Course Description

"Like those other great democratic experiments inaugurated in eighteenth-century America and France, India became a democracy without really knowing how, why, or what it meant to be one. Yet the democratic idea has penetrated the Indian political imagination and has begun to corrode the authority of the social order and of a paternalist state. Democracy as a manner of seeing and acting upon the world is changing the relation of Indians to themselves."
Sunil Khilani in The Idea of India

China and India. Rarely has the economic ascent of two still relatively poor nations been watched with such a mixture of awe, opportunism, and trepidation. The postwar era witnessed economic miracles in Japan and South Korea. But neither was populous enough to power worldwide growth or change the game in a complete spectrum of industries. China and India, by contrast, possess the weight and dynamism to transform the 21st-century global economy. The closest parallel to their emergence is the saga of 19th-century America, a huge continental economy with a young, driven workforce that grabbed the lead in agriculture, apparel, and the high technologies of the era, such as steam engines, the telegraph, and electric lights.

But in a way, even America's rise falls short in comparison to what's happening now. Never has the world seen the simultaneous, sustained takeoffs of two nations that together account for one-third of the planet's population.
BusinessWeek - August 22, 2005

This Advanced Studio will develop a series of proposals for the city of new delhi, india. In lieu of a site visit, we will employ an array of imaginations to construct the site conditions. These include required readings (maximum city: bombay lost and found - suketu mehta & the idea of india - sunil khilani), film screenings (bollywood and hollywood), and lectures.

Week 1-4: the modernist amalgam:
Retracing projects completed by international (or internationally trained) architects, one may question the attitudes and aspirations of post-independence Indian architecture. A dissection of a these works may enable a comprehension of both physical / cultural context and the architectural propositions. We will examine the work of Lutyens and Baker (new delhi), Corbusier (chandigarh & ahmedbad), Kahn (ahmedabad & Dhaka), Stein (new delhi), Doshi (ahmedabad) and Correa (mumbai).

Week 5-7: site strategies:
The arrangement of a physical, tectonic, and material presence at a specific location may suggest a symbiosis affecting both landscape and architecture. New Delhi's rapid growth as the capital city has spawned ad-hoc strategies for zoning and development. Selecting a specific zone of central & south-central new delhi (equivalent to a "downtown"), we will program a single site for multiple architectural possibilities.

Week 8-14: schematic design:
Subsequent to the investigation of architectural precedent and site study, each student will adapt / edit a range of programs for Schematic Design and Presentation. The program possibilities include wholesale vegetable and flower market, inter-state bus terminal, government housing, public library, and national museum.