Graduate Research And Teaching Assistant
CurrentRA/TA for Rahul Mehrotra's GSD seminar "Expanding the Canon: Architecture and Urbanism":An inquiry into the boundaries of the Canons that dominate the discourse in Architecture and Urbanism globally. The seminar interrogates the limits of the Western Canons – their histories and production cultures across material, political, economic, and social spheres. The philosophical underpinnings of modernity and the establishment of the global normative have conditioned the conversations of space and time largely to responding to and privileging the facilitation of universal tenets and notions of efficiency. This seminar transcends these conservative, ideological imperatives that determine the contemporary understanding of cultural significance and draws theoretical frameworks from practices that often have been ‘othered’ by Western dominance of the discourse in the academy as well as the professional media. The intention of the seminar is to develop theoretical frameworks around a shared or common set of issues and conditions that are shared by different geographies outside the West. Drawing from case studies, the seminar will illuminate philosophical orientations, traditions, and knowledge systems that allegedly fall outside of the standards, values, and prescriptions of the West but have existed over thousands of years and display relevance in the broader discourse on Architecture and Urbanism today. Through reviewing architectural, cultural, and urban practices, students delve into the complexities of societies globally, understanding geographies and landscapes as inherently dialogic, relational, and interdependent. The seminar interrogates the tenets of modern thought and expands the Canon to rethink contemporary culture, public life, and a more situated agency of the architect.