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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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Of cosmic mediations: a study of changing architecture of astronomical observatories

Interfaces and Mediations
Darshan Dedhia, 2023


The experience of astronomical observatories nowadays is very different from what it used to be in earlier times. There used to be a direct relationship between the astronomical observatory - the humans - and the celestial bodies, which has been shifted to an indirect relationship. The space where people used to conduct observations, events, rituals, and ceremonies has been transformed into a place with highly sophisticated technology that only serves the purpose of examining celestial bodies. The objective of astronomy in former times was to watch celestial bodies and implement and affect their positions and movements in people’s lives. However, the meaning of astronomy has altered over time to analyze the physical features of celestial objects, thereby giving rise to a new science called Astrophysics. With this, the observatory’s social and cultural experience has been shifting all around the world. Several elements like technology, climate, and functions of instruments, influence architecture, which serves as a bridge between the earth and celestial bodies, resulting in a shift in the concept of an observatory. The thesis investigates what caused the shift in experience and how it influences the spatiality of the research settings, as well as vice versa.

The thesis starts with historically looking at the astronomical observatories across the world as they are the medium that serves to connect humans with the celestial bodies and place them in a timeline, which becomes the method to study the shifts taken place historically.  The cases are selected according to certain important shifts that are clearly visible in them, which range from the Neolithic period to the modern period. With readings, information, and fieldwork, certain parameters are introduced which become concepts through which the historical study has been done. The atlas hence becomes the medium to locate astronomical observatories and planetariums across the globe in a historical timeline, and, opening up of cases historically shows the shifts taking place becomes the strategy that allows one to walk through several astronomical observatories and planetariums and notice the shifts in the experience and architecture of them.

The thesis identifies and examines the shifts in the experience and spatiality of the astronomical observatories. These shifts have led to the emergence of a new form of programmatic space - planetariums, which allow public interaction to take place in a certain manner and hence change the experience and the relationship between the astronomical observatory - the humans - the celestial bodies. Therefore, the argument rests on the historical evolution of relationships between the spatial form of the observatory and the shifts that occurred, which in turn altered the relationship between the celestial bodies and people.




Read also under ‘Memory and Belonging’:


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Spatialities of everyday heritage



Memory and Belonging
Aashika Vijaykar, 2020

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Remembering ghar: continuities of memory


Memory and Belonging
Anika Pugalia, 2024

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Architecture of a monument: Vasai fort


Memory and Belonging
Chinmay Kadwadkar, 2018

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Architecture and memory: remembering home in involuntary dislocation

Memory and Belonging
Dhruv Chavan, 2018

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On Sindhi refugees: making home in Jalgaon


Memory and Belonging
Khushboo Tejwani, 2024

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Retrofitted domesticities


Memory and Belonging
Nikunj Dedhia, 2020

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Architecture and healing: civil war inversion of public space Borella, Colombo

Memory and Belonging
Rutu Kelekar, 2018

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Spatiality of remembrance: encounters between the native and urban

Memory and Belonging
Tanishqa Rodrigues, 2020

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