Last winter, the traveling exhibition, “The Architectures of Transition – Emerging Practices in South Asia” began its journey across South Asia. It displays the works of 41 emergent architecture practices in South Asia that have engaged in the making of architecture, landscape, and infrastructure in the public realm. In each stop across South Asia, the exhibition involves local curators who are tasked with adding to and building upon the intellectual provocations and framings. Local curators will bring a diversity of curatorial approaches and therefore expand the lenses by which curatorial choices are made.
The exhibition is part of the research project – State of Architecture in South Asia, which aims to collectively ask, across South Asia, the question: Does Architecture matter in a state of transition? In the region, numerous transitions, and uncertainties, encompassing climate change, political transformations, and socio-economic shifts, manifest in a heightened form within the daily existence of its populace. The project was initiated by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the Architecture Foundation and is supported by supported by JSW, Prakriti Foundation and Amardeep Designs.
We spoke to curators Prof. Rahul Mehrotra, Devashree Shah and Pranav Thole about the traveling exhibition, and what they hope the public experiences through it.
“The Architectures of Transition – Emerging Practices in South Asia” traveling exhibition.
Mittal Institute: What does the traveling exhibition entail and who has been involved?
Exhibition Curators: The travelling exhibition is designed to travel the 56 panels, translated from the book of the same name that documents the works of 41 emerging practices across South Asia, that display a rigorous engagement in the making of architecture, landscape, and infrastructure in the public realm, along with infographics culled from the exhibited practices examining models of practice. The exhibition entails installing the panels in every location and creating a set of events to discuss the architecture practice of the region. In every location the events differ depending on the context and the host institution.
It has been a collaboration between the curators – Rahul, Devashree and Pranav. And supported in the travels by the Architecture Foundation in Mumbai and its director Ela Singhal has convened some of the conversations and coordinated the travel.
Mittal Institute: Where has it traveled? In what ways are each showcase different from previous locations?
The first edition of the exhibition was shown at the India International Centre, New Delhi in December 2023, followed by the first travel edition at the Alliance Francaise, Chennai in August 2024. It just finished a showing at Bangalore International Centre in Bengaluru in January, and another at the Avani Institute of Design in Calicut. It will then travel to Kochi and Kabul, Afghanistan this spring.
The exhibition kicks off in New Delhi in December 2023.
The exhibition traveled to Chennai in August 2024.
The exhibition kicked off in New Delhi with a two-day conference on Frameworks and Practices in South Asia. In Ahmedabad, only the book was released, the exhibition was not installed. However, the CEPT University convened a discussion with the practices included in the exhibition, based in Ahmedabad and thereabouts. In Chennai, and Bangalore, two events were organized – a keynote lecture by Prof. Rahul Mehrotra on Research as Practice, and individual presentations by young practices from the city and surrounding regions followed by a discussion on the work of the practices in the context of responding to the transitions of the region. While in Bangalore the four young practices invited were part of the exhibition, in Chennai there were no practices that were part of the exhibition, and two younger practices were identified from the city and invited for discussion.
This format will be followed for the other travel edition scheduled to show in Kochi and Kozhikode. The idea is to use the exhibition as a platform for a younger generation of architects in that location to have this conversation. And to identify other practices we may have missed in the earlier curation.
A keynote lecture Prof. Rahul Mehrotra on Research as Practice at the Bangalore International Centre, Bengaluru, India in January 2025.
A panel discussion by Prof. Rahul Mehrotra on Research as Practice in Bengaluru, January 2025.
Mittal Institute: Why did you initially conceptualize traveling exhibit? What does it mean for the State of Architecture project to create it?
Exhibition Curators: The idea was to trigger conversations around the exhibition in different locations and also identify emergent practices in these locations by making visible some of their peers. At the end of two years of travelling the exhibition will conclude with an expanded version in Mumbai and hopefully then also travel it to Boston.
The interesting aspect of the traveling component of the exhibition is that it is exposing young South Asian practices to completely new audiences and, as a result, we are also developing new research networks in order to finally expand this exhibition in its final version.
Mittal Institute: How do you select the locations?
Exhibition Curators: The selection of locations has largely depended on collaboration with the host institutions. For example, the Prakriti Foundation that hosted the exhibition in Chennai and Bengaluru had visited the Delhi exhibition and showed interest in taking it to these respective cities. A similar response was received from the Avani School of Design that reached out to the team, after the show in Chennai.
However, for travel outside India, the team reached out to the project advisors that were identified early in the project to identify practices in each country, as well as the speakers who were part of the discussions in the Delhi conference.
The exhibition traveled to Bengaluru in January 2025.
Mittal Institute: What do you hope the future holds for the exhibition?
Exhibition Curators: Once the exhibition has assimilated insights from across the region, we hope to revisit the resulting body of knowledge, which was created incrementally and collectively, so that we might once again incorporate the new information to respond to the meta-questions that the overall project hoped to raise. The final objective is to share the learnings from the various travels and local conversations through a concluding edition in Mumbai in 2026.
☆ The views represented herein are those of the interview subject and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Mittal Institute, its staff, or its Steering Committee.