A moderated conversation between Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan, Kaiwan Mehta and Alison Crawshaw
Bauhaus as an institute situated itself not as a binary of tradition and the modern but as a transformation of the rural to the urban. Exploring the basic idea of ‘form follows function’ and ‘total work of art’, Bauhaus single handedly transformed urban design into a playful exercise of unique innovation beyond the degeneration of a mass produced commodity. Today after 100 years, when the world is struggling to cope with the homogenization of globalization in a postindustrial world and its impact on climate change, a sustainable lifestyle in harmony with nature is the call of the day, this programme will witness experts engaging with the tools and the pedagogical models initiated by Bauhaus and review its relevance today in relationship to lifestyle, science, arts and environment.
Detail about the speakers:
© Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan
Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan
Suchitra teaches at the School of Design, Ambedkar University Delhi. Her research interests centre on the intersections between craft, design and nationalism in India against the backdrop of decolonization and Cold War diplomacy. Her publications include “Moving away from Bauhaus and Ulm” (bauhaus imaginista online journal 2019); “Craft and Design in the Hindu Way of Life” in Encyclopaedia of Asian Design Vol. 4: Transnational and Global Issues in Asian Design (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018); “Imagining the Indian Nation: The Design of Gandhi’s Dandi March and Nehru’s Republic Day Parade” in Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization (Berghahn 2016).
© Kaiwan Mehta
Kaiwan Mehta
Kaiwan is a theorist and critic in the fields of visual culture, architecture, and city studies. Mehta has studied Architecture (B. Arch), Literature (MA), Indian Aesthetics (PGDip) and Cultural Studies (PhD). In 2017 he completed his doctoral studies at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bengaluru, under the aegis of Manipal University. Since March 2012 he has been the Managing Editor of Domus India (Spenta Multimedia). He is also Professor and Programme Chair of the Doctoral Programme at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmedabad; and contributes to the CEPT University Press and Research. He was the Charles Correa Chair professor at the Goa College of Architecture under the aegis of the Department of Art and Culture, Government of Goa for the academic year 2017-2018. He authored Alice in Bhuleshwar: Navigating a Mumbai Neighbourhood and The Architecture of I M Kadri. He has delivered keynote lectures and seminars at Cornell University, Centre Pompidou, Paris, besides other Indian and international universities, institutions, museums, and organisations; and has also contributed a section on Modern and Contemporary architecture in India and South-Asia for the recent and updated edition of Bannister Fletcher's "A History of World Architecture". He is currently working on other architecture biographies - the works of Architect Sen Kapadia, as well as Architect Jeetendra Mistry
Mehta co-curated with Rahul Mehrotra and Ranjit Hoskote the national exhibition on architecture – “The State of Architecture: Practices and Processes in India” at the National Gallery Modern Art, Mumbai and 'State of Housing - Aspirations, Imaginaries, and Realities in India'. He has been elected as the Jury Chairman for two consecutive terms for the international artists’ residency programme across 13 disciplines at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. He has been curating the Urban Design and Architecture section of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai since 2016.
© Alison Crawshaw
Alison Crawshaw
Alison is a registered architect and set up her studio in 2014 after ten years in practice in London and New York. The studio pursues a design led and interdisciplinary approach to architecture through a portfolio that includes landscape, urban design, buildings and installations. Alison works internationally, across the public and private sectors on projects of varied scale and typology. She has extensive experience in the design and delivery of public space and urban strategy and a thorough understanding of arts practice and institutions having collaborated with many contemporary artists and leading galleries. She has tutored at a number of architecture schools including Cambridge University, the Architectural Association, the Royal College of Art, London and the Bauhaus in Dessau. She was Rome Scholar in Architecture, exhibitor in the international section of the Venice Biennale and was shortlisted for Harvard University’s Wheelwright Prize.
This programme will be live streamed on the Facebook pages of the Goethe-Institut Kolkata and the Indian Museum on the scheduled date and time.
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