Papers by Dr. Vikramaditya Prakash
ACSA International Conference Proceedings, 1998
Speaking at a conference on the Theatres of Decolonization, Gayatri C. Spivak, the well known pos... more Speaking at a conference on the Theatres of Decolonization, Gayatri C. Spivak, the well known post-colonial critic andintellectual, made acase for freeing colonial architecture from the unhappy menlory of colonization. It is "silly" she argued to shadow box with the "mundane movement of the European colonies upon Indian soil ... in the
Le Corbusier's Chandigarh Revisited
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
This paper argues that heritage planning must not gravitate towards the singular and the exceptio... more This paper argues that heritage planning must not gravitate towards the singular and the exceptional, but must find ways of accommodating the innumerable and multiple claimants of a heritage, however impossible that task might be. The paper uses the case study of Chandigarh as its example, where preservation or conservation is a hot button issue today.
Seminar on Architecture, 1992
Town and Country Planning, 2002
Photographs of Architecture and Scenery in Gujarat and Rajputana, 1992
Neocolonialism and Built Heritage, 2019
This paper discusses the complex problem of working through the 'habit' of quickl... more This paper discusses the complex problem of working through the 'habit' of quickly donning colonialist epistemic frameworks while developing supposedly postcolonial arguments and narratives. I argue this not as a pathology or a bad faith activity, but as an inescapable inheritance that one cannot really disown, but one has to learn to slowly work through (as in Freudian psychoanalytic discourse).
International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 2021
In this essay the author considers the Islamic-modern project within the challenging contexts of ... more In this essay the author considers the Islamic-modern project within the challenging contexts of today’s globalizing architectural culture and international instability. The author explores the concepts of global history, modernity, and ‘transversality’ from his own vantage point as an educator, designer, and theorist. Ultimately the Islamic-modern project is described as necessarily always a work in progress.
Rethinking Global Modernism: Architectural Historiography and the Postcolonial, 2022
This introductory chapter establishes the theoretical foundations for the edited volume and explo... more This introductory chapter establishes the theoretical foundations for the edited volume and explores what a postcolonized and decolonized history of global modern architecture might begin to look like. Outlining the editorial team’s framework for the collection, it provides brief introductions to global history, historical conceptions of modernism, as well as postcolonial studies in terms of their relationship to the historiography of modern architecture. It concludes with brief notes on the “post-postcolonial.” The chapter advocates for the development of a postcolonial global architectural history that emphasizes transnational entanglements and agencies while elevating marginalized voices and traditionally overlooked sites. Such a historiographical approach would produce an ever-changing narrative that would be beset by uncertainty, precarity, and incompletion.
Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism, 2021
A reading of Gayatri Spivak’s 1995 “City, Country, Agency,” this article offers a framework for c... more A reading of Gayatri Spivak’s 1995 “City, Country, Agency,” this article offers a framework for constructing a responsibility- based agency for architecture and urbanism in service of decol-onization. Weaving together deconstructive readings of select verses from the Mahābhārata and other Sanskrit texts, it posits an alternate ecologist understanding of history and society as dhāranā, as a kind of holding otherness, that architects must pre- comprehend to responsibly and more impactfully situate their agency in the world. Architectural thinking, or the prac-tices of design, are offered as situational imperativist agencies that are accessible to dhāranā. The article also points toward the ethics of an alternate preservationist practice, that neither fetishizes the object nor sidelines its agency, but invests in and investigates other modalities of preservation. It argues for a future oriented praxis that is neither prescriptive nor reactive, but is propelled by desire as inflected via dhāranā.
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Coloumn 5 , 1999
This short paper discusses the relationship between reading a 'real' book and reading a book on t... more This short paper discusses the relationship between reading a 'real' book and reading a book on the internet/virtually both in terms of their continuities and their discontinuities.
JSAH: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians , 2009
This is a review of Alain Tanner's film on Chandigarh, from the 1960s.
Coloumn 5, 2009
This short paper is a critical reading of the exponential growth planned in the peripheries of th... more This short paper is a critical reading of the exponential growth planned in the peripheries of the modernist city, Chandigarh, during the early 2000s.
Le Corbusier: Chandigarh and the Modern city edited by Hasan- Uddin Khan with Julian Beinart and Charles Correa, 2010
The book examines lessons offered by Le Corbusier s architecture and planning of India s model ci... more The book examines lessons offered by Le Corbusier s architecture and planning of India s model city, Chandigarh, from today's perspective.
Sub-Saharan Africa: Architectural Guide, 2021
Theorising Architecture in Sub-Saharan Africa : Considering the immense diversity of sub-Saharan ... more Theorising Architecture in Sub-Saharan Africa : Considering the immense diversity of sub-Saharan Africa's architecture and built realities, does it make sense to speak of an African architecture? How does this differ from architecture in Africa? What does the term architecture actually mean in the African context? And how could these questions be conceptualised while leaving behind pre-existing theoretical moulds and biases? Searching for new ways to theorise sub-Saharan African architecture, this collection of 49 essays broadens and develops the discourse around the architecture of a very rapidly changing continent. Its authors – practising architects and renowned scholars – put forward an array of heterogeneous perspectives, question old tropes and emerging narratives, and challenge popular concepts whilst proposing new ones. All with the aim of critically examining and advancing theoretical reflection on African architectures, both on the continent and globally. --- --- --- ---- ---- "Double Bind: Thinking Theory and Africa" in Philipp Meuser and Adil Dalbai (eds), Architectural Guide Sub-Saharan Africa, 7 vols, vol1: Introduction to the History and Theory of Sub-Saharan Architecture, Berlin: DOM publishers, 2021., pp 304-5
The Hindustan Times (newspaper), Chandigarh, India, 2008
This short op-ed makes the case that the so-called preservation/adaptive re-use of Aditya Prakash... more This short op-ed makes the case that the so-called preservation/adaptive re-use of Aditya Prakash's Tagore Theatre in Chandigarh is a travesty of the original design, and completely misses the point of preservation.
International Journal of Islamic Architecture IJIA, special issue, 2021
In this essay the author considers the Islamic-modern project within the challenging contexts of ... more In this essay the author considers the Islamic-modern project within the challenging contexts of today’s globalizing architectural culture and international instability. The author explores the concepts of global history, modernity, and ‘transversality’ from his own vantage point as an educator, designer, and theorist. Ultimately the Islamic-modern project is described as necessarily always a work in progress.
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Papers by Dr. Vikramaditya Prakash
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One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash documents and contextualizes the work of one of the most prolific of the first generation of Indian modernists. Prakash was an architect, an urban planner, a painter, sculptor, set-designer, furniture designer, academic, theatre director, and actor, as well as an occasional poet. The first publication devoted solely to Prakash's work, the objective of this book is to introduce scholarly and general audiences the diversity of his work, to locate it in terms of its local, national, and international contexts, and to build a narrative that describes the motivations of the work. The "continuous" in the title refers both to Prakash's fascination with the possibilities of generating form using a single line, and to his search for synergy between the various disciplines.