Join us for a talk ‘A way out of the building, with no plan’ by Himanshu Burte.

DETAILS:
Date: 27 April 2024 | Saturday
Time: 6.30 pm onwards

About the Talk:
The speaker takes up the invitation to reflect on over thirty years of a ‘mixed-up practice’ of engaging the social through the spatial: as a designer, researcher, writer, gatherer, and teacher. He started out as an architect and de facto architecture critic trying to understand and practice ‘good’ design. He has ended up – unexpectedly – as a de facto social scientist studying the sense, beauty and violence of urban life and governance. In one sense, he could enter the city only by walking out of the architect’s building. But perhaps, he could find his way out (and around the city) only because of his time in the building where he learnt to design, but also to see through it. Now, the critical angles of insight that led out of the building also bend his way back to it from a more hopeful place.

Himanshu Burte is an architect, urbanist and Associate Professor at IIT Bombay. He has practiced architecture in Mumbai and Goa for over a decade and a half, and has published extensively across the professional, popular and academic press for over thirty years. His first book, Space for Engagement proposed an alternative conceptual framework for architecture centred on the act of dwelling. His co-edited book, Urban Parallax gathers different disciplinary perspectives to critique urban policy in India. Himanshu also guest edited a special issue of Marg titled Infrastructure as space: Development and its (Dis)Contents in 2019. To take research to a wider audience, he co-curated a digital research exhibition titled Make/Break focusing on the quiet violence of Mumbai’s ongoing spatial transformation. Himanshu is a former Fulbright Fellow, and a co-founder of Gubbi Alliance for Sustainable Habitat, a network of architects practicing sustainably in India. He has a PhD from CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

Venue: Arthshila Ahmedabad
2-G, Opposite Ahmedabad Management Association, Panjrapol, Ambawadi – 380015.