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.
+ CORE COURSES
+ CULTURE STUDIES
+ CHOICE COURSES
+ SETTLEMENT STUDIES
CORE COURSES
Core modules are anchor courses around the philosophies of SEA. They are experimental and exploratory - jointly undertaken by the faculty and students of SEA towards not only developing new knowledge, but also speculating and projecting on architectural ideas and questions for developing new possibilities for life and living.These courses are set up with a twin agenda - first to build capacities in spatial analysis and design at various scales; and second to build a conceptual, spatial, visual and making culture at SEA.
Conceptual Culture refers to a culture of depending on conceptual articulations to engage with life (and architecture). The premise here is that our lives (including architecture) are shaped through concepts, and it is the job of academia to interrogate them. Through these courses, students and teachers will be involved in rigorously interrogating these concepts. Each semester will focus on one of the concepts (or cluster of concepts) that have significantly shaped architecture, and subsequently life.
Visual Culture refers to a culture that believes that we as society are significantly shaped by images. Here images mean drawings, photographs, signages, hoardings, and even the image of form that one perceives (for example - image of a street in one’s mind). The premise here is that the structure and language of these images (particularly drawings, when made for understanding, analysing or imagining new forms of life and space) shape the world we live in, aspire towards, and make. Every semester, the Core Courses will explore different kinds of image-making to explore the concepts they are working with.
Spatial Culture refers to a culture of thinking through space and place. The premise here is that there are relationships between a specific (geographic & temporal) form of society and spatial culture - every society produces its spatiality and vice-versa (for example: a chawl or a palace or a fort is produced in a specific society). Spatial culture not only has to do with the specific forms / types / patterns of spatiality, but also with contexts, modes, methods and mechanics of imagining / producing such spatiality along with the experiences and relationships the spatiality creates.
he concept of ‘spatial culture’ collapses the distinction between materiality of space and the abstractions in social relationships into one composite idea. Spatial culture impacts the experience of space. The courses will seek to think of the world as a spatially structured entity and make space active in all engagements with the world.
Making Culture refers to a culture of looking closely at the mechanics of physicalities and viscerally engaging with the world. The premise here is that space and form are inseparable and humans think of space through form. Form has a structure and materiality, which are instrumental in form-making. The Core Courses will invest in experimenting and exploring form, its structure, its assemblies, its detail, the processes of putting them together along with affordances, experiences and meanings generated.
The following courses are conducted through the ten semesters as Core Courses at SEA.
1CC01M ORIENTATION
1CC02M FORM THROUGH DRAWINGS
1CC03W MATERIAL SYSTEMS
1CC04W EXPERIENCING FORM
1CC0AW MATERIAL AS BUILDING ELEMENTS
1CC0BW FIELD LOGICS
2CC01M COMPUTATIONAL & DIGITAL METHODS
2CC02M ENVIRONMENTAL AS ARCHITECTURE
2CC03W BUILDING SYSTEMS
2CC03W TYPE IN CLUSTER, BEHAVIOUR, MEANING & EXPERIENCE
2CC0AX SPACE SYNTAX
2CC0BX ENVIRONMENTAL FLOWS & MATERIALS
2CC0CX DIAGRAM & LANGUAGE
2CC0DX SYSTEM ONTOLOGIES 2CC0EX CONTEXT & BUILDING
2CC0FX RESOURCE AUDIT
3CC01M GENEOLOGY OF INSTITUTIONS 3CC02W COMMUNITY & BUILTFORM
3CC03W BUILDING MAKING
3CC0AX DESIGN & DETAIL
3CC0BX RESOURCES & FLOWS
3CC0CX TECHNOLOGICAL SENSORIUMS
3CC0DX ENVIRONMENTAL THRESHOLDS
3CC0EX SPANNING & ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS
4CC01M MASS INHABITATION 4CC0AX EMERGING URBANISATION
4CC0BX HYBRID TALL BUILDINGS
4CC0CX HOUSING & DIFFERENCE
ALD001 REPAIR AND RETROFITTING
ALD002 EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
ALD003 CONTEXTUAL TECHNOLOGIES
ALD004 URBAN STUDIES AND DESIGN
ALD005 LIVING IN A METAPHOR ALD006 THE SCRIBE AND THE LABYRINTH ALD007 MINIATURE AS METHOD
ALD008 DIGITIAL ANATOMIES & MATERIAL AUTONOMIES
ALD009 SHELTERING IDIOSYNCRASIES OF A HOME
ALD010 US
EFUL AND UNUSEFUL OBJECTS
ALD011 IN A CITY PARTS DO NOT MAKE THE WHOLE
ALD012 THE BRICOLEUR : BRICOLAGE AS METHOD
ALD013 ENVIRONMENT AS A PRACTICE OF CARE
ALD014 THEORISING HOUSING PRACTICES
ALD015 LAPUTA THE FLYING CASTLE
ALD016 ARCHITECTURE OF EXFOLIATION
ALD017 THE ARCHITECTURAL KITCHEN
ALD018 THE SELF & THE STRUCTURE
ALD019 HUMAN ECOLOGY & ARCHITECTURE
ALD020 MEANING & FORM: OBJECTS , MOVEMENTS & SOUNDS
ALD021 PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
ALD022 GENDERED SPACES IN THE CITY
ALD023 BODIES, CITIES, ECOLOGIES: POSTCARDS FROM MUMBAI AND NAIROBI
ALD024 SOUND MECHANISMS
ALD025 MAKING A PROTOTYPE + PAVILION
ALD026 THINKING THROUGH MOBILITIES
ALD027 CHAIR FURNITURE DESIGN
ALD028 MAKING HOME
SPC001 TECHNOLOGICAL SENSORIUMS
SPC002 SPATIALITY OF THE FUTURE
SPC003 EVERYDAY ENVIRONMENT & ARCHITECTURE OF EXFOLIATION
SPC004 CURATION & EXHIBITION DESIGN
SPC005 PRODUCT DESIGN
SPC006 LANDSCAPE URBANISM: COMMONS, DESIGNING THE BIO-DIVERSE & SPECIES INCLUSIVE CITY
SPC007 3D DIGITAL FABRICATION
SPC008 TACTICAL INTERVENTIONS, POSSIBILITIES & RECONCILIATION THROUGH DESIGN
SPC009 RETHINKING SPATIALITY WITH BAMBOO
SPC010 URBAN INFORMATION AND GIS
SPC011 MAKING A PAVILION
SPC012 LANDSCAPE DESIGN
SPC013 STREET ENVIRONMENT DESIGN
SPC014 INTERIOR DESIGN
SPC015 DESIGN AND MAKE (NEPAL)
SPC016 DESIGNING FOR STREET VENDORS (ANJAR, KUTCH)