Tag Archives: architecture

Frame Conclave, Lectures, Modern Heritage

The Architecture of Golconde

April 15, 2025 matter Leave a comment

Pankaj Vir Gupta

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, Pankaj Vir Gupta discusses the conception of Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry. Gupta delves into the architectural history of this structure, highlighting its pioneering use of concrete in India. He recounts his personal experiences at Golconde, sharing vivid details about the architecture and its unique features.

Edited Transcript

It is a particular privilege to be presenting a project with which we started our practice in 2003 and in the office archives, this is project 001 (referring to image 01). So, this morning to wake everyone up, I think it is important to understand why we are here to talk about this building and I will try and make it as energizing for you as possible.

My name is Pankaj Vir Gupta, and with my partner, Christine Mueller, I run a practice in New Delhi called Vir-Mueller Architects. I am also a professor of architecture at the University of Virginia, where I run what is called the Yamuna River Project, a multi-disciplinary research project, looking at ecology and urbanity in the megacities of the world. But to go back to how we started our practice, I was leading a study abroad program with some students from the University of Texas and we happened to be visiting Pondicherry, to look at the urban fabric of the city (referring to image 02), and we came across this extraordinary building (referring to image 02) and it was a surprise to me personally, because in several years of architectural education and research, I had never come across this building in any writing or any publication, at least not in the curricular work that we had been exposed to in our education.

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PRAXIS Initiative

PRAXIS 26 | A THRESHOLD

December 9, 2024 matter Leave a comment

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 this episode, Avinash Ankalge and Harshith Nayak of A Threshold, introspectively examine their practice from the perspective of evolving from a multitude of lived experiences over time. These vignettes link their work’s ability to look consistently towards traditional depictions and landscapes, their mentors, and travel in terms of cultivating dialogues, and exploring experiments in spatial systems and details. They connect their processes of sketching, making models, seeking exchanges in architecture and teaching back to these guiding impulses. In invoking the various inferences, they form a worldview of an architecture of – possibility – that has more to do with the stewardship of gained knowledge and steering it towards making new kinds of relations with the programme, light and public.

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PRAXIS Initiative

PRAXIS 25 | SOCIAL DESIGN COLLABORATIVE

October 24, 2024 Matter Leave a comment

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 this episode, Swati Janu of Delhi-based Social Design Collaborative emphasises on their idea of design and collectives as prisms to multiply opportunities to make architecture and its responsibilities accessible as a conversation to all; especially to those outside the purview of planning processes. The practice engages with an integrated approach to arrive at meaningful enquiries and possible opportunities at a more localised level, in tandem with the governance and power structures, community networks and the city. Architecture is conceived as a sort of node in the broader system. Swati, and her colleagues, Shreya Rajmane and Anushritha Sunil reflect on their processes and values that guide and conciliate technical and narrative tools to translate ‘projects’ across spatial, planning, advocacy, academia, art, writing, research and other diverse forms.

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Lectures

CONSTRUCTING THE SACRED OUTSIDE TRADITION

October 23, 2024 Matter Leave a comment

A Srivathsan

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, A Srivathsan presents his view on the construction of Hindu Temples, and raises pertinent questions about the orientation of contemporary and modern architecture within this discourse. Using examples of temples built by young practitioners as a prism, he draws distinctions and similarities between what the sacred is and what is modern.

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PRAXIS Initiative

PRAXIS 23 | Put Your Hands Together

July 5, 2024 Matter Leave a comment

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 this episode, Areen Attari of Put Your Hands Together introduces the idea of owning ‘bio-architects’ as the appropriate preface to the work they are pursuing. He cites collaborative influences, former partners, friends, and colleagues, underscored by their shared interests as a means of exploring and drawing attention to an architecture that finds a tacit relationship with natural materials. Through the discussion, Areen portrays the multi-modal approach of documentation, and teaching engagements to embrace the kind of imaginative play and intimacy that is essential to this practice and developing its details and systems. He believes he wants to create spaces that heal, spaces that make one slow down, and feel at peace with themselves.