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Designed as a comprehensive resource on spatial thinking, experimental pedagogy, and academic practices, this archive serves as a record for reference and critical analysis. 

More than a traditional institutional repository, it is envisioned as an "Archive of Ideas," structured to mirror the conceptual and intellectual framework of SEA. The platform captures specific engagements, explorations, and pedagogical reorientations, expressing the school's distinct set of practices constituted by its students and teachers. 

The collection encompasses intellectual articulations—from course books and objectives to studio briefs and lectures—alongside a  documentation of student work, field studies, and thesis projects. Through this structure, the archive navigates complex inquiries into typologies, ontologies, and genealogies, while exploring themes of environment, urbanisation, futures, and ethics. It serves as a space for rethinking geographies and histories of type, offering the school's co-learning experiments and its ongoing articulation of space and form.


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(Inter-)active spaces

Mobility and Publics
Saloni Vora, 2020


“If space does not have boundaries, do things then extend infinitely?”- Tschumi Bernard. 1989, Question of Space. New York: Architectural Association Publications.

Cities are formed by various forms of boundaries. Boundary is the ‘in between space’ which should be understood as a space for growing interactions and blurring the boundaries of inside and outside. In between spaces are spread across the city in fragments. They are perceived as dead zones which are under utilised and imagined as filthy, whereas the rigidness of distinct boundaries serve one dimensional use for division of plots but are often apprehended as clean and clear edges. These edges allow transactions to take place and make the space flexible. The continuous fluctuating realm of growing and shrinking, shapes the relationship between the user and the built environment.

The interactions between the form and the function of the space started vanishing as development took over. On comparing the past geographies of my neighbourhood, Malad, a suburb in Mumbai, there is no interaction between the form and the function with the space which used to be in 1980s. Borrowing and building on works of J. Gibson’s theory of furnished environment and affordance of space, Benjamin N. Vis’ book which talks about creating transparency in humans and social interactions and Lukas Smas explaining transactional spaces as the in-between spaces which creates a blur in the inside and the outside. Thus I further want to expand my thesis on the concepts of transactional capacity and affordance of space through strategies which reveals the subjective sense of space.

The interaction with physical boundaries differs from imaginary boundaries which creates a difference in the type of activities performed. To achieve the hypothesis three different edge conditions would be studied through the method of mapping and infographics. This will help to understand time-geography of the place and put together a study in time and space.  Thus a comparison will be created on comparing the transactional capacity of the space and reveal its affordance of form. Through this I have identified that there are specific conditions of not only cultural production and desire but also stationary activities that people voluntarily or involuntarily utilize in their daily routine, which produces pockets of spaces all across the city.

This work is concerned with understanding the relationship of the form of the boundary and urban everyday life in the cities being formed, reformed and interdependent on each other. Within this broad theme the specific focus is on how humans inhabit in the built environment and the social life it creates. Considering the process, observation and inference it is distinct to conclude in two ways, that a human body experience adaptations and adjustments so frequently to the extent that consciously the user isn't aware of its extent and impact and also how the configuration of the form affects the affordance and the transactional capacity of the edge. As architects it's our role to understand what is the form of architecture which allows porosity?


Read also under ‘Mobility and Publics’:


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The spatiality of urban mobilities


Mobility and Publics
Abhinav Pahade, 2020

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Highway urbanization: architecture of flux, uncertainty and anticipation

Mobility and Publics
Ankita Teli, 2020

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Street affordance: a case in Amravati

Mobility and Publics
Arnav Mundhada, 2022

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The politics of commons


Mobility and Publics
Ashi Chordia, 2020

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Upgrading roads: transforming edge affordances

Mobility and Publics
Bharvi Shetye, 2022

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City undone: fragmenting the narrative

Mobility and Publics
Maitreyee Rele, 2020

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Highway urbanization in Chiplun


Mobility and Publics
Ninad Thatte, 2022

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Suburban streets: claims and affordances

Mobility and Publics
Riddhi Shah, 2022

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From the streets: behaviour and experience

Mobility and Publics
Samruddhi Pawar, 2022

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Street as a carnival


Mobility and Publics
Simran Panchal, 2020

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