Architectural design studio is a place for thinking and working.

'Studio' as a classroom is a unique environment discovered in the first year of architectural studies, and soon one realizes that the doors of the studio are never closed... they remain open day and night, for the dedicated... Beyond the school, the studio space follows the architect into the profession... there is a studio space in every office that means serious business...

In schools of architecture is it that only students should work in the studio? Should not the teacher architect too work in the studio, solving the problems he/she has set for the students to solve? Should the teacher remain confined to the role of only being a critic?  Or should the teacher architect too put up own version of the design solution for students to 'learn from', or even 'criticize'?

In 1999, as a design studio incharge, I experimented with this idea and put up my own version of a quick solution on two butter sheets, solution to the problem of designing a community center in rural Maharashtra, for the students to comment...

The results were encouraging...for me personally, if not for the students. I realized that architectural design teaching should be like music teaching... the teacher also must perform, using own skills, to inspire the students...

I must confess that this idea of mine was never appreciated by my colleagues! But I have continued to indulge in work like this since then... every time I have set a problem for students to solve, I too have tried my hands at it... It has made me only a better critic of myself... because every time I did this, I found a better designer than me, among students...

Here are some of my recent experiments...

C S A Selfie Point

A design workshop with students of third year architecture at Crescent School of Architecture, Chennai...

Decoding Corbusier

A design workshop with students of first year architecture at Department of Architecture and Planning, I.I.T. Kharagpur