WHAT IS GENEALOGY

 This course becomes important for students as they understand that architecture is an intrinsic part of the culture, informed by historic processes of architectural production as well as contemporary everyday practices. It asks ontological questions about modern institutions and their programs that have come to principally shape the nature of our lived experiences in the last two centuries. (Ontology is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of objects, things, institutions, etc. It is a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them.) This studio takes up one contemporary institutional programme that has emerged historically over the years and asks students to trace its genealogy. Architecturally it traces different spatial configurations that have developed across history under the same programme through case studies. With the help of these case studies students are asked to speculate on the societal structures for each spatial configuration, establishing the relationship between societal structure, programme of the institution and spatial configuration. Through this analysis, students learn to ask the question ‘What is?’ What is the genesis of the programme? What is the deep structure of space? Was this configuration produced by the society? Did it produce a particular society? (For example: What is a home? What is a clinic? What is a factory; Where did these come from? What is the next stage in their development?