Good practice - Farshid Moussavi

In the first of 10 discussions about the changing demands of the profession, the guest editor visits Farshid Moussavi to discuss subterfuge and micropolitics

Does size matter? Exploring the aesthetics of miniatures

Two recently concluded exhibitions in Mumbai used the theme of miniaturisation distinctly yet effectively.

Notes on nature and art Wandering Violin Mantis

In a recently concluded exhibition, artist Nibha Sikander creates stunningly lifelike creatures — birds, insects and moths — all handmade from paper. It is her preternatural rendering of the natural in all its gorgeous detail that summons forth, in the viewer, a wave of rapture.

Architecture: A Daring and Visceral Pragmatism

An office building in Bengaluru by architect Madhusudhan Shridhar and engineer Manjunath B L conceived as a base for the former’s practice, puts forth a convincing argument of the spatial wonders achievable when two practitioners from differing disciplines choose to turn the tables upon a historically fraught relationship.

THE COVER STORY

In January 2017, Domus India set out on a new experiment — the cover of the magazine would be specially designed by a designer, artist, architect or photographer in discussion with the editorial and design team of the magazine. Here, we present the covers from the last two years.

The Wonder Journal

Vadodara-based artist Utkarsh Makwana’s works navigate through the tropes of philosophy as well as comedy and touch upon the wonder one derives from the mundane. Alluding to historical and mythological references, his visual interpretations are arresting, owing to his choice of colours and well-thoughtout compositions. A constant feature in his works are varied geometrical patterns which stem out like a maze, knitting his imageries together. There are references obtained from patterns like the Sacred Geometry, the Fibonacci sequence and many other shapes. With this body of work, Makwana invites the viewer to write their own narratives in his personal wonder journal.

Kaleidoscopic Play and Quiet Wisdom

If photography is, literally, the act of ‘writing with light’, photographer Sheetal Mallar shows us how it can also be the act of writing with shadow and darkness, penumbra and eclipse. Mallar’s 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. Beneath these outward and visible subjects — ephemeral spaces and evanescent trades, aftermaths and afterlives — Mallar’s constant theme is transience. Encountering her protagonists, we recognise them, as well as ourselves, to be transients: creatures of passage afforded a brief leasehold by the cycle of time.

“Only smart people make a city smart”

Future city governance Densification and greenification Diversity for the society The challenge of self-sufficiency An interview with Ahmed Aboutaleb, Mayor of Rotterdam

Imagine

On speculation: landscape, city-making and imagination

Indian Cities Sanitation And Equity

At the recently concluded edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, RMA Architects (Mumbai + Boston) presented an ongoing research project mapping the sanitation landscape in Mumbai and beyond. It explored social, technical and cultural challenges surrounding sanitation infrastructure and suggested potential design and planning solutions. The central component of the installation represented a community toilet building in India. The area occupied by this installation would typically house 12 toilets in Mumbai, serving up to 17,401 people. The video projections in the installation depict the lived experiences of those residents of the city who grapple with extremely limited access to sanitation infrastructure.

Exhibition Fields of Eros and Enchantment

An ongoing exhibition of artist Bhagyashree Suthar’s works reflects her fascination with architecture and geometry, and are a play of the fantastical and the familiar. Suthar gathers images and objects from everyday life, and is familiar with the histories and contexts of drawing up futures. She is also invested in the use of mathematical constructions and abstractions towards mapping these languages of the future world. From the Fibonacci series and Fractals, Parametricism and Visionary Futures of Archigram to the drawings and models of Lebbeus Woods or the architectures of Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry — they all build a library of this investigation for Suthar. She brings into her work a whole history of humankind’s interest in shaping worlds of perfection — places of balance and cosmic as well as earthly magnificence and sublimity — utopia — something that never exists, a never-place!

The privatisation of the public realm

During the past decade Milan has hosted several stunning urban renewals, ushering in a new age of globalisation.

Worldwhite?

From the coolest to the Parthenon: the colour white in architecture has many connotations, sometimes linked to cultural prejudice.

Milan 2030: 88 squares for 88 neighbourhoods

Milan is changing. Its population reached and topped the 1.4-million mark for the first time at the start of October, when the city reported its number of inhabitants to be 1,420,000.

Indian Aesthetics The Wonders of the Konark Museum

While the Konark Temple in Odisha is admired for its architecture and iconography, the site museum, in contrast, is marked by its simplicity, focusing not on itself but on the temple. The many galleries are dotted with sculptures of gods and goddesses, apsaras and mythical creatures occupying pride of place.

Exhibition Concrete Ciphers

In his recent body of work, artist Pratap Morey filters out the hustle and bustle of the city, training his gaze instead on the massive modular blocks of construction material used for infrastructure projects. Like pieces of a Lego set, they patiently lie in wait for their moment of assembly, when according to a pre-determined plan they will neatly click into place to create a flyover or the stretch of a metro line. But for Morey, they represent concrete ciphers, waiting to be decoded and put to more imaginative use. Elevating these humdrum, banal, serial and seemingly soulless creatures of mechanical production, Morey gestures at the roles they could possibly play in creating alternate, utopian worlds.

Exhibition 1:2500 (One is to Twenty-Five Hundred)

A recent exhibition showcases how architect and artist Martand Khosla delves into the dark underbelly of urban India, where pavement dwellers wash dishes in the shadows of luxury high-rises, when the city floods during times of drought. His title refers to the scale of survey maps used to record populations, constructions and geographies, where small gestures stand for things much larger, when control gives way to chaos.

A Built Manifesto

Tucked away on a dense street in Chennai with mixed-land use is the newly-built office for local practice KSM Architecture Studio. Built by the designers and engineers of the practice for themselves, the building housing the studio — both in its intent and its manifestation — captures the practice’s worldview. It is a startling and refreshing example of how ‘wisdom’ and ‘technique’ can find an amicable meeting point, embodying the design beliefs and principles of being sensitive to the environment.

Exhibition Retrieving the Lost Works of a Master

A recent exhibition brought together a considerable body of Ebrahim Alkazi’s paintings and drawings in several media, which have never been on public view since they were originally shown in the early 1950s and the mid-1960s. So towering is Alkazi’s reputation as a theatre-maker and institution-builder, theatre pedagogue, champion of artists, organiser of exhibitions, and mentor to generations of actors on stage and screen, that the memory of his own artmaking has been largely forgotten.

Can art change us?

JR: the tale of a free artist

Indian Aesthetics - Temples of the Yoginis

Circular and open to the skies, the temples of the Yoginis 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.

Books - The Principles of Uncertainty

A book about finding meaning in a perplexing world and understanding oneself through the author Maira Kalman's astute observations that are paired with whimsical illustrations and annotated pictures is perhaps a reminder to end the year on a profound note.

Bridging The Gap: Computation For Construction In India

The processes of design development and construction are locally contextualised in different parts of the world based on the available technology and resources. This feature presents a craft-based approach to computation and its contribution to support artisans in India. Such solutions attempt to establish a methodology which makes complex geometry constructible in the country today, even when access to digital fabrication methods are evolving and expensive.

The Discovery Of India

The Discovery of India is a permanent exhibition display at the Nehru Centre in Mumbai. Designed by the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, it is a physical manifestation of Jawaharlal Nehru’s magnum opus The Discovery of India — a book that was a key text during India’s struggle for independence from colonial rule as well as in the shaping of the first decade of independent India. It set the tone for a nation that is inclusive and believed in ‘unity in diversity’. An important book of the twentieth century, manifest in the objects and tableaux is alive here in the exhibition, reminding us of its relevance, more so today. Designed and composed using various forms of visual culture — objects, prints, scenographies, cabinet displays and recreations, including the television series Bharat Ek Khoj — the displays draw from archaeology, history, art history, architecture, anthropology, thereby shaping an intense experience which is informed, rich and thoughtful. This photo essay, based on the current status of the exhibition, invites one to not only engage with the visual rendering of the text but also with the design of messages and ideas, presented here through some extracts from the book itself.

Letters From A Father To His Daughter

Series of letters

Architecture As Symbol And Idea

Architecture : Weaving the aspirations and struggles of a new nation into a building A memorial to independent India’s first and most dynamic Prime Minister

A Velocity Of Being

A collection of illustrated letters to children about why we read reveals the agency of words, the power of articulation, and why reading is essential to make a good life, reminding us that language is a delicate yet powerful tool.

On Charles Correa's Kala Academy

In the wake of the recent threat of demolishing the storeyed amphitheatre of Panjim’s iconic Kala Academy, designed by Charles Correa, what does the future hold for India’s postcolonial architecture?

Indian Aesthetics Memory, Museums And The Mahatma

Memorial sites dedicated to Gandhi developed organically or naturally, like the house he was born in Porbunder; or by association, like Mani Bhavan in Mumbai; or sites which were specifically made for the purpose of creating a memorial. While 2019 is the 150th birth anniversary of Gandhi, it also marks about seven decades since the idea of memorialising Gandhi was initiated