Neeraj Bhatia: The Latest Architecture and News

Call for Papers: Bracket [On Sharing]

January 23, 2018

Sharing is one of the humanity’s most basic traits; we intrinsically recognize the benefits of pooling resources within a community in order take advantage of varied abilities and access in order to fulfill needs. Sharing is the key driver behind civilization’s move towards collective living – first in small settlements and eventually in megalopoleis. The impact of sharing goes beyond simply satisfying the necessities for survival and extends itself into the social and cultural dimensions of our communities. In constructing an urban commons, composed of collectively managed and shared resources, we shape our physical, social, and cultural environments

The Machine in the Ocean: On The Petropolis of Tomorrow

June 20, 2014

Clocking in at just under six hundred pages, Neeraj Bhatia and Mary Casper’s The Petropolis of Tomorrow (Actar, 2013) presents a series of dueling monstrosities—land and sea; ecology and industry; isolation and circulation—at the hard-edged site of their collision. The product of an intensive research studio directed by Bhatia at the Rice School of Architecture, Petropolis documents and explores Brazil’s rapidly developing network of offshore petroleum and natural gas drilling infrastructures as a site ripe for the deployment of architectural expertise and imagination. Conducted as part of a broad collaborative research investigation on resource extraction urbanism initiated by the South America Project (SAP), the studio, as introduced by SAP Co-Director Felipe Correa, is a speculative experiment that “tests an extreme scenario” with the aim of identifying “new hybrids between industry and urbanism for an alternative twenty-first century extraction town.” Complementing the studio work, the editors have marshaled an impressive array of text and photo contributors whose essays offer distinctive takes on the book’s three thematic threads: archipelago urbanism, harvesting urbanism, and logistical urbanism.

Bracket 2: Goes Soft

June 29, 2013

From the Publisher. Bracket 2 examines physical and virtual soft systems, as they pertain to infrastructure, ecologies, landscapes, environments, and networks. In an era of declared crises—economic, ecological and climatic, amongst others—the notion of soft systems has gained increasing traction as a counterpoint to permanent, static and hard systems. Acknowledging fluid and indeterminate situations with complex feedback loops that allow for reaction and adaption, the possibility of soft systems has re-entered the domain of design. Bracket 2 critically positions and defines soft systems through 27 projects and 12 articles. From soft politics, soft power and soft spaces to fluid territories, software and soft programming, Bracket 2 unpacks the use and role of responsive, indeterminate, flexible, and immaterial systems in design.

Arium: Weather + Architecture / Jürgen Mayer H. and Neeraj Bhatia

June 01, 2010

I am very interested on the relation between architecture and weather. That’s why On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time by Moshen Mostafavi has a special place on my bookshelf.

That’s why enjoyed Arium so much.

Arium is the result of a studio led by Jürgen Mayer with Neeraj Bhatia at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. The book moves between a series of analytical articles on the relationship between weather and architecture, ranging from tourism to shopping. These concepts are then tested by the studio over the Victory Soya Mills Silos, a massive concrete structure sitting silent along Toronto’s waterfront, the perfect lab for a weatherized intervention: the Ariums (Algarium, Fogarium, Thermarium, etc).

The balance between weather analysis and the studio projects make this book a good reference on the subject, and not just a mere compilation of student’s work.