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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 recasting of Jain religiosity

Urban Religiosities
Jay Kanti, 2022


The thesis aims to identify spatiality of Jain religious institutions that exist in an urban setting. Due to the availability of land in remote areas or at various pilgrim locations there are numerous Jain temples and institutions that are horizontally spread out and exist in a single complex, which adheres to a certain order, symmetry and many other characteristics of sacred spaces that the religious scriptures highlight on. However these characteristics of sacred religious spaces are not necessarily  seen in an urban setting like Mumbai. The institutions exist in fragments and in default in-between interstitial spaces, primarily due to the dense conditions of life and living and hence relatively less availability of larger open spaces  and hence these institutions merge with the everyday life of the city.

Having been born in a Jain family, growing up with its religious practices triggered my interest in this subject. Over the years I have seen the Jain temples and Upashrays in my neighbourhood emerging and existing in a variety of configurations like  where an apartment, garage, retail shops etc were remodelled or refurbished into a monastery and temple.

The thesis primarily focuses on the Derasar (Temple) and Upashray (Monasteries) types. These institutions are essential for a community to strive for, and these institutions become central to the people of the community as the routine of many people revolve around these institutions. It is significant even in today's global society, because its existence has an impact on both the urban environment and the people.

The study tries to analyse spatial, economical, socio-contextual, networks the way in which placemaking happens in three different Jain neighbourhoods in Borivali. It also tries to understand the spaces claimed and shaped by these communities to perform their everyday rituals and practices. It looks at the spatial configuration of these institutions and their relationship with each other, their overall functioning, the individuals involved, and the activities that take place in and around these institutions in an urban setting.

The thesis becomes a collection of spatial diagrams of Jain religious institutions with varied constructed typologies within the city. It necessitates to rethink what sacredness is when interspersed with the urban constructs of life and living.




Read also under ‘Publics and Spaces’:

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Enclosed opens


Publics and Spaces
Akshada Dhamapurkar, 2021
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Urban grounds


Publics and Spaces
Alisha Jain, 2021
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Food institutions: spatial and social networks

Publics and Spaces
Chetasvi Patel, 2024
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Spaces of dissent/protest



Publics and Spaces
Maryam Sheikh, 2021
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Changing publics and the making / emergence of new cultural spaces


Publics and Spaces
Neel Shah, 2022
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Narratives of public line in Asar Mahal: histories, events and everyday

Publics and Spaces
Nisha Shinde, 2024
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The architecture of public spaces



Publics and Spaces
Ritu Naik, 2021
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Architecture of repose: characteristics and perceptions of open spaces

Publics and Spaces
Rushabh Dedhia, 2019
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Aesthetics of erasure



Publics and Spaces
Sakshi Sawant, 2022
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"open" to "public" spaces in Amravati


Publics and Spaces
Sapna Chopda, 2024
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Interpretative capacities of builtform


Publics and Spaces
Shachi Shah, 2019
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Public as assemblage in Sharjah

Publics and Spaces
Tanushree Bhagwat, 2024
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