Avani Annual Research Symposium 2021
Advisor: Ar. Bijoy Ramachandran
Convenors: Ar. Meenakshi Dubey, Ar. Sebastian Joseph, Dr. Soumini R, and Ar. Thushara K

The Nordic Neighbourhood Thinking Camp is a Nordic arena to share experiences, reflections and ideas about neighborhood development and strategic urbanism.

Combining presentations from acclaimed Nordic urban practitioners and thinkers, focused workshops, symposiums and social gatherings, the camp goes beyond the celebratory pitches. The ambition is to help foster ideas and bring forward practices that make a difference in terms of social and environmental sustainability.

Future Airports re-examines the relationship between the growth of capital and the history of New York City real estate by speculating that airports play a role in the city’s financial success. What is the typology of a successful airport for the 21st Century? What role does the airport play in the context of rapid globalization and ever-expanding International logistics networks? Can the Airport become a regional economic catalyst while also creating an inspiring and novel experience for passengers? The Future Airport becomes an important infrastructural space intricately weaving New York City’s desire to maintain its leadership in global financial markets with the imminent need of improved air infrastructure and the emergence of the logistics hub as an important and growing building typology.

Homelessness is one of the monsters that haunts our society. Thousands of people are trying to address the challenge but fail to come up with a solution. Valley View Senior Housing, built in 2019 in Napa County, CA, is a VERY affordable community of 70 cottages. This groundbreaking homeless project was organized by American Canyon’s city government, for older homeless people and homeless veterans of the area. This solution-oriented book shares the inspiring story of a compassionate & humane project. Imagine if every city could do one community like this and we can begin to make headway to solve the homeless problem. Every city can do this! And from this we can grow to do even more.

The pedagogical experiments of the Bauhaus, imported by Gropius, Mies, Hilberseimer and others to the US system, challenged traditional Beaux-Arts thinking and played a crucial role in shaping modern architectural education. Historically, the German architectural training has been different from the Franco-Italian model. New interdisciplinary and technology-focused modes of teaching architecture and design had a long-lasting impact, however, are now again transformed by German-trained educators currently active in reshaping curricula. The conversations reveal the critical and independent thinking of this group of educators, and how they make a meaningful contribution to the discourse of architectural education appropriate to the 21st century. The book provides insight into the ways in which these German-born educators influence architectural and design education in the United States to this day.

The book focusses initially on the philosophical, artistic, and scientific forces that impacted on the humanist of the late Medieval and Renaissance period, profuse in the exchange of ideas and discovery. Behind much of which was the impact of Dante’s Divine Comedy with a message which continues to reverberate through the centuries. What has also persisted is the perpetual tension between science, religion, and design because of their perceived contradictions. The book explores how we might gain inspiration and motivation to embrace a consistent artistry and sense of exploration in the face of an ever-expanding knowledge-based frontier.

For the fourth time, the Lisbon Architecture Triennale presents the Début Award to an architect or a practice in order to celebrate their achievements and stimulate their career.

Our Voices II: the DE-colonial Project will showcase decolonizing projects which work to destable and disquiet colonial built environments. The land, towns, and cities on which we live have always been Indigenous places yet, for the most part our Indigenous value sets and identities have been disregarded or appropriated. Indigenous people continue to be gentrified out of the places to which they belong and neo‐liberal systems work to continuously subjugate Indigenous involvement in decision‐making processes in subtle, but potent ways. However, we are not, and have never been cultural dopes. Rather, we have, and continue to subvert the colonial value sets that overlay our places in important ways.

12 Projects in 120 Constraints reviews a set of Plan: b projects in Colombia through the environmental, social, and voluntary constraints the projects faced, and the interim agreements built around them. The book details a reconstruction of these buildings' central facts through an "inverse" exercise — explaining each project based on contextual constraints rather than singular architectural ideas. As a prelude to the projects, the book examines other authors' work and how they understand the limitations and difficulties that are part of their creative activity. This revision generates a broad reflective base to approach the architectural projects and the predominant role that restrictions have played in them.

Terra. It’s the 6th edition of the Triennale for 2022.
It will take place between October and December 2022, chief-curated by Cristina Veríssimo and Diogo Burnay. “Terra explores how new paradigms are changing our ways of place-making in a globalised Planet. Terra addresses how climate cha(lle)nges, pressure on resources and socioeconomic and environmental inequities are profoundly intertwined”.

The 2021 Summer School will focus on water and public spaces in urban areas.

The exhibition With Love from Spain in Aalborg, Denmark, is a collaboration between Utzon Center and the Aarhus School of Architecture. It is based on the research project “Escandinavia - Architectural dialogues between Denmark and Spain”, which investigates the fortunate parallelisms, influences and translations between Nordic and Spanish architectural cultures. The origin of this long-term affinity is to be found in the significant interest that Spanish architects had in Nordic architecture, extensively focused on its Modern Masters: Alvar Aalto, Erik Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz, Sverre Fehn, Arne Jacobsen, and Jørn Utzon.

A fascinating insight into Britain’s industrial past as evidenced by its buildings, richly illustrated with intricate line drawings.

This book is Michele Saee’s life’s work. A collection of projects, built, unbuilt, conceptual, and experimental which expands over more than three decades. There
are over 50 projects in different cities, countries, and continents, all with different programs, scales, and sizes on sites varying from the hillsides of Tempio, Sardinia in Italy to the Champs Elysees, Paris in France to the ocean front of the Pacific in California, USA to an apartment condo in newly developed towers in Beijing, and a new aquarium in Shanghai, China. This book is about an architect’s journey of discovery—a fluid emotional exercise in life, love, work, and architecture.
The projects are presented based on their individual original design and their development. There are hand and computer sketch, drawings, and model studies of different stages of their development. The book covers everything from conception
of the projects in their early stages through the process of their creation. The book clearly shows Michele’s way of working and his personal exploration in establishing his architectural philosophy and language.

In rural China, an informal wave of building jump-started by economic and social transformations over the past 40 years has rendered some villages unrecognizable. The resulting building boom, taking place in a context of few regulations, has created densities more often found in urban areas. At the same time, the availability of new materials and industrial construction methods has led to remarkable hybrid experiments where rural self-builders adapt, modify, graft, cleave, and wrap traditional building types. These unexpected and innovative solutions address some of contemporary architecture’s most pertinent issues.
As Found Houses argues that the manifold evolution of the vernacular is part of the everyday practice of villagers’ lives. The book documents surprising design decisions in the domestic architecture of rural China and is a resource for thinking about new ways of living together.

The contemporary building industry is addicted to new materials in an era that necessitates smarter practices. The concrete industry alone accounts for 8% of global CO2 emissions with alarmingly little attention paid to the inevitable obsolescence of that material. These buildings are destined for the landfill with concrete occupying the vast majority of that mass. THE CANNIBAL’S COOKBOOK mines solutions from an ancient practice known as cyclopean masonry—a practice that intelligently consumes the rubble of building stock to provide new structures. This book contextualizes these practices, deciphers the mysteries embedded in their cryptic geometries, and provides a series of recipes that can be adapted, automated, and applied today. Is the key to recycling our building materials locked inside the cryptic cyclopean masonry walls suspected of being built by primordial giants? THE CANNIBAL’S COOKBOOK challenges the inappropriate practices surrounding concrete by learning from the myths and legends of architectural cannibalism.

The Lisbon Triennale seeks proposals for self-financed projects that relate to the main programme of its 6th edition for the Autumn of 2022, and bear an independent and diversified character, essential for the living cultural mechanisms in the city and attentive to the liveliness of the debate around architecture.