film, the archive, the aural and sonic medium, speculative futures and science-fictions.

Chus Martinez is dOCUMENTA (13) Head of Department, and Member of Core Agent Group, as well as Associate Curator at MACBA, Barcelona, where she was Chief Curator from 2008 to 2010. Previously she was Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005-08) and Artistic Director of Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2002-05). For the 50th Biennale di Venezia (2005), Martinez curated the National Pavilion of Cyprus, and in 2010 served as a Curatorial Advisor for the 29th Bienal de Sao Paulo. She lectures regularly and has written numerous catalogue texts and critical essays.

Shanay Jhaveri is a Phd. candidate at the Royal College of Art, London. He graduated from Brown University, concentrating in Art Semiotics and the History of Art and Architecture. He has edited a volume of essays titled Outsider Films on India: 1950-1990 and has curated film programmes at Tate Modern, Frieze and Iniva. He divides his time between Mumbai and London.

December 21, 2011
Rangswar Hall, Y. B. Chavan Centre, Mumbai

November 12, 2011
Arbour Research Initiatives in Architecture, Fort, Mumbai

May 30, 2011
M. C. Ghia Hall, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai

May 27, 2011 | 6.00 pm
M. C. Ghia Hall, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai

To dissent is to ask why and is fundamental to creating spaces for negotiation, debate and dialogue. The erroneous invocation of detention laws, charges of sedition and the incarceration of Binayak Sen by the Chhattisgarh court led to global protests of dissent against repression of human rights in a democracy. A public health activist and civil rights defender, Sen has spent over three decades providing healthcare to deprived tribal communities and unorganised labour while advocating non-violent political engagement to resolve societal conflicts. The public criticism for securing his release acquired the dimensions of a mass movement, expressing an over-arching concern of incarceration of other citizens under such outdated laws. The suspension of his sentence and release on bail on the orders of the Supreme Court of India question the material inconsistencies and structural flaws of his case and continue to be factors for debate in public conversations and pedagogic enquiry. His release is not a closure but inspires new possibilities of change and offers alternative ways of thinking amidst sustained dialogue.

Right to Dissent, convened by Tushar Joag, an initiative consisting of an art exhibition, film screenings, a panel discussion and performance in Mumbai continues this interrogation against questionable verdicts and comes together in solidarity for citizens denied of their rights for democratic aspirations.

Minnie Vaid | A Doctor To Defend: The Binayak Sen Story (2010)

Anand Patwardhan | Prisoners of Conscience (1978)

March 17, 2011 | 6.00 pm
Goethe Hall, Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai

The Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron were jointly awarded the 2001 Pritzker Prize, their profession’s highest honor, for combining ‘the artistry of an age-old profession with the fresh approach of a new century’s technical capabilities’. Over the past twenty years they have been involved in finding inventive architectural solutions to building a diverse range of projects — domestic, municipal and commercial — from a modest switching station for trains to a strikingly innovative approach to the design of a winery. Their highest profile commission to date was the conversation of London’s giant Bankside power station into Tate Modern, acclaimed by their peers, the media and the public alike.

Visiting examples of Herzog and de Meuron’s ground-breaking style, this film reflects their capacity to astonish and explore the way in which they transform what might otherwise be ordinary shapes, materials and surfaces through new treatments and techniques. Their perspective on and approach to architecture; their design dialogue; the way their strengths and weaknesses complement each other, and their collaborations with others, particularly artists, will all be brought into focus to give a fascinating insight into the cutting edge of architecture today.

January 20, 2011 | 6.00 pm
Goethe Hall, Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai

Manufactured Landscapes is the striking documentary on the world and work of renowned artist, Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’ — quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams — Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. With breathtaking sequences, such as the opening tracking shot through an almost endless factory, the filmmakers also extend the narratives of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste.

Manufactured Landscapes powerfully shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it, without simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions.

December 13, 2010 | 6.00 pm
Goethe Hall, Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai

On August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic divided Berlin in two with a 95-mile-long wall which also isolated the three Western sectors from the surrounding area of Brandenburg. The Berlin Wall was officially referred to as the “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall” by GDR authorities, implying that neighbouring West Germany had not been fully de-Nazified. The West Berlin city government referred to it as the “Wall of Shame” while condemning the Wall’s restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB) that demarcated the border between East and West Germany, both borders came to symbolize the “Iron Curtain” between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc. It became a symbol of the Cold War and the division between communism and capitalism.

The documentary film, ‘The Berlin Wall 1969-1989’ has the original film sequences covering the period from the building of the Berlin wall in 1961 to its fall in 1989. The date on which the Wall fell is considered to have been November 9, 1989 but the Wall in its entirety was not torn down immediately. Starting that evening and in the days and weeks that followed, people came to the wall with sledgehammers or otherwise hammers and chisels to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts of it in the process and creating several unofficial border crossings. New border crossings continued to be opened through the middle of 1990, including the Brandenburg Gate on December 22, 1989. Several sections of the wall stand as memorials today.