+ CULTURE

DECONSTRUCTING THE MUSEUM – A SUMMER SCHOOL WORKSHOP FOR ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS : INDIA + THE NETHERLANDS

OBJECTIVE 

To provide a holistic understanding of the museum as an institution in the nexus of spatial, social and political ideology.

We understand that museums hold a special place in the imagination of an architecture student. While architecture has been playing an increasingly important role in shaping expectations and experience in the post-modern world, it is but one thread in a larger tapestry. We believe strongly that it is important to understand both the built and the unbuilt in order to create good architecture, and this is what we hope to impart through this course. We will explore not only the spatial and experiential qualities of museum architecture but also the history, politics and socio-cultural context within which it is situated.

About the course

The course will involve visiting 10 museums across Delhi and Amsterdam. The students will be exposed to the histories and urban planning of both cities and the complexities of museums in the East vs. the West. We will provide a comprehensive interdisciplinary framework to analyze any museum. 

Participants will – 

  1. Decipher the voice of a museum from it’s narrative
  2. Understand the workings of a functional museum
  3. Observe visitor engagement and evaluate lived experience
  4. Analyze the city and the building in relation to each other
  5. Evaluate the spatial and experiential design of individual museums 
  6. Understand museums as generators of culture and their impact on our worldview. 

We will do this with –

  1. Lectures and conversations with Industry experts
  2. Stakeholder surveys 
  3. A variety of visual representation tools 
  4. Design thinking exercises
  5. Creative group projects and thought experiments
  6. Independent research and reports 

The idea is also to use the format of a workshop to go a little beyond the subject of architecture and equip students with critical thinking skills.

Learning outcomes / Takeaways

Students will come away with an analytical framework and a set of critical thinking skills that will direct their research, analysis and discovery. We will facilitate this process with questions like –

  1. What is the origin of museums as a concept?
  2. How did individual museums evolve in the larger context of global intellectual movements in art, politics and urban planning? 
  3. How did museums sprout in the micro-context of local culture and history of each city?
  4. What is the relationship between the contents of a museum and its architecture?
  5. How does the visitor experience the design of space and narrative? 

These questions are inroads into further questioning politics of representation, museums as generators of culture, the symbolic value of the museum building and the lived experience of a public/cultural space.