Contingencies as Opportunities: Transformative Approach to Pedagogy

The intrinsic quality of India has always been in its socio-cultural dimension, often informed by its microcultures and traditional sensibilities. This further informs all realms of development and survival and, therefore, impacts design and architecture. Over the past century, India has experienced a myriad of challenges in the field of architecture, from rapid urbanization, sustainability to modernization. Through this paper we argue that the contingencies—economic, political, or social—should not be seen as a threat but as opportunities that add richness to thinking. This paper is an attempt to reflect on many years of teaching experience and help inform newer ways of teaching, expanding on ways to adapt, use these contingencies, and foresee a way to design for the future. In Donna Haraway’s writings on “Staying with the Trouble”, the readers are encouraged to engage with the complexities of challenges and draw upon the wisdom of the past to address the issues. India’s approach to growth also exemplifies this philosophy. However, unprecedented challenges such as the impact of globalization, rapid urbanization, influx of information and technology, control of power, climatic change, etc. pose a threat to our very existence and are becoming real contingencies as they are unfamiliar in nature. These layers have not always been addressed through the traditional ways of “microcultures,” and therefore require inquiry through unlearning and adapting. Pedagogic experiments come in strongly and play a pivotal role in shaping the entire process of creating meaning through architecture and design for the future. These experiments, interconnected approach (system design) for pedagogy delivery is discussed in this paper and can be termed as “transformative design studio,” and the methods of the same will be explained through case studies and outcomes.