Practice of Architecture 📐

The places we inhabit play an important role in shaping both our social interactions and individual actions, by restricting some, affording others, and encouraging yet others. Architectural design shapes many of the spaces we encounter in our day-to-day lives. The calculations and assumptions that go into each beam, curve, and corner may have consequences far beyond what we might imagine. These questions become even more pronounced in a caste-based society, where the segregation of space has been a social norm. By examining the mathematical practices within architecture, especially from the past, we hope to understand how geometrical drawings and computations manifest in the shape and form of buildings and consequently structure social relations. Our very limited collection currently includes texts, primarily on Vastu, as well as conversations with practitioners. If you have materials that could add to our archive, or if you would like to study some of the materials in our possession and develop research agendas around the social history of architectural practices and the computational repertoire involved in them, please write to us.