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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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Urban Ruins

Cultural Dimensions of Inhabitation
Gauri Sarang, 2021


The city of Bombay has seen multiple economic shifts from being a mercantile city which used to majorly run on trading activities, to an industrial city which was a hub for the production of large goods hence various mills came up during this time, and then it slowly started transitioning into a service-based economy. These economic shifts lead to the occurrence of several dilapidated and unused buildings within the city. These forts, docks, mills, occupy large portions of the city land and are often placed within dense life which has emerged.

The materials we see in these structures respond to the time that they were built in addition to the old grace of these abandoned structures which are contrasting yet somehow weave perfectly with the urban fabric. They become curious spots in the contemporary everyday life of the city. We become curious about them because either there is restricted access or they are sealed. This is why we know very little about their history as they are screened from our everyday transactions with the city. The mystery in these spaces allures us but at the same time makes us hesitant towards accessing them. Yet, people in the immediate surroundings engage in multiple ways with these peripheries due to their own exigencies.

Through this research, I'm looking at the questions that we have in our minds on encountering abandoned sites in our urban environment. How does the city survive abandonment? What do abandoned sites offer to the city? What were these structures, what context produced them, and what was the life it sustained?

Through the study of 3 such cases - Vasai fort, Sassoon Docks, and Khadi Gram Udyog, the thesis tries to understand ways in which abandoned sites adapt or adjust to the altering socio-economic needs of the society. I construct an architectural ethnography of these sites through the documentation of historical narratives of abandonment, as well as a close observation of their material conditions, that lead me into a phenomenological understanding of decay. Through such an approach, one may be able to approach the ethics of conservation and repurposing leftover spaces, which often get transformed into quick capitalistic forms.



Read also under ‘Cultural Dimensions of Inhabitation’:


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Architecture of congestion


Cultural Dimensions of Inhabitation
Deep Shah, 2018

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Spaces of lived experiences


Cultural Dimensions of Inhabitation
Mahek Malaviya, 2021

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Memoryscape: a psychogeographic understanding of street

Cultural Dimensions of Inhabitation
Neha Keshari, 2021

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Architecture for mobile densities

Cultural Dimensions of Inhabitation
Nishi Shah, 2018

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Festive spaces

Cultural Dimensions of Inhabitation
Rithik Mali, 2021

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