Sidh Losa Mendiratta
Sidh Losa Mendiratta is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, and an Integrated Researcher at the Centre for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism, based in the same Faculty. Since September 2024 he is the Coordinator of the research project "ID-SCAPES: Building Identity. Religious Architecture and Sacral Landscapes of Christian Minorities in India and Bangladesh (ERC/COG/101125057)" funded by a Consolidator Grant of the European Research Council (2024-2029), and since January 2022 he is the Co-Principal Investigator of the research project "PORTofCALL. African-Asian-European Encounters: Cultural Heritage and Ports of Call in the Indian Ocean during the Early Modern Period (FCT/PTDC/ART-DAQ/4357/2021)" funded by COMPETE 2020 and FCT (2022-2025). He holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of Coimbra (2012, summa cum laude) funded by an FCT fellowship. Between 2012 and August 2024, he was an Integrated Research at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, and also an Assistant Professor at Lusófona University of Porto, holding the chair of History of Portuguese Architecture, part of the Integrated Masters in Architecture. In 2013 he was awarded the "Fernando Távora" prize by the Architects' Order of Portugal. He is the author of the books "The Church and Convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Chimbel" (2021) and "Domus-fortis in Æquator: a segunda vida da casa-torre de origem Europeia no antigo Estado da Índia" (2019). In 2011, he was a visting scholar at the Xavier Centre for Historical Research, Goa. Specializing in cultural heritage of Portuguese influence in South and Southeast Asia, he has conducted twenty-seven georeferenced topographic surveys of archaeological and architectural sites in India, collaborating with the Archaeological Survey of India, Fundação Oriente and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. In 2011, he was a visting scholar at the Xavier Centre for Historical Research, Goa. He is author and/or coauthor of over seventy papers, including five papers presented at the Society of Architectural Historians International Conference (2008, 2009, 2010, 2018 and 2024).
Address: Rua J. B. Lavanha, 55, 4 D
4150-412 Porto
Portugal
Address: Rua J. B. Lavanha, 55, 4 D
4150-412 Porto
Portugal
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Books & Chapters by Sidh Losa Mendiratta
ISBN: 9789380607993
Journal Articles by Sidh Losa Mendiratta
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In the chancel of the church of St. Anne, in Talaulim, Goa, there are three tombstones bearing coat-of-arms with skeletal motifs crowned by three-sided birettas over crossed keys. They belong to Goan priests, and their respective inscriptions include the sobriquet “Bragmane” (Brahmin) after their names. One of the tombstones is that of Fr. “Francisco do Rego Bragmane” (ca. 1638-1689), and the epitaph credits him with beginning the works of this lofty building back in the early 1680s. “Santana”, as the church is known locally both in Portuguese and English, was recently described as the “first Goan church,” and is a fundamental element in the fabric of Goan Christian identity.
https://ces.uc.pt/pt/ces/pessoas/investigadoras-es/sidh-losa-mendiratta/publicacoes/artigos-em-revistas-cientificas
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Mumbai’s diverse built heritage includes several Catholic churches, associated to the city’s East Indian community, and to Portuguese colonial rule in the region, which lasted from the mid-sixteenth century to 1739. In An Early Modern Sacromonte in Mumbai, the author addresses one of theses sites, Mandapeshwar, which developed from an eighth-century Hindu rock-cut cave temple, becoming a center of Franciscan missionary activity in the region. Among the buildings commissioned by the Franciscans is a Sacromonte, unique in its design. Contextualizing this structure, the author follows the path of the early Franciscans missionaries into Shashti Island, and argues that the Sacromonte’s architecture was both influenced by the region’s numerous caves temples, some of which were re-consecrated as churches by the Portuguese missionaries, and by the religious order’s hermitic traditions. Although the Sacromonte’s religious program remains open to debate, it was probably of Marian devotion, with a crowning hermitage dedicated to the Holy Spirit.
ISSN: 1645-2704.
ISBN: 9789380607993
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https://repositorio-aberto.up.pt/handle/10216/161177
https://estudogeral.sib.uc.pt/handle/10316/116156
*******************************************************************************************
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In the chancel of the church of St. Anne, in Talaulim, Goa, there are three tombstones bearing coat-of-arms with skeletal motifs crowned by three-sided birettas over crossed keys. They belong to Goan priests, and their respective inscriptions include the sobriquet “Bragmane” (Brahmin) after their names. One of the tombstones is that of Fr. “Francisco do Rego Bragmane” (ca. 1638-1689), and the epitaph credits him with beginning the works of this lofty building back in the early 1680s. “Santana”, as the church is known locally both in Portuguese and English, was recently described as the “first Goan church,” and is a fundamental element in the fabric of Goan Christian identity.
https://ces.uc.pt/pt/ces/pessoas/investigadoras-es/sidh-losa-mendiratta/publicacoes/artigos-em-revistas-cientificas
*************************************************************************************************************************
Mumbai’s diverse built heritage includes several Catholic churches, associated to the city’s East Indian community, and to Portuguese colonial rule in the region, which lasted from the mid-sixteenth century to 1739. In An Early Modern Sacromonte in Mumbai, the author addresses one of theses sites, Mandapeshwar, which developed from an eighth-century Hindu rock-cut cave temple, becoming a center of Franciscan missionary activity in the region. Among the buildings commissioned by the Franciscans is a Sacromonte, unique in its design. Contextualizing this structure, the author follows the path of the early Franciscans missionaries into Shashti Island, and argues that the Sacromonte’s architecture was both influenced by the region’s numerous caves temples, some of which were re-consecrated as churches by the Portuguese missionaries, and by the religious order’s hermitic traditions. Although the Sacromonte’s religious program remains open to debate, it was probably of Marian devotion, with a crowning hermitage dedicated to the Holy Spirit.
ISSN: 1645-2704.
Goan emigration to Bombay during the late 19th and early 20th centuries had a strong impact on the city, influencing its culture and society. This created an uneasy juxtaposition between the pre-existent Catholic community in Bombay, who came to be known as East Indians, and the newcomers. Within the framework of colonial Bombay, the Goan migrants found employment, creating mutualistic structures such as clubs, housing societies and micro credit banks, developing agency in certain sectors. Goans tended to settle in specific neighbourhoods, where their presence influenced the cityscape and urban life of Bombay. By mapping the impact of Goan emigration to Bombay, one can understand how the community adapted itself to a new cosmopolitan environment, creating a web of dwellings and services that allowed the Goans to adjust, settle, and feel at home. Using primary and secondary sources, we will focus on the numerous Goan clubs, housing societies and Goan-owned economic activities that mushroomed in Bombay during the early 1900s. By addressing how the Goan community established itself in Bombay, we will argue that convergence towards the same geographical areas was a factor in the rivalry with the East Indians, as was the internecine religious strife usually described as the Padroado-Propaganda dispute. This rivalry between the two Catholic communities evinced conflicting notions of collective identity, with citizenship, race, and language playing determinant roles.
ISSN: 1645-2704
As far as we know, this is the first time within the S.A.H. annual conferences that a session engages with the Indian Ocean world as an analytical space for exploring histories of the built environment and landscapes. Scholarship on the built environment and landscapes of the Indian Ocean region developed in the 1960s with works like Auguste Toussaint’s “History of the Indian Ocean” and the later works of Kirti Chauduri, Michael Pearson and Edward Alpers among others. This scholarship departed from earlier European-centric and colonialist frameworks that were often influenced by the formal reality of European colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries, and that tended to perceive Early Modern European administered port settlements as self-contained devices of colonial power, cordoned-off from their surrounding landscapes and hinterlands.
While the concept of cultural landscape has evolved, the study of such environments necessarily requires an interdisciplinary approach. Coastal landscapes often present dense and multi-layered histories, impacted by the circulation of people, plants, commodities and ideas. The Indian Ocean’s coastal landscapes are often marked by the dynamics of change and permanence, of innovation and tradition.
In proposing this session, we address some of the themes and methods developed by the PORTofCALL research project, which began in January 2022. This project aims at studying the relation between African-Asian-European encounters during the Early Modern period and the cultural heritage of the Indian Ocean’s port settlements with a Portuguese influence. By researching how African-Asian-European cultural encounters and negotiation impacted and shaped the built environments and landscapes of the Estado da Índia’s network of port settlements, and their respective hinterlands. Looking at aspects such as indigenous agency, settlement patterns, building technologies, spatial traditions, arts, and agrarian customs, the project will propose new readings for cultural heritage in the Indian Ocean rim.
Mudanças de paradigma na investigação e nas metodologias associadas à História e Teoria da Arquitetura têm enfatizado a importância de grupos societais na configuração e uso dos espaços e paisagens, centrando nas interações e dinâmicas entre pessoas e os ambientes construídos, e na evolução dessas interações ao longo do tempo. De certa forma sobrepondo-se ao enfoque no papel do arquiteto/autor, às suas intenções retóricas, e à sua filiação artística e “estilística”, a nova abordagem muda o enfoque para as aspirações e identidades colectivas e individuais envolvidas nas concepção, edificação e intervenções na paisagem, e para as histórias entrecruzadas (“entangled histories”) que caracterizam muitos dos objetos arquitectónicos e paisagens culturais do ambiente construído. Entendendo as edificações culturalmente significativas enquanto ferramentas/espelhos na constante construção de identidades colectivas negociadas, a história social do ambiente construído possibilita novas abordagens e leituras para além daquelas tradicionalmente empregues na História e Teoria da Arquitetura.
O seminário visa debater como estas novas abordagens têm influenciado os mais relevantes projetos de investigação neste campo coordenados por investigadores sedeados em Portugal.
“Towards the destruction of [the city of] Goa there was no decree, like the Roman Senate’s delenda Carthagine [sic]; the land was not invaded by barbarians, who used to level buildings to the ground; nor was the wrath of conquerors unleashed upon it, like that of Alexander against Persepolis; or of Cambyses, of Aurelius, of Timur, or so many other devastators, especially in Egypt and Syria; finally, there was no deluge, earthquakes or other extraordinary operations of Nature that disfigure the globe’s surface.
Nothing of the sort occurred; yet [today], of the city of Goa, there is nothing but the soil.”
Joaquim de Cunha Rivara (1859)
This paper addresses the period of Old Goa's history under Portuguese rule from its conquest in 1510 to ca. 1615, the time when the city's economic stagnation and decline became manifestly visible along its cityscape and urban fabric. Focusing on the history of the built landscape, I will make use of archaeological and architectural studies produced during the last hundred years or so, as well as primary and secondary sources important to the city's history.
Considering how church architecture is central to the cultural heritage of the Goan Christian minority, it is important to address the “Goan church” as an identity landscape, both building and projecting a representation of collective identity.
Numerous churches were built or rebuilt in the Goan villages during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the agency of the Goan clergy as they progressively substituted European missionaries in the territory’s village parishes. Their lofty fa ades, spectacular settings, and original articulation of specific elements - such as vaulting systems, internal elevations and ornamental features – make the Goan churches an essential element of the territory’s cultural landscapes. Among the most recognizable features of the Goan church is the façade with the symmetrical towers and conspicuous friezes, and, in the interior, the barrel vault with lunettes, both in naves and chancels. The barrel vault with lunettes solution was firstly introduced in India with the Carmelite church, something that has gone unnoticed. Modelled after that of Il Gesù and other churches in Rome, the impact of this vault was so strong that many of the city’s conventual churches and sacristies were rebuilt with similar vaults.
In this paper, I will show how church architecture is central to the cultural heritage of the Goan Christian minority; therefore, it is important to address the “Goan church” as an identity landscape, both building and projecting a representation of collective identity.
The remains of Bassein and Chaul are extraordinary for their dimension and the quality of their architecture. Both have lain peacefully in ruins for 250 years, almost deserted. On the other hand, Portuguese Thana has disappeared under the buildings and activity of a contemporary city although the fort and other old structures still exist.
An architectural survey of Bassein’s ruins has been conducted in 1998 under the guidance of one of the authors of the present paper proposal who is also the author of the only modern essay about the town’s urbanistic and architectural history. The only existing survey and study of Chaul was published in German in 1964. Nothing reliable has been published about Thana’s architecture and urbanism in the Portuguese period.
In the cadre of a multi-disciplinary team of architectural historians, historians and geographers who have been working on the construction of a geo-referenced database of iconographical, cartographical, photographical, bibliographical and documental material about this territory in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, we propose, in this article, to present the reconstruction of the urban form of Bassein, Chaul and Thana in the Portuguese period, using contemporary satellite photography as a geographical matrix on which to work with old Portuguese and British maps, many of which previously unpublished, photographic and graphic research conducted on site, published and unpublished written sources. The correct identification of buildings or their traces and the emergence of entire town sectors from oblivion, from the jungle and coconut groves, or from under present day urban sprawl could prove to be a powerful knowledge tool.
Este processo de expansão urbana durante o longo século XIX foi fortemente polarizado por um conjunto preexistente de aldeias localizadas a norte da cidade e fortificação inglesas, tanto na ilha de Bombaim como dispersas pela mais ampla ilha de Salcete. Estas aldeias, maioritariamente habitadas por indianos católicos, estruturavam o território anteriormente pertencente à Província do Norte do Estado da Índia, a maior parcela territorial administrada pelos portugueses na Ásia, à excepção de Timor-leste. Durante os dois séculos de existência da Província do Norte (1534-1739), os habitantes das ilhas de Bombaim e Salcete foram convertidos ao cristianismo e as suas aldeias dotadas de estruturas religiosas cristãs, enquanto que as zonas rurais envolventes foram desenvolvidas sob foreiros portugueses ou luso-descendentes.
Nesta apresentação, e focando especialmente as aldeias da ilha de Salcete e o caso da vila de Taná, propõe-se demonstrar como estas aldeias constituíram os pontos nodais do crescimento de Bombaim e como as suas estruturas e paisagens de cariz indo-português foram absorvidas e transformadas pela expansão do tecido urbano e suburbano daquela metrópole.
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Although only partially carried out, many of the issues that the 1959 plan addressed remain pertinent, given the renewed and continued interest in Old Goa’s heritage. One of the critical aspects of the plan was the adaptive reuse of Old Goa’s heritage buildings. The Pius X Institute, an interesting example combining adaptive reuse and new construction, has its roots in this plan.
Interestingly, archaeological excavations in Old Goa - after a brief activity in the early 20th century - have only occurred in the last two decades, while many of the known archaeological sites in and around the abandoned city are being threatened and submerged by development. The only systematic excavations occurred on the site of the vice-roy’s palace, the Brahmapuri underground sacred tank and the Augustinian convent. This last monumental group of ruins has been recently musealized and is one of Old Goa’s popular tourist attractions.
In this paper, besides describing the Gracias / Vassalo e Silva plan of 1959 and some of the conservation and musealization interventions in Old Goa since, I will elaborate on new ideas and opportunities regarding heritage issues in Old Goa
Also as a consequence of the process of colonial occupation, a comprehensive network or religious structures emerged, mostly built by the religious orders, within which the Jesuits and the Franciscans clearly stand out. Many of these structures also had a defensive outlook or potential, and a handful was even fitted with bulwarks mounting cannons. Besides the private and religious structures, the Estado da Índia built many fortifications to protect smaller settlements and strategic locations like mountaintops and passages, river crossings and bends. Due not only to their numbers but also to their diversity - both morphologically and tectonically - and also their interdependence, this network of strong points, together with the militia model and the naval forces adopted to tender it, represents a territorial defensive system of outstanding interest, especially from the architectural, urban and landscape history perspective. This defensive system was put to the test repeatedly by an array of invasions and attacks, and its structures evolved according to the scale and nature of its enemies, hampered constantly by the limited resources and manpower of the Estado da Índia, notably after the loss of supremacy on the Arabian Sea.
Both as part of a network and individually, the devices of this defensive system have not been researched, with the exception of the aforementioned four urban settlements and they represent a fundamental topic not only in the history of the Northern Province but also of the whole Estado da Índia.
Keywords: Modern Age; India; Portugal; Forts; Architecture; Territory.
Senior Researcher Annual Conference Fellowship
Albuquerque, NM
The roundtable article is composed of eleven tremendous essays about New Spain, The Philippines, Peru, Portugal, Cuba, Goa, Angola, Brazil and Spain, authored by a team of terrific scholars, namely, Barbara Mundy, Sandra Pinto, Pilar Regueiro, Juan Luis Burke, Sidh Losa Mendiratta, Miguel Valerio, Francisco Mamani-Fuentes, Antonio Urquízar, Amy Chang, Crislayne Alfagali, Rosalía Oliva, Mahé Lugo and Alice Santiago Faria.
The roundtable article can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2024.83.3.268