(“Text as submitted by architect”)
Raghuveer Kathpalia
Raghuveer Kathpalia, graduated in 2018 from Navrachna SEDA with a B.ARCH degree. His graduation thesis looked at the physical importance of objects in the process of home making amongst other questions related to how places are made through processes of inhabitation committed intentionally or otherwise, that result in the conditioning of the environment. He is currently working at the architectural firm Vastushilpa Consulants as a junior architect along with pursuing his own architectural practice independently.
Parth Modi
Parth Modi graduated from Navrachna University SEDA with a B.Arch degree in the year 2018. His thesis looked at how the vernacular architecture specifically homes in Mehsana could be evaluated for retrofitting and offered a documentation of the sequence of change along with plausible causes for the changes. Currently apart from doing freelancing projects as an architect he also works as a part time as an UI designer.
Practice Ideology
As of now since it’s only been two years of independent practice. I would say there is no firm ideology. But yes, there are questions which interest me. I would say most of my ideas as of now come from my lived experience of space, of how one sees these interesting things that happen with architecture all the time within the built environment. They happen everywhere in the city through a process of accretion and negotiation of adjacency. The entire landscape is a project in the happening, for sure. The city is a concentration, the house a fragment and the home its most essential quality. The home is the most basic unit of a city not a house but a home. A home is what makes the city happen, it is that which holds all settlements. That is why my present pre-occupation is with the idea of settling in a landscape. Such as what happens to how one experiences a piece of land once it has been occupied vis a vis how one did formerly before occupation. When one adds a building to that piece of land one creates conditions of access (what goes through) , enclosure (the boundary definition) and intimacy (belonging) and how we constantly deal with these basic spatial qualities in any architectural endeavor. What settling means as an act of consolidation of relationships between people and the environment, relationships that are to bear the test of time. That is why understanding typology is really important, to understand how people have practiced settling by negotiating with the environment.
