Yale Architecture Studio in Mumbai
Professor Bijoy Jain, Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture (YSA), and Professor Tom Zook at YSA are co-teaching a course on Design and Visualization that takes Yale Students to Mumbai, India.
The Architecture of Water throughout India defines a spatial realm that is simultaneously sacred and mundane, private and shared, spectacular and subtle. In a history that extends back thousands of years, spaces for storing water are connected with religious structures in a tradition that seamlessly unites a spiritual consciousness with basic human activity of drinking, bathing, and washing. With this inspiring vision, the Yale Architecture Studio traveled to India in September to study water thus defined. Through guided research, each student analyzed the atmosphere of specific sites in India and sought to represent them through construction of physical models made in sand, wax, aluminum, plaster, and bronze.
The students worked in three specific sites spread across Mumbai, Alibag, Varanasi, Agra and Delhi. The Banganga Water Reservoir Tank and Temple in Mumbai India presents a site where architectural and cultural traditions collide, coexist, and push apart. Hundreds of water tanks were built throughout the seven island area that first comprised Bombay. The students analyzed and interpreted the area, formed hypothesis of what this body of water does and what it means, and how it regulates and determines the architecture that surrounds it.
Small village temples and water tanks still function in the rural area of Nandgaon, just an hour from Mumbai by boat. Forming the second site of inquiry for the course, these places allow quiet contemplation and gave students an opportunity to observe relationships among people, architecture and water as it has existed for thousands of years.
During this intense and carefully executed research seminar, the class also traveled to their third site across Mumbai, Alibag, Delhi, and Agra (Fatepur Sikri) and spent three focused days in Varanasi, India’s holiest city on the waterfront of the Ganges River. The eight mile urban edge where the city meets the river presents a site where water and architecture operate simultaneously while also serving millions during religious festivals.
Upon their return from India, students planned to locate individual sites in the United States with a sibling commonality that connects it to their previously researched site in India. These sites will be within a reasonable distance from New Haven to afford continued observation and research during the semester. These site options include, first, salt water marshes off Cape Cod. This specific site has remained pristine for almost 1000 years cleaning the sea water with each tidal surge. The second site option is New York City’s East River Waterfront which presents incredible possibilities for understanding a history and ecosystem vastly different from anything pristine or natural. The once great shipbuilding drydocks in Providence Rhode Island present another potential site.
The course is being taught by Professors Bijoy Jain and Tom Zook. Bijoy Jain is a contemporary Indian architect who founded his own firm Studio Mumbai. He is currently the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor at YSA. Established through the generosity of Norman R. Foster, this professorship enables the School to invite distinguished international architects to teach in the design studio. Tom Zook is an architect who has been practicing in New York since 1999. He has designed and built numerous projects in the US, Mexico and India. Tom is in the faculty at the Yale School of Architecture where he teaches senior design studio.