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KRVIA: Fellowship Research - Various categories of the fellowship
Sr.
No.
Name of the
Student
College
Title
Year
Post
Gradu
ation
Currently
Employed
Gupte, Rupali
KRVIA
Collective memory and
Architecture:Mumbai –
a case
1998-99
Post. G. Employed
Shetty, Prasad
KRVIA
National Imagination
and Architecture
Production
1998-99
Post. G. Employed
Mujumdar,
Rohit
KRVIA
Economic Restructuring
and the Modality of
Architectural Education
2001-02
Post
G.Furth
er
Architecture
S.
Khadilkar,
Nikhil
KRVIA
Locating Shifts in the
Urban Contemporary
Architectural Practices
2003-04
-
Employed
Salvi,Prashant
KRVIA
Rituals of the City
1998-99
Post. G. Employed
Mudgal,
Shweta
KRVIA
Spatialities of Work:
case of marginalized
work cultures in
Mumbai
2001-02
Further Employed
S.
Chhaya, Atrey
KRVIA
The Sprawl “Ordered”
Chaos in Commercial
Urbanization
2001-02
Post G. Employed
Roy Choudhary
Gaurav
KRVIA
Changing Perceptions
of Mumbai in the Post
Liberation Era: a Study
of Transport
Infrastructure
2002-03
Employed
Lohkande,
Yogita
KRVIA
Politics of Urban
Developments in
Mumbai in the 1990s
2002-03
Post G.
Shah, Sonal
KRVIA
Slum Rehabilitation
Policy, 1995:
2003-04
Post G. Employed
Urban issue
1
Evaluating its
Construction &
Manifestation
Ubaid, Ansari
KRVIA
Regulation 33/7: a
case for Adopting
Precinct Specific
Regulation
2004-05
Post G. Employed
D’souza, Jude
J.J.
Exploring Relevant
Participative
Developmental &
Management Models
for Open Space
Redevelopment in
Mumbai
2004-05
Sudhakar,
Aditya
KRVIA
Citizen Based
2004-05
Organizations: a critical
review of their
Manifestation in the
city
Post G. Employed
Pandit, Ninad
KRVIA
Public Arena Mumbai:
an Archive / Repository
of Imaginations of
Publics in Mumbai
2004-05
Post
G.Furt
her
study
Saurabh
Vaidya
KRVIA
Vision Mumbai:A
Critique
2005-06
Post G. Employed
Prajna Rao
KRVIA
A Case for the
Peripheries
2005-06
Post G.
Neha Panchal
KRVIA
Urban Densities &
Public Ground Area
2006-07
Employed
Lubaina
Rangwala
KRVIA
New Urban Landscape
2006-07
Post G. Employed
Sanmita Patel
KRVIA
Mapping
routes
to 2010-11
uncreated
pubic
spaces;
-
Employed
Sustaining the sociocultural experiences in
the city of Dubai
Aravind Unni
Jamia
Milian,
Delhi,
Reading Muslim space 2011-12
in
Mumbai
through
Employed
Univ of
Berkeley
cinema
Mehta, Kaiwan
KRVIA
Eight Men on a Tower:
ideology politics and
architecture
1998-99
Further
Studies
Kothari, Dipal
KRVIA
Observations Leading
to the Research
Concern: various
emerging media
2001-02
Post. G. Employed
Raveshia,
Chintan
KRVIA
Manufacturing Sector:
Shifts in its formalities
2002-03
Post G.
Rajadhyaksha,
Nilesh
KRVIA
The Politics of Cultural
Production: practices of
legitimization and the
Transformation /
appropriation of the
others
2002-03
Post G. Employed
Bhoite, Sachin
KRVIA
Decoding Bodies in
Motion
2003-04
Post G. Employed
Harsh Rebello
KRVIA
Changing Concepts of
Centrality:A Study of
Mumbi’s Corporate
Geography
2005-06
Post G. Employed
Ateya K.
KRVIA
Political, Spatial,
Structural Obsessions
of Body
2006-07
Post
G.Furt
her
study
Kairavi Dua
Nagpur
Stories of
Rehabilitation: a post
occupancy of SRA
buildings
2009-10
Employed
Anuj Daga
AOA
Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki:
Stories of Domesticity
2009-10
Employed
Aparna Parikh
KRVIA
Cities in Literature:
Mumai
2010-11
Richa Mehta
KRVIA
Manufacturing Consent
2010-11
Theoretical
2
Further
study
-
-
through Representation
Isaac Mathew
J.J.
A study in archives
2011-12
Employed
Bhor, Tushar
KRVIA
Urban Water:
Investigating water
management for the
City of Mumbai
2003-04
-
Employed
Aditya C.
Chandra
KRVIA
A Path Towards Safer
Habitat:Seismic Safety
& Urban Development
Policies of Mumbai
2005-06
Post
G.
Employed
Zorha
Mutabnna
J.J.
Sustainability Analysis
Mechanisms:an
integral approach to
regenerative
development in
mumbai
2006-07
Post G.
Sahil
Deshpande
Rizvi
Sanitation,
a
case 2011-12
Study
across
a
metropolis:
towards
framing a sustainability
oriented
urban
manifesto
Technology
Employed
Some chosen synopsis work
Since its inception, KRVIA has located its architecture education in a wider format of cultural studies.
A multi-disciplinary enquiry and a strong urban focus, form two overlapping spines of its curriculum. In
doing, so we hope to understand our lived context in a new perspective and conceive new trajectories
of development.
The list of fellowship thesis are categorized and some of their synopsis are provided for
understanding the various topics and scope of working in research field
THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION:
Practices of legitimization and the transformation/appropriation of the ‘Other’
“The history of Euro American modernist art’s engagement with the “primitive” or the “naïve” is a welldocumented one. In the subcontinent situation however, to engage with the space of the “primitive”
does not offer the safe option of dealing with the cultural production of another place and time, for the
other/primitive, frequently exists as a present category, who represents the position of the
disenfranchised within the state’s hierarchies, whose bodies, objects and ways of life have been
subject to a commodification so profound and so pervasive in its insidious violence that their
meanings, status and forms have been fundamentally altered.
The colonial encounter within India not only brought into being a new consciousness/imagination of a
unitary ‘Nation’ but also through education introduced new, legitimized and delineated, territories
(domains) of “practice” and the new entity of the “professional”. These new practices: fed on
education and an international awareness, a new pan national cultural consciousness and their
‘legitimacies to practice’, created in their wake marginalized categories of the ‘Other practices’ and the
‘Other professionals’ by deeming them ‘maestri’s’, ‘crafts persons’, ‘artisans ’ and so on as against
‘architects’ or ‘artists’. While the ‘urban intellectual’ cultural productions gained an institutionalized
‘Dominant’ status (at one level through the regimes of taste and refinement it built around itself, at
another through the development of a discursive support structure provided by the various related
disciplines that emerged such as history, theory, criticism etc. and at a thirdlevel through the ‘secure
confines of institutions devoted to “fine arts” or “high” culture’2 such as the art galleries),these ‘other’
practices (folk, tribal, urban popular) were:
Relegated to a subservient cultural position of ahistoricity (since they were considered traditional,
apolitical, un-‘self’-conscious, stagnant, naïve).
‘Fetish’-ised through their treatment as ‘curios’ or appropriated as ‘artefacts’ that denote a quality of
‘Indian-ness’.
Simply banished as ‘Kitsch’ of no real consequence to cultural theory. Within Architecture as within
the Visual arts alike, the large quantum of cultural production generated by such “expertise not trained
in educational institutions, operating primarily in rural India in economies that are agrarian or semifeudal and are encountering the ‘industrialization/post-industrialization processes”3 fell into the above
slots and became ‘Traditional reference material’ for the dominant intellectual productions. Even the
‘other’ urban arts such as the ‘Applied’ or ‘Commercial’ arts as they are so designated within the Art
academia find themselves being pushed to the status of non-expressive, market-oriented kitsch, as
against their privileged colleague: the ‘Fine’ Arts.
The research is divided into 3 main parts:
Part 1:
Historically traces the practices of legitimisation that have constructed the categories of the
‘Dominant’ and the ‘Other’ or the ‘Artist’ and the ‘Artisan’.
Part 2:
Takes up five cases of practices spread over Colonial and Post-colonial Indian Visual Art history so as
to trace the various interactions/transactions that have occurred between these groups.
Part 3:
Analyses these practices on the basis of the assumption that there always exists an ‘Active’ and a
‘Passive’ agency in these interactions and through such an analysis intends to restate the crisis of
RECEPTION of the OTHER.
Fellowship Thesis:
Year 2002:
Nilesh Rajadhyaksha
CBO’s A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THEIR MANIFESTATION IN THE CITY
The research is about the awareness of the myriad pressures, desire and aspiration under which the
city always is and constantly burgeoning with it. The primary focus of the thesis is the city with the
realization that the urban realm is shaped by innumerable interests of various actors and agencies in
the city. Constant exposure to news and media about the various issues ranging from the state
government’s dream to convert it to Shanghai or of local resistance/aspirations further fuels the query.
Various actors and agencies such as NGOs, builder’s lobby, environmental groups, CBO’s, slum
committees etc. have their own field of interest in which they are involved and have acquired
knowledge and power through which they shape the spaces in the city and create a niche for
themselves.
However for the study purpose, since all these agencies will have separate scope of work, the
research is focused only on CBO and its working, functions and power to create spaces in the city.
The primary attempt of the thesis is to theorize the conditions that have led to the formation of the
activism and to understand what the tools are and network the organizations are able to legitimize
and operationalize their objectives.
The thesis however restricts itself from proposing any form of solution to problems that are inherent in
such uni-dimensional form of organizations, but it hopes to frame broader questions that would need
to be addressed to arrive at and to mitigate the problems of such participation.
Fellowship Thesis:
Year 2002:
Aditya Sudhakar
Exploring Relevant Participative models for Open Space Redevelopment in Mumbai
The recent years have seen the advancement of theory and practice in favour of greater
democratization of urban governance by allowing wider participation of multiple publics in its various
processes. Physical planning and redevelopment of urban space is one such arena that has seen
efforts in both theory and practice towards wider and more direct modes of citizens’ participation. The
tools employed for enabling this are critical to the successes or failures of these moves. The city of
Mumbai has seen citizen participation in urban space redevelopment that has been growing in the
past few years. Open spaces within the city have been the sites and foci of a number of these efforts.
With the objective of informing the formulation of enabling and regulating structures that can influence
these initiatives, this paper takes a look at the various tools in operation in open space redevelopment
and their successes and failings as participative processes.
The paper is an attempt at exploring relevant participatory development and management models for
open spaces in the city through a study of existing practices. The enhancement, encouragement, and
regulation of these processes as being attempted by the MCGM, requires an understanding of the
successes and failings of the various modes of practice. To build up learning that will help establish
more meaningful practice is the objective of the paper.
Fellowship Thesis:
Year 2004-2005:
Jude D’souza
REGULATION 33 / 7:A CASE FOR ADOPTING PRECINCT SPECIFIC REGULATION
Regulation 33/7 lays parameters for reconstruction of old residential buildings built prior to 1940.
TheCess buildings are scattered throughout Mumbai city, which reflects various phases of the city’s
so-calleddevelopment. Over the period, depending on its location and the pressure faced by the
precinct, thesesettlements have played an important role in creation of community, neighbourhood,
and identity of place and ingeneration of economic potential of individual houses / precinct.
With dilapidation of buildings and loosening of laws, new buildings are proposed which have created
immense possibilities as also problems in city. As a result the city in place of these cess buildings is
experiencing sudden hike in high-rise buildings. These towers on one hand helps improve housing
stock in the city, however puts more pressure on the existing infrastructure within a precinct and the
local communities have to bear the brunt.
Today regulation 33/7 is stuck in contradictions between the builder’s aspirations for profit, the
contrastingsocio-economic position of the locals and development of the area. Hence, it is important
to re-examine Regulation 33/7 as a renewal strategy for the old buildings keeping in mind
infrastructure of the area, economical potential [aspect] of a locality / house, aspiration of people
staying, there social development[community and neighbourhood improvement] and the developer’s
profit.
Since these problems vary from precinct to precinct, which are not answered due to blanket
implementation of cess regulation it is necessary to look for alternates that are more condition based.
Hence, the purpose of this paper is to establish the need for developing precinct specific guidelines
for redevelopment as against the generic implementation of the Regulation: 33/7.
Fellowship Thesis:
Year 2004-2005:
Ubaid Ansari
Changing Concepts of Centrality
A Study of Mumbai’s Corporate Geography
The economic reforms of 1991, led a liberalizing India to reposition itself in the world economy.
Various cities within the country attempted to develop as nodes for transnational flow of capital and
information. In order to facilitate such activities and attract foreign companies, cities were required to
provide specific infrastructure and institutional conditions, thus creating the need to generate space in
cities, like Mumbai, for international capital and global functions.
In generating this space over the course of the past decade and more, Mumbai the financial capital of
the country, witnessed various changes in its corporate geography, giving rise to a new spatial order.
The objective of the study is to create an understanding of the existing corporate geography in context
of globalization from 1991 to date. Mentioned below are some guidelines the project will follow:
Track the dispersal of corporate activities from the CBD (as well as associated surroundings) in South
Mumbai to their new locations.
Identify and document the causes for dispersal; which agencies, if any, control it as well as influence it
and also what elements/ things facilitate it?
Identify and discuss the implications of the current spatial pattern on the city.
Fellowship Thesis:
Year 2005-2006:
Harsh Rebello
GLOBALISATION AND THE CITY-REGION
World-wide changes in the global economy have resulted in complex spatialities in Mumbai and other
cities of fast-growing and market-driven economies. Increasing centralization and concentration of
capital ownership, typified by the formation of huge corporate conglomerates combining diversified
industrial production, finance, real estate, information processing, entertainment and other service
activities have transformed the city from being a centre of industrial production into a competitive site
for moving global capital. This new urban economy leading to the growth of multi-national corporate
centres in the city has given rise to a radically new landscape with vast expanses of land in the core
of the city opened up to cater to new-age consumerism, marked by the emergence of five star hotels,
multiplexes, shopping malls and entertainment centres.
This gentrification of the city core has been largely supported by the State in its own attempts to
corporatize the city, with private investment playing a large role in the formation of this new urban
landscape. In turn, the economic advantages/ disadvantages derived from the intense clustering of
people (and increased relations of production and exchange) in the city core is seeping into proximate
regions like the Vasai-Virar, Kaliyan-Dombivali, etc, have resulted in various forms of urbanization
transferred to the Region in small and large ways, thus constituting what has been referred to in this
paper as the ‘city region’.
The key argument being made above is that all propulsive forces for economic growth and
development emerge from the particular socio-spatial milieus of cities and extends this growth to
create a newer form of city-ness or urban condition within the towns, villages, country-sides or ‘the
peripheries of this city region’ that start catering to depending upon the core.
Fellowship Thesis:
Year 2005-2006:
Prajna Rao
KAHANI GHAR GHAR KI
Domesticity is the way in which we inhabit an interior space and relates to the activities that happen
inside the home. This process of inhabitation involves bringing a lot of ideas and objects together
which relate to the way we live, and the way we want to project our living. The objects laid together in
the house give meaning to the everyday activities and thus are cultural manifestations in the design of
a house. People get objects in their house with an idea of something that would perfectly suit their
living – in utility, taste and conception. Thus, these objects embody the ideas of the ideal. Home
making is an active process in the city. Homes are constantly upgraded, transformed and they adopt
new ideas. The domestic space contains ideas of an ideal space. Although the city is always
understood through its outside conditions, it is also a summation of the domestic spaces that it
accommodates.
The domestic space allows the expression of personal desires which may be different from the
collective desire of enterprise or development of the city. The idea of living in grandeur, the wish to be
different from the rest, the imagination of reliving history, the need of feeling secure are desires that
make up the city, but are materialized only in the home. Domestic spaces may therefore be seen as
representations of urban desire. These urban desires are handled by a group of professionals today,
called interior designers who have started to shape up interior living spaces. Their professional
expertise claims authority over functionality of objects, utilization of space and perfect ideas of beauty.
It tries to encompass new and intangible ideas into the physical reality. Keeping memories of events,
remembering experiences through images, thinking back of various places through textures, making
statements through colours and choices of objects – all form the sensitive space of the home. The
paper tries to understand this nature of domesticity we live in. What is it in a home that it reposes
things completely different than the city outside? What is it in the domestic space that allows multiple
ideations to coexist? How does it perform, and how does it manifest itself? These are some questions
which have surfaced during the research.
The domestic space seems to be an ambiguous idea in the frame of academic beauty. But such
domestic space would be of great value in recording the cultural history of a city, of the way people
lived, or the way a city evolved or even how the practices shaped living conditions in the city.
This project should be considered as a beginning in the understanding the nature of domesticity in the
city. The scope of the project is primarily to introduce the importance of studying domestic spaces of
the city, and therefore is not too comprehensive. The analysis, as explained, could not have been
empirical and the idea of the paper is to present dominant patterns in the space of domesticity. What
has added to the limitation of the project is the problem of the communication language - the disparity
of what the user wants to convey by using certain terms (like modern, contemporary, ethnic, etc.) and
the interpretation of these terms by the researcher due to certain training in the field of design.
Therefore, the stories are descriptive and present the word of the interviewee without any bias. The
patterns identified too, therefore can be debatable. However, the essence of the paper lies in
recognizing the domestic space and the various vectors it opens up for pursuits of design methods.
Fellowship Thesis:
Year 200-200:
Anuj Daga
LITERATURE AND ITS USES
‘There is a great power contained in the network of texts which humanity has produced and still
produces not for practical ends, but, rather, for its own sake, for humanity’s own enjoyment’1.The
literary canon consists of those works in language by which a community defines itself through the
course of its history. As an art, literature is a fantastic or imaginary re-creation or interpretation of the
‘real world’. It uses language as a medium and words as elements to construct this world. It gets
created through the relation between the author, reader and the text placed at a certain moment or
moments in time.
Like all other forms of art, literature too reveals aspects of the real or imaginary world through
inclusion and exclusion. A frame of viewing becomes that because of what it excludes and the relative
distortion it produces. This includes both exaggeration and denial. It uses a combination of elements
that are logical as well as fantastic, cognitive as well as affective.
Through these elements, images are evoked as are other sensual ideas. Literature has an ability to
use events and people as material to enable flights of imagination and transform understandings of
situations and places in multiple ways. It welcomes the existence of earlier pasts, builds its
representational forms out of materials from these accepted pasts, re-organised by conflicts and
interests formed in the present. By not merely imitating something in absence, it not only discovers
but also invents reality. These always mediate between the spectator’s perception of reality and what
might be reality: ‘they are supplements or substitutes standing in for the real, establishing neither a
perfect fit nor a mimetic relationship’. Literature uses mimesis adaptively in order to move from the
realm of the familiar to the unfamiliar. By introducing elements that are recognisable, it paves the path
to the lesser known. Knowledge is derived from literature through these elements. There is also a
trace of enchantment contained in literary text that entices the reader. This is created through the
transformation of the everyday by use of fantastic elements.
Fictive literature also has the ability to enter spaces and record moments that are difficult to establish
by the use of conventional empirical methods. Without setting out to give an incontestably true reality,
it is able to open up ideas and shape perceptions. It could also do so in situations where it may not be
easy or possible to prove or demonstrate.
There are various themes and meanings embedded within literary text. To extract these meanings, as
well as bring out the importance of the text, an analysis of literary text becomes imperative. While
carrying out an analysis of literature, the fundamental question remains why it is being done in the first
place. The answer to this question determines where the focus should lie.
Literary theory has been irremovably bound up with political beliefs and ideological values. Indeed
literary theory is less an object of ‘intellectual enquiryin its own right than a particular perspective in
which to view the history of a ascertain time’3. In literature, various forms of knowledge about the city
including ideas of society, historical events, political fissures and everyday activities are presented,
which help in shaping our perception of the city. This paper explores ways in which literature may
open up new ways of perceiving / reading /understanding the city of Mumbai.
Fellowship Thesis:
Year 2010-2011:
Aparna Parikh