Design by Ankita Dhal, Images sourced from offices solely for academic purposes

Design studios are centered on ‘a’ design project. In practice, however, the project is substantially influenced by multiple dimensions of architectural practice. This studio explores the impact of practices’ vision, values and ideologies on the act and practices of designing. It further explores how the structuring of people in the practice, authorship over design through roles and standardized design processes affects architecture, and the overall culture of architecture itself.  Architectural education’s structuring of “projects” and the fraternity’s cultural notions keep the architect at the center stage of design. However in practice design takes shape through multiple people, contingencies, outside forces etc., creating a disparity - an architecture project is larger than the architect. How do architects negotiate with these complex paradoxes  and nuances?

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To establish context, we read through multiple texts, two of which helped us structure our understanding of architectural practice. These books are - The Story of Practice by Dana Cuff and Architecture Depends by Jeremy Till. Studio discussions based on these readings began shedding light on the students’ idea of practice, their notions and belief systems. The readings further shaped the analytical lenses for interpretations in the next exercise. 

To broaden the scope and understand the various models of architectural practice, we conducted surveys and interviews with approximately 20 design practices across the landscape of India. This helped students articulate the contemporary condition and context of practice by devising various analytical frameworks drawing from Dana Cuff’s theories. A concise comparative analysis has been put together to understand the larger narrative of practice models.  These interviews further aided the design of the students' own individual practices in the first half of the studio by clarifying their positions, values, design principles and processes.

To test their designed models of practice, the second half of the studio poses three subsequent design exercises. , First, the students participated in a design competition hosted by Switch titled- 'Alps Wellness Retreat'. Teams of 2-3 students were made  to simulate a collaboration between two architectural practices. This  encouraged the sharpening of individual ideologies and was seen as a process of discussion and negotiation between the two practices. To further simulate a practice’s working condition of multitasking across projects, two more design exercises were introduced.  One of these was self initiated solely by the student as an ideal project for the practice, and another hidden design project was revealed at a later stage for all. The three projects together simulated an office environment where systems for time and person hour management had to be tested as well. 
 

This studio provided a platform to critically examine the role of architectural practice on architectural design decisions and the architect themselves. These projects served as a means to arrive at design processes that aid in translating a vision [ideology] into reality [building] that the practice would uphold. The studio was a unique opportunity  to purview varied kinds of practices, reflect, brainstorm, and present ideas on how practice affects the architecture producedand the architect themselves.