With this webinar I aimed to explore the foundational elements and architects of the “international style” that came to form the basis of the post-independence architecture of India-

in conjunction with exploring the personal politics of the pioneers of the international style— Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson and their links to fascist architecture as well as their roles as propagandists in various movements across the world and how these ideologies have trickled into ultimately laying the foundation of “exemplary” and landmark architecture in India. 

India’s political landscape has long used heritage landmarks to assert communal politics... 

but it is now slowly mutating into commissioned structures, statues and public spaces— the processes of which very closely invoke the dynamics of fascist era structures. 

Architecture is not just the physical spaces it’s first and foremost a display of relationships, a performance, with which those in power assert to the aspiring masses— 

this is what having it all looks like. 

I explored the different ways these aspirations are manifested visibly in architectural structures and in architecture as a practice. 

This doesn’t just include designers but the positionality of the spectators, which informs the experience of architecture which in turn affects how this knowledge is used by power systems to shape our symbolic landscapes. I also discussed at length—