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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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Morphology of movement in museums

Interfaces and Mediations
Jainam Mehta, 2023


Museums as institutions are responsible for collecting, preserving, and exhibiting various artifacts. These built spaces ensure that the movement of the visitors is effortless throughout the exhibition space, and allows an active, comfortable and close engagement with the objects on display. The closeness with the exhibit, the movement corridor, the passage, the gathering space thus becomes a measure of how the visitor engages with the museum artifacts. Therefore, the morphology of these exhibition spaces and parameters like wall surface to floor area ratio become critical for good functioning of the museum. The thesis titled "morphology of movement in museums" explores the movement in exhibition spaces of museums, emphasizing the effectiveness of a spiral morphology (helical or any other type of looping geometry) in enhancing public interaction in the museum spaces.

Central to the research is the question: How does a spiral morphology affect the critical parameters and ratios of museum design? The study employs an analysis using tangible numerical parameters and ratios by unfolding the geometry of the museums to understand the logic behind exhibition space design. The preference for a spiral, whether helical or any other type, arises from its difference from the conventional planar circulation model of stacked floors. Unlike the linear journey of these planar models, a helix allows seamless movement through all three dimensions of space at the same time, eliminating the concept of 'floors' as pedestals to ascend or descend. Additionally, a  spiral morphology also significantly increases the availability of vertical surfaces (walls) in relation to floor area.

Studying two prominent spiral museums, the Guggenheim Museum in USA and the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Germany, alongside two conventional planar counterparts, the Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore, and the Louvre-Lens Museum in France, this thesis uses numerical relations and proportions to deconstruct their morphology, seeking to understand the logic behind the design of museum's exhibition spaces that facilitate seamless movement for the visitors.
Overall, this thesis delves into the nuances of museum morphology, with a focus on the influence of spiral geometry on critical proportions and parameters. By breaking down the geometric intricacies of museum exhibits, the aim is to contribute practical insights into the design of museums, emphasizing the importance of seamless movement for the museum-goers.






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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