An editorial project by Matter in partnership with Şişecam Flat Glass, PRAXIS investigates the work and positions of diverse contemporary architecture practices in India. Field Architects, led by Faiza Khan and Suril Patel, is an adaptive and itinerant practice. Based out of Ladakh and Ahmedabad currently, the practice is simultaneously nomadic and rooted, allowing architecture to emerge through sustained engagement with place, climate, and lived experience. Formed through early exposure to rigorous studio cultures and materially-positioned site practices, their trajectory gradually deepened into a critical engagement with Ladakh’s ecology, cultural, and temporal dimensions. Within this fragile and potent landscape, characterised by environmental extremities and cultural continuity, the studio has developed a process-oriented, handcrafted language that is both technically rigorous and contextually aware. At the core of this approach lies a triangulated, interconnected landscape of three practices: Field Lab, a workshop, and the architectural studio. Collectively, through teaching, research, and construction undertaken in collaboration with local institutions, communities, and students, the studio has assembled a framework rooted in sensitivity and feasibility, closely aligned to its immediate conditions. Architecture here becomes a cumulative act – iterative, collaborative, and embedded within cycles of learning and production.

An editorial project by Matter in partnership with Şişecam Flat Glass, PRAXIS investigates the work and positions of diverse contemporary architecture practices in India. Pooja Khairnar of the Nashik-based pk_iNCEPTiON speaks about a certain mutability of ideas holding deep personal and professional significance that travelled through time, experiences and cultures to shape ‘architecture’ for her. With careful definition and constant reflection, a vivid map of interactions with the city, meaningful dialogues with mentors, and self-introspective journey emerges to conceptually anchor and create a scaffolding for the studio’s growing body of work to be understood. The repertoire of projects thus created across scales demonstrate a sustained emphasis on multiple ways of cultivating cultural and aspirational exchange with communities, and on the notion of ‘expanding’ a brief based on a critical evaluation of what the project impacts and what is a ‘necessity’.

An editorial project by Matter in partnership with Şişecam Flat Glass, PRAXIS investigates the work and positions of diverse contemporary architecture practices in India. In the episode, Abhirup Dutta and Deeptashree Saha reflect on the intellectual roots of their work as The Vernacular Modern. While anchored in their emphatic thematics of material cultures, and engineering, the imagery of the vernacular and the modern eponymously makes for their repertoire of furniture, art, architecture and objects. The formidably functional range is deeply researched, as evidenced by the studio’s process that is simultaneously organic and directional, embedded in the idea of ‘slowness’ and ‘an artisan-led’ approach. The Vernacular Modern’s work places these objects as signifiers in a complicated context and legacy of craft heritage in India. Working consciously with old demolition timber and towards contemporary narratives born of relearning and exploring, it asks a more nuanced question of itself – about true sense of collaborations, and developing products with a purpose.