The January 2020 edition of Domus India brings together a range of features comprising both art as well as architecture. 

We look back on the designs of the covers of Domus India from the last three years — each cover specially designed by a designer, artist, architect or photographer in discussion with the editorial and design team of the magazine. 

Aparna Andhare reads The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris, a book that responds to the culling of language with a commitment to the natural world. Here, words and images inform each other, thus reflecting the poetic nature of the book. 

The archival material we present from Charles Correa is an indication towards the ability of the architect to think beyond sites and commissions towards the making of public and cultural spaces, politics and social environments, and is strikingly relevant in today’s day and age. 

Suprio Bhattacharjee writes about the Crescent School of Architecture in Chennai, designed by the studio architectureRED.

Through Sheetal Mallar’s photographs we learn that her protagonists — her human subjects as much as the environments she so memorably records—occupy a precarious threshold between the powers of vitality and the forces of extinction.

We also look at a recent exhibition, Can You Hear Me?, artist Nalini Malani’s first solo show in India in five years, marking her return home after she became the first Asian artist to win the prestigious Joan Miro Prize in 2019.

In Vadodara-based artist Utkarsh Makwana’s works, we look at how he navigates the tropes of philosophy as well as comedy and touches upon the wonder one derives from the mundane. Alluding to historical, architectural and mythological references, his visual interpretations are arresting, owing to his choice of colours, well-thought-out compositions, and use of geometry.

The December issue brings together a range of features comprising both art as well as architecture.

The cover of December edition features the work of French artist JR (Paris, 1983) comprising large murals that aggrandise the common man and engage with his often overlooked reality, not from a sense of responsibility inherent in ‘art activism’ but from a position of dignity and respect for others. JR’s artistic engagement reconfigures the trappings of our reality awash with images through new images calling for dialogue and transformation leading to freedom of expression and art.

In ‘Indian Aesthetics’, Anuradha Shankar explores the temples of the Yoginis. Circular and open to the skies, these temples are few and far between. While most of them are currently in Central India, extending to coastal Odisha in the east, and Rajasthan in the west, based on sculptural and literary evidence, it is clear that they must have, at one point, thrived across the country.

Architecturally, Suprio Bhattacharjee looks at  SPACES designed by MOAD, a cultural centre along Chennai’s famous Elliot’s Beach, which is home to the archives of two of India’s most important post-independence artists — dancer Chandralekha and painter, designer and sculptor Dashrath Patel.

The issue also highlights two recently concluded exhibitions — pieces earth left behind, featuring the work of insallation artist Sudarshan Shetty, and Opening Lines: Ebrahim Alkazi, Works 1948-1971 curated by Ranjit Hoskote.

In the ‘Poetry’ section — curated by Ranjit Hoskote — we present a set of poems by the distinguished Anglophone Indian poet, literary reviewer and anthologist Manohar Shetty. This selection of Shetty’s poems offers readers the first glimpse of his forthcoming collection, Borderlines, to be published in 2020 by the independent poetry imprint, Copper Coin.

The November edition of Domus India largely revolves around Jawaharlal Nehru and his sense of ‘discovery’ — discovery as a journey of explorations — exploring the world, its people, its history and locating the self within that world, history, and people. Under Books and Reading, we explore myriad titles: The Velocity of Being edited by Maria Popova & Claudia Bedrick; Letters from a Father to his Daughter by Jawaharlal Nehru; and Nehru’s iconic The Discovery of India, with an introduction by Sunil Khilnani. A photo essay by Mumbai-based lensman Chirodeep Chaudhuri on the exposition titled ‘Discovery of India’ on display at Mumbai’s Nehru Centre is almost a visual, physical  manifestation of Nehru’s eponymous magnum opus, and sets the tone for an inclusive, diverse nation. 

Architect, M Kadri’s design for Mumbai’s Nehru Centre — a rich symbolic interpretation in design of India, the country he inherited as the first Prime Minister of a free people, and his own personality. 

With a focus on a craft-based approach towards computation and its contribution to support artisans in India, we attempt to explore a solution aiming to establish a methodology which makes complex geometry constructible in the country today, even when access to digital fabrication methods are evolving and expensive. This project was conceptualised by students during a three-week-long course, Digital Crafts: Customised Bricks 1.1, conducted at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University, Ahmedabad in 2016. 

The cover of this edition, designed by Parshav Sheth, a recently graduated young architect, brings material culture and objects together. The brick shell pavilion in Ahmedabad is a discovery of ‘India-now’ and ‘India-past ‘— a combination of new technologies and existing skills, and direction for the future without positioning the now and past as antagonists but rather as mutually complementing; superimposed with journeys in a ‘discovery of India’, in a perpetual state of being.

The October edition of Domus India largely revolves around Mahatma Gandhi and how, as a symbol, the idea of Gandhi has been interpreted visually and philosophically across India. Architecturally, we look at memorials and museums built about or around Gandhi, along with a focus on the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad. We also look at issues and concerns surrounding the concept of the preservation of postcolonial architecture in India, with a special mention of the Kala Academy in Panjim designed by Charles Correa. A three-part photo essay by Mumbai-based lensman Chirodeep Chaudhuri collects the Mahatma in his myriad sculptural afterlives. 
An excerpt from the Critical Edition of An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth, from Penguin Books (2018) by Tridip Suhrud looks at how the Ashram and its community were Gandhi’s greatest experiment and also the site for his experiments. In a country fixated on the notion of ‘big is better’, architects are perhaps in a position now to evolve and effect — more than ever before — antidotal efforts that negate the adverse effects of our obsession with magnitude. A feature on several such ‘small’ yet ‘meaningful’ architectural projects further explores this idea. 

The cover of this edition, designed by Mumbai-based artist Sameer Kulavoor, draws on the relationships architecture and design share with material cultures on the one hand and people and memories on the other, working with examples of architecture that believe in — and work with — ‘substance in smallness’. Kulavoor also includes key elements of design and memory, as well as people and behaviour, extracting from images of museums, places and ashrams connected with Gandhi’s life and history.

The September edition primarily speculates on design through exhibitions on architectural and artistic practices entwined with architectural engagements. In the Books section we dwell upon Monsoon Feelings, edited by Imke Rajamani, Margrit Pernau and Katherine Butler Schofield. Brimming with evocative essays, this volume explores the history of emotions in the monsoon in South Asia since the twelfth century through the many tropes of poetry, paintings, architecture, cinema, landscape, festivals, music and medicine. In Indian Aesthetics, we explore the Kolvi Caves in Rajasthan, cut around the entire circumference of a hillock. Once perhaps used by members of the monastic community for prayer or meditation, this complex of Buddhist rock-cut caves remains uninhabited today; only a deafening silence greets visitors. 

The issue includes detailed features on three important exhibitions. The first is Foy Nissen’s Bombay — at the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, CSMVS, Mumbai — that brings together over fifty years of work by Foy Nissen, a lensmen of Danish descent who combined a keen sensibility with a quiet discipline. Secondly, an exhibition project titled We Colonised the Moon by Hagen Betzwieser and Sue Corke employs a range of DIY production techniques that roots their ‘Moon-project’ in absurdism, where installations and inquiries are characterised by slogans and catchphrases. Bringing together selected projects from more than a decade of the practice of studio MADe, a recently held exhibition comprised over a dozen projects, presented through models and drawings, focusing on conceptual ideas and their [generative] principles. 

Exploring urban continuity and transformation through his work, as both complement and counter to his experience building in contemporary India, New Delhi-based Martand Khosla has developed, over time — through the material and substance of his questions for architecture and architects — a rich, robust artistic practice.

The August edition of Domus India includes a blend of features on art and architecture. In the Books section, we review The Mughal Empire from Jahangir to Shah Jahan, a compilation of essays by one of the most widely regarded experts on Mughal art and architecture, Ebba Koch, in collaboration with Ali Anooshahr. The essays invite the reader to delve into a multidisciplinary analysis of Mughal India during the first half of the 17th century, during the reign of Emperor Shah Jahan and his predecessor Jahangir. An essay on modernist architecture especially pertaining to Delhi and Chandigarh raises questions of whether the architecture is adaptive or normative, if it can accommodate the expansions of desires and the accumulation of years, and if it fabricates buildings for people or people for the buildings.

The issue includes in-depth features on two important exhibitions — Connecting Threads: Textiles in Contemporary Practice held at Mumbai’s Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, comprising the works of 17 artists which present textile as both a medium and process; and Negative Space: Trajectories of Sculpture at ZKM | Karlsruhe, Germany, surveying ideas from history as well as the contemporary, to build arguments regarding our notions of perception and reality, reflection and representation, illusions and experience. 

Following the release of the book Shaping Cities in an Urban Age (2018) authored by Ricky Burdett — professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age project — this edition of Domus includes an interview with Burdett, highlighting how any argument around sustainability must reintroduce planning as a political and a design discipline, at the heart of architects’ agendas.

Context, collections, and cartography dominate this issue of Domus India. The cartography of text, time, and nature builds up experiences and produces grounds for ruminations on life, politics, and people we meet or read. Cartography — that is often the notion of space and geography, and represented in two-dimensional languages — is actually debated here for its defiance of space, asking for a geography that is not bound by land freed by the flight of the mind across many places and through many libraries. The maps in our minds produce a way of living and experiencing our everyday life narratively. Walking in locales and places produces memories from far and wide, present in the context of now, where one is walking. The writer, the poet, charts across pages, notes towards a ‘world map of life’, that is then awakens the reader to a reality within as well as beyond the drawings on the map.

Civilizations are measured practically always by the buildings they make and the cities they build; but rarely have we written the histories of people and the cultures that destroy and demolish their built worlds. How could the building of French pride and history, and world heritage — the Notre Dame — burn down? But the French President Emmanuel Macron, at the site, announced its assured reconstruction and rebuilding, and support poured in from across the world. In India, in 1992, Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid was demolished by aggressive mobs driven by ideological imaginations and manufactured confusions regarding national histories and politically driven interpretations of mythologies. In 2017, the Hall of Nations and Hall of Industries at the Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, celebrated world over as an architectural engineering feat and marvel, was demolished by the ITPO (India Trade Promotions Organisation), an agency under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The history of contemporary architecture in India is marked between these two demolitions — Babri Masjid in 1992 to Pragati Maidan buildings in 2017 — and it well indicates the nature of the civilization and society we live and participate in.
History and the contemporary are both contested regions. The struggle constantly is not only to make sense of continuities and discontinuities between history and the contemporary but also to recover the multiple histories and stories of confluences that shape our present. The present needs to be recovered beyond its politicized narrowness to address richer and more complex histories. Our simplistic histories and readings of craft and regionalism have destroyed deeper debates on building civilizations and the complexities of creativity and citizenship, neighborhoods and relationships of everyday living.

While this issue of Domus India focuses on the ideas of infrastructure and the reorientation of relationships — politics and geography, land and sacredness, connectivity and cultures — we also review the neighbourhood and the spaces of the ‘inside’ as the arenas of infrastructure, globality, and humanity. In this issue, architecture is re-organised as landscape — landscapes of human endeavours and negotiations. The macro-scale and the micro-dimensions are difficult to separate into categories or be seen as two ends of a spectrum anymore. The macro and the micro are intertwined as networks of technology, as memories, as human labour. The pages of this magazine are currently in a phase where the magazine is a travelling archive — not in the sense that it has collected elements and is now moving, but that it moves in time, building and collecting on practices, material knowledge, and objects of creative and measured production. It is moving in the sense that it is a vehicle to churn the archive as new entrants arrive and sit side-by-side with revious occupants. Occupations are constantly adjusting to new migrants. The magazine works on collaborations beyond the borders of its covers; it is not restricted to the limits of time as bound geography. Much like culture, it is a repository of ideas in conversation and argument. The magazine traverses media of many types in its quest to comprehend the contemporary as we see it in the built and crafted material environments. Our material environments occupy our imaginations, but as much as materials and the objects they make are finite and tangible, never are the journeys and histories of these materials and their avatars limited to physical space or a line of time.

Architecture in contemporary India has not established a dynamic and argumentative relationship with politics of time and culture in a robust way yet. This is not to say architecture and the many studios of design practice in a vacuum of time and space — they do not. There is a substantial number of studios and designers that build in various proportions in India today, that are very sharply aware of the context they live and work in, and at times consciously, and sometimes subconsciously, respond to a politics of place and people. And in the large quantum of built environment that is being churned out in India, if there is a small but critical mass of studios and practices that engage with the politics of people and place, and times around them, it is enough for a field to keep a sensible discourse between poetics and politics going.

Feb 19 is a special issue as it brings to the centre not only the city – the site of everyday living and action for many of us, but also to the centre, and in focus, ‘you’. Drawing from the international edition of Domus 1031 guest-edited by Winy Maas, we take forward the theme ‘You are Urbanism’. One of the regrets today, either while talking about architects and architectural practice in India, or the question of cities, urban space, and civic sensibilities and responsibilities, is that we are constantly facing a sense of withdrawal from public space and public action. In that scenario to have a phrase such as ‘You are urbanism’ is extremely important as it throws a challenge right in your face. This is also the month of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai, one of the biggest civic movements in India, and in many cases, in the world. The genesis of this festival came as a form of civic action against losing the city to thoughtless development and with a special focus on conservation of what exists. Today the festival is one of the largest urban gatherings in the world over ten days with much merriment, simultaneous with a range of intellectual and critical programming — cinema, theatre, art installations, readings, discussions, and workshops. It draws the city out of its many far flung neighbourhoods — and that is very important. As much as travel in the city has become a nightmare, and planners are always talking about reducing distances, travel-time, and so on, moving in a city and it many parts makes ‘you one with the city’. To be familiar with the city is to be in tune with the city – its chaos and its pleasures. So with the special editorial focus from Winy Maas, and the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in our front yard, it is an important moment to talk about civic engagement and urban involvement.

January 19 issue of the magazine is focused in many ways on conversations around Design. Design as a broad field of practice has a strong presence in India today — besides architecture and cities, fashion and product design, or textile design and the multiple forms of Design Thinking, are all drawing attention one way or another from India. The practices and productions involved are at a large scale, not maybe in the size of establishments always, but in the number of studios and practices. At the same time there is an emerging and growing ‘creative class’ population involved in ‘design’ in one way or another. What is coming about in this scenario is a serious problem — there is no history or practice of critical research and review of design around, especially at the moment. And a parallel issue is the lack of educational institutions that offer formal and university education in design – there are hardly a handful of that impart sound and contemporary design education. Critical writing is totally missing and the glamour associated with many areas of design takes over the talk on design, minus the discourse. The field of design needs to be developed and shaped.

The informality in the practice of design is not as true as it appears, with a good quantity of production, material, and labour involved and all along there are financial exchanges at many levels. Yet in the discussions on design or design practice it is talked about as artistic flair, creative flows, star individuals, and often it is imagined as if all of this happened only yesterday!

There have been a few academic programmes of importance and have attempted experiments and drawing out debates for a contemporary practice  but much more work and active debates are needed here. Books and magazines are practically missing, and a creative leap will be required to build this space of ‘design discourse’ and ‘design debates’.

Domus, the iconic architecture and design magazine from Italy, is now in India. The eight-decade-old monthly magazine has a history of informed debate on architecture, interiors, art and design. The Indian edition, the first Domus exclusively in the English language, seeks to encourage and promote innovation in the built environment. 

Domus has been brought to India by Spenta Multimedia, India's largest custom publisher. It aims to track and review the latest architectural and artistic movements in India and the world through its exciting content and rich visuals.

Domus, the iconic architecture and design magazine from Italy, is now in India. The eight-decade-old monthly magazine has a history of informed debate on architecture, interiors, art and design. The Indian edition, the first Domus exclusively in the English language, seeks to encourage and promote innovation in the built environment. 
Domus has been brought to India by Spenta Multimedia, India's largest custom publisher. It aims to track and review the latest architectural and artistic movements in India and the world through its exciting content and rich visuals.

The eight-decade-old monthly magazine has a history of informed debate on architecture, interiors, art and design. The Indian edition, the first Domus exclusively in the English language, seeks to encourage and promote innovation in the built environment. 
It aims to track and review the latest architectural and artistic movements in India and the world through its exciting content and rich visuals.

December 2019

November 2019

October 2019

September 2019

August 2019

June-July 2019

May 2019

April 2019

March 2019

February 2019

January 2019

December 2018

November 2018

October 2018

September 2018

Domus, the iconic architecture and design magazine from Italy, is now in India. The eight-decade-old monthly magazine has a history of informed debate on architecture, interiors, art and design. The Indian edition, the first Domus exclusively in the English language, seeks to encourage and promote innovation in the built environment. 
Domus has been brought to India by Spenta Multimedia, India's largest custom publisher. It aims to track and review the latest architectural and artistic movements in India and the world through its exciting content and rich visuals.

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Domus India - January 2020

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In this issue