Anuradha Chatterjee, PhD | Statement of Teaching

Anuradha Chatterjee, PhD | Statement of Teaching There are three interconnected trajectories in my teaching practice in architectural history and theory. First is my interest in embodied knowledge in the production and reception of historical knowledge; making historical surveys relatable, deep, meaningful, and where possible, experiential; and theoretical histories in architecture. Second is seeking reciprocity between architectural histories and theories and design studio inquiries, with a focus on speculative studio projects seeking spatial prospects for theoretical ideas. And third, is my interest in finding alternative, feminist methodologies of proceeding, in design studio projects that involve multiple theoretical strands, which overlap in convenient and inconvenient ways. I - Theories in Architectural History Online and in the Field: MOOC course, Chaukhat, Darwaza, Jharokha: The Public Life of Threshold Elements in Historic Buildings, Acedge Academy This was a MOOC course aimed at uncovering a theoretical history of the elements of Chaukhat (threshold), Darwaza (door), and Jharokha (window/bay window), in traditional Indian buildings, which mark and celebrate the passage between the private and public realms. It positions these readings in the contemporary field of surface studies that refocuses surface as the substance of and spatial. In essence, the learner writes a mini theoretical history of architectural elements, which would be assisted by but not limited to formalist and historical readings. Implicit to this process, is the desire to recover and ‘unlock’ new histories of these elements, without dehistoricizing these elements. The objective of focusing on threshold elements was that they would speak about the making of the domestic interior; the interrelation between domesticity and the public realm; and the shaping of the public realm and the urban ‘fabric.’ The pedagogic objective of this course was also to move away from exclusively text, graphics, and classroombased education in architectural history, to return to the field, and to trust embodied and situated knowledge and insight. We wanted learners to explore ways in which these threshold elements echoed as well as shaped the rhythms of civic life; evoked alternate worlds, spaces, and realities through their painted surfaces, or surfaces of textiles through their carved surfaces; or suggested new proportional relations to bodies, spaces, and surfaces in the city. A similar course employing elements of the threshold, door and window could be plotted out across the historic sites and structures of Singapore such as heritage listed buildings and existing shop houses. Deeper Survey: History of Western Architecture, Year 1, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool The lectures in this course did not feature just my perspective, but it also included voices of academics in the faculty cohort from other regions of the world. The course was structured as a hybrid model of thematics and chronology, and it considered key historical moments. The aim was to make Western architectural history graspable and relatable for students in China and to introduce depth as well as relevance to what was otherwise a survey course. We therefore looked at the themes of Foundations and Antiquities; Re-Births and Revisions; Modernism: Space, Machine; Situated Modernisms; and Responses and Transformations. The assessments were structured to support rather than test learning. The sectional models and parti diagrams of the modern villas helped make these more palpable to students as historical artefacts. Hence, while they were able to ‘survey’ the historical terrain, they could also deep dive. The Shanghai field trip, which was structured around three distinct urban settings of the waterfront (Bund); the park (People’s Square); and the dense urban fabric (French concession), was an important activity. The on-site production of analytical sketches of buildings (where students tried to highlight the theories of classical composition) mounted a subtle critique of classroom and image focused teaching of architectural history and theory, which for students is often somewhat distanced from the urbanity and materiality of the objects of history. Surface as Lens: Outside In, M. Arch. Theories in History elective, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales This was an original elective course based on my research which has argued that surface in architecture has had a deeper and a more pervasive presence in the practice and theory of the discipline than is commonly supposed. The course exposed students to the theoretical history of the architectural surface, marking a point of departure from conservative theories of architectural modernism that emphasize space, 1 structure, and form. The seminars explored the historical condition of architecture’s investment into the constructive and the spatial; the eighteenth and nineteenth-century crisis of architectural representation, and perspectives on ornament emerging from Germany, France, and Britain; and architectural modernism’s anti-representational claims and the denial of the surface, exploring specifically the whitewash and the curtain wall, and presenting critiques which demonstrate that these positions are untenable. It also presented the more recent ‘surface turn,’ by presenting current perspectives emerging out of a new interdisciplinary field of ‘surface studies.’ This was considered in parallel with shifts in architectural thinking organized around emerging alignments between Deleuzian metaphysics, topological surface, and digital design. The seminars also presented a set of surface typologies in architecture through the study of buildings. While the seminars provided an overview of the field, the assessments were shaped such that students could start to speculate about spatial, tectonic consequences of these ideas, and engage in a process through which scholarship in architectural history can become meaningful and relevant for design. II - Spatialities of Architectural History and Theory Unflattening the Surface: (Re)thinking and (Re)making the Threshold, M. Arch. Year 1 (2011), University of New South Wales This was an experimental studio concerned with the re-design of the façade/threshold of Red Centre, West Wing at the Kensington Campus of University of New South Wales in Sydney, using the four surface typologies proposed in my book Surface and Deep Histories (surface as urban marker; integrated surface; surface as transient, and surface as the design tool) as building blocks for the new intervention. As discussed in my book chapter, “Ungraspable Criticality,” the students used the “building as a site” and proposed a “surface intervention based on the conceptual wall of their choice. This was imposed and impressed upon the existing structure. A given organizational order was infected and contaminated with another, with the aim of introducing a shift in the building’s occupation, appearance, and experience, without a complete overhaul of the original building. The project was to be imagined variously as an extension, addition, insertion, and wrapping.” The aim was to provoke new organizational structures that would provoke a creative organization, whilst taking the focus off the orthographic gaze (and control) of the plan. These ideas have subsequently been tested in two other studios—Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University, where students took the experiment at UNSW much further, as they explored the use of surface intervention to refurbish an entire section of the Foundation Building, and Sushant School of Art and Architecture, where the studio transformed the free-standing conceptual wall fragment into an entire building on a narrow and deep plot. III - Alternative, Feminist Methodologies of Proceeding As a feminist academic practitioner who is interested in policed spaces in architectural discourse, and the designerly (and patriarchal) proclivity to be in control of every corner of designed space, I have delved into alternative design methodologies, first in (Re)thinking and (Re)making the Threshold as described above, and then in a studio project at Avani Institute of Design, titled Narrative, Sense and Space: Cultural Interpretation Centre, Mahé. Informed by four complementary critiques in/of design—design research; critique of control in total design; generative fragments; and rhizomatic, non-linear design thinking—and a historical novel as a point of entry into the site and context, the studio ‘travelled’ from fictive spaces to the lived city; from imaging the spatial within the fiction to architectonics of emotions; from stories within stories to architectonic assemblages; from sited, amalgamated assemblages to many emergent architectural becomings. The creative methodology supported structured meandering as much as it did letting go. 2