ARCHITECTURAL SPACE IN ACADEMIA: Techno-Regimes of Materiality

This essay explores the different objects integrated into complex technical systems that make an academic space functional. Starting with the basic question about the meaning and relevance of material objects and physical matter, the essay seeks to document the architectural design and infrastructures within private academic spaces of New Delhi, India. This documentation is co-curated with students for whom university and campus experience is much more than classroom and curriculum interaction alone. The essay uses photographs taken by students while negotiating through the physical infrastructure at college and different spaces like corridors, canteen, library and computer labs. The author argues that these photographic documents are an important tool of students’ lived experiences and form an integral part of the campus photographic archive. Studying these photographs, the author also argues that infrastructures are layered connected systems that perform in unison. While mapping the infrastructural space and various material devices within one of the private colleges affiliated to a state university in New Delhi, the author also studies the photographs in glossy brochures of academic institutions that showcase high rise buildings, state of the art infrastructures, technologically well-equipped classrooms and surveillance devices as their main selling point. The essay attempts to explore how these modern architectural setups and technical material are redefining knowledge systems and educational practices and how these photographs are creating archives while being an important testimony to everyday lived experience.