After a visit to Chennai with the MONASS team, I spent some weeks this summer exploring other parts of Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu was created out of part of the former Madras State when the administration of India was divided based on language in 1950, three years after independence. Though Chennai is the capital, it […]
[ 27 July 2017, 03:30, MAA ] As the plane landed on the tarmac, my introduction to both Chennai and Monsoon Assemblages had officially begun. For the past two years, I’ve been based in Jakarta, Indonesia–a neighbouring coastal megacity in Southeast Asia. On approach from the air, the glow of ship lights in the Jakarta […]
Lindsay Bremner, Beth Cullen and Christina Geros reported on field work conducted in Chennai in July and August 2017 at the University of Westminster’s Architecture Research Form on 19th October.
Chennai Field Trip Report Monsoon Assemblages is concerned with understanding large-scale and complex phenomena, namely changing monsoon climates and processes of urban development. As an anthropologist used to working at a more intimate spatial resolution, my challenge has been to find a way of understanding aspects of these phenomena at a more relatable scale. It […]
Chennai Field Trip Report The MONASS team of researchers – Lindsay Bremner, Beth Cullen and Christina Geros – spent six weeks in Chennai during July and August 2017, undertaking field work to better understand the ways in which the monsoon is entangled in urban life and space in the city. Our work was facilitated by […]
The design research on Chennai undertaken by Design Studio 18 at the University of Westminster as part of the MONASS project, was exhibited at the Department of Architecture’s OPEN Exhibition from June 16 until July 02 this year. For more on the exhibition go here. For more on the studio brief and student outputs go here. […]
Next Thursday, 15th June at 18.00, the end of year exhibition of the work of DS18, the M Arch design studio at the University of Westminster associated with Monsoon Assemblages will open. This past year students have been working on Chennai, from the perspective of how the city and its human and nonhuman inhabitants interface with monsoon rain. Some […]
DS18 is the MArch design studio at the University of Westminster taught by Lindsay Bremner and Roberto Bottazzi associated with Monsoon Assemblages for the next three years. This year the studio is working on Chennai. In the first brief of this studio, students were asked to research the complex and architecturally fertile phenomenon of monsoon […]
DUE NEXT WEEK! The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster invites applications for the position of Research Fellow (Spatial Design) for Monsoon Assemblages, ERC Starting Grant no. 679873. As a member of the project research team, the post holder will work with the PI, Lindsay Bremner and anthropologist, Beth […]
Pushpa Arabindoo’s brilliant paper on the 2015 Chennai floods has just been published. “Recognising the need for a more robust (post-) disaster discussion, this paper offers an anatomy of the floods that begs a broader rethink of 21st-century urban disasters and argues that the current discourse offered by the social science of disaster is insufficient […]