The Architecture of India

Book review of "India: Modern Architecture in History" and author interview with Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastav

Religion as Conceptual Scaffolding for Architecture

Religion and Architecture have a long and intimately intertwined relationship in virtually all cultural histories. Through a wide-ranging discussion centring on India and its global diaspora, this chapter considers some of the many ways in which religion continues to be invested in architecture in the world today, and vice versa, broadening and deepening understanding of how religion is literally 'placed' in contemporary life. Architecture, we conclude, sustains at least a part of the project that religion pursued more dominantly and directly, with the aid of architecture, in other times; it constructs and articulates space, both physical and social, as a medium in which individuals and collectives may engage and cohere, and through which the self and its relationship to greater wholes or entities may be defined and realised

Australian Architects in Melanesia: Two Case Studies in Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia, 1960s-80s

International audienceThe current paper uses the narrative of two Australian architects involved in different parts of the Melanesian neighbourhood to characterise these two approaches to the region. In the first section we will discuss the work of Melbourne based architectural consultant and educator Balwant Saini, who first travelled to Papua New Guinea in 1963. Over the next two decades, Saini continued to engage with several development initiatives aimed at improving the local building industry and educational institutions, as well as initiating local architectural training. In the second section, we will discuss the peculiar conditions that led to the engagement of Sydney based architect and illustrator Douglas Snelling to design a range of built and unbuilt projects in New Caledonia, Fiji and Vanuatu. Snelling had first travelled to New Caledonia in 1967 where he met local entrepreneurs who invited him to design their lavish residences, and then continued to develop projects in New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and Fiji over the following years into the early 1970s. The paper is based on a selection of published and unpublished documents from both public and private archives, as well as interviews with relevant participants conducted by the authors

Translation of social citizenship to architecture & built environment: A methodological review

Social Citizenship is a concept that is used to represent acceptance and identity by the local community. This is a manifestation expressed in the form of space, monument or buildings. Buildings such as mosques and other religious buildings are a form of manifestation to such expression left for other generations to see and study. This manifestation of citizenship through religious buildings can be an expression of struggle, establishment, sense of belonging and local acceptance towards achieving social citizenship. The understanding of this concept implicitly shows that these elements are the driving forces behind the architecture that is erected in order to find approval from the local population. This paper reviews the employed research designs, methods and procedures in the process of understanding the translation of social citizenship to architecture expressed by mosques. The methods adopted were aimed toward obtaining archival/historical evidence that can elicit proof of the concept. The methods also involved the process of inquiry that would be the basis for discussion and to draw a conclusion to the relationship between social citizenship and architecture. This paper also highlights the strengths and limitations of the methodological techniques besides spelling out the variables needed to prove the relationshi