Preface: SEN KAPADIA ARCHITECT- IN PURSUANCE OF MEANINGS

Reasoned commitment is the basis of our sustained engagement with deciphering encoded messages in architectural performances from across the world.

– Sen Kapadia

SEN KAPADIA ARCHITECT – IN PURSUANCE OF MEANINGS is a reflection by senior architect Sen Kapadia on his life and 50+ years practice which he has seen as a cultural endeavour and is one of the first compilations on his work in recent times. The 160+ pages book is edited by Mumbai based architect, Pnkish Shah, and published by CEPT University. The book is written in first person and has four parts. New essays and texts by Sen Kapadia, eight seminal projects carefully selected by him, rumination on five cities that have shaped his life and outlook, and an enlightening conversation between Pritzker Prize winner Prof. Balkrishna V. Doshi, acclaimed visual artist Atul Dodiya and Sen Kapadia.

The book was launched on December 13, 2022, at CSMVS museum amphitheatre.

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Below is the preface from the book.

Among the numerous projects which my team of devoted architects focused on to find deep meaning, a few chosen projects are discussed here to help define the Form / Space manifestations of their architectural ambitions. Our consistent goal was to devise trajectories like the inclusion of the peripheral and liminal into the spaces transforming the scale of the projects, making them ascend from mere sites into the realm of a memorable Place; filled with sunshine activities and reciprocal shadows. These projects reach out towards interpreted, expanded images of built spaces, offering new orientations and references as well as challenging givens and evading inane symbols of popular culture.

Eight projects that present the variances between the functional agendas given by clients and the deeper implications of our estimations of the sites are presented here. Our interpreted valuations opened up and transformed the potentials of the projects making them reflect universal values. Each of them speaks in specific individual architectural language that aims to resolve not just Space / Form pragmatic commitments, but also go beyond to raise pertinent issues that must be addressed by responsible architectural bodies globally. The effectiveness of these projects is to be counted for their role in changing the value judgments of ‘undefined’ clients over a sustained period of time establishing new norms and sensibilities. It is movements like the ‘’Theatre of the Absurd’’ which ushered in notions of relativity, preparing us to accept that valuation of ideas is dependent on one’s point of view.

The efficacy of converting given messages into interpreted meanings is the primary task of avant-garde practitioners. In Architecture this translates into the need to explore ways of deciphering future expressions, to debate on complex audiovisual languages acceptable in tomorrow’s currency.

– Sen Kapadia

Reasoned commitment is the basis of our sustained engagement with deciphering encoded messages in architectural performances from across the world. Creative arts have been an area of exponential growth globally. We see the language of the medium being defined at an orbital velocity. Arts are hurriedly morphing into the realm of conceptual art, but what is expressed is often obtuse and verbose. Our task is to bridge the gap and assemble the ‘probable’ and fleeting mass of intended images towards configurations of materiality that ensure convivial experience of the new. Thus, inviting the perplexed towards being a connoisseur.

We began this volume at a critical moment after completion of the last project but were eclipsed by an abrupt and imposed retirement. But the grand image of a restructured universe that we assembled with relentless insistence, will remain as a conceptual model. Through sharing our journey, we wish to establish the role of an architect as an exemplar committed to create a bond between present society and its future development. Architecture involves looking inwards beyond the object in a philosophical pursuance of an unknown tomorrow.

This book is specifically directed towards suggesting the role of young architects in defining their responsibility to a future society as they navigate this translation from the present into the future. We hope that the intended discussions will be refined by the critical crucible of future architects, inspired perhaps by our need to dissect each thread of the emerging theories of the creative arts. What then will be the new benchmarks that will guide us?

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