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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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A Neighbourhood as Migrant Housing    

To be added
Jai Shah, 2025


Neighbourhoods are continuously shaped by the movement of migrants who arrive in search of education, work, and better opportunities. As they settle, their everyday routines, social interactions, and spatial adaptations begin to reshape the existing fabric of the neighbourhood. This research explores how the neighbourhood functions as a space for migrants and how spatial and service networks shape it through their inhabitation, focusing on Airoli Sector 4, Navi Mumbai, as a case.

The study begins with the observation that the area has transformed from a landscape of salt pans and farmlands into a dense residential and service-based neighbourhood. The central research question asks: How does the neighbourhood function as a space for migrants, and how do spatial and service networks shape the neighbourhood through their inhabitation?

The research aims to understand the relationship between migrant inhabitation and neighbourhood change by documenting housing patterns, spatial organisation, and the network of everyday services that support migrant life. The conceptual framework positions migrants as active agents whose routines, social connections, and informal economies contribute to the making of urban space. Methodologically, the study combines field mapping, case documentation, interviews, and service network analysis to trace how built forms and neighbourhood activities evolve over time. Findings show that family houses are being converted into rental housing, terraces and lanes are used as shared spaces, and informal services such as tiffin providers, coaching classes, and small eateries have emerged to meet migrant needs. These elements collectively build an ecosystem that sustains everyday migrant life.

In conclusion, the study reveals that migrant housing is not just about one building or a single unit or room but about how the whole neighbourhood supports the needs of migrants. The spatial layout, the mix of services, and the social relationships between residents all come together to create a rental economy that sustains both migrants and locals. Through this process, the neighbourhood keeps changing and adapting, becoming a shared habitat where migrants find ways to belong and live within the city.
Read also under ‘Memory and Belonging’:


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Spatialities of everyday heritage



Memory and Belonging
Aashika Vijaykar, 2020

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Galalelya jaga ("गाळलेल्या जागा"): overlaps of memory and home


Memory and Belonging
Aditi Bhandari, 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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