Ivan Serpa, Lygia Clark, and the Bauhaus in Brazil

Like most designer start-ups, A&T started as a very small design studio. We began by designing and manufacturing modest batches of textile and fashion items, manufactured mostly on handlooms and tiny printing and embroidery sheds in India’s still pervasive small-scale industrial sector. And indeed, 25 years on, our supply chain is still reliant on and supportive of many of these small enterprises.

The symposium in New Delhi at the India International Centre, organized in collaboration with the Max Mueller Bhavan, looked specifically at the history of art school education in South Asia in relation to the Bauhaus legacy. Speakers include: Kathleen James Chakraborty, Sabih Ahmed, Anshuman Dasgupta, Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan, Mayank Mansingh Kaul, David Abraham, Tanishka Kachru, S Balaram, Saif Ul Haque, Kazi Ashraf, Prasad Shetty, Rupali Gupte, and Natasha Ginwala.

Both the tropical architecture discourse in general and British notions of modernism in particular were embedded in larger discussions on climatic and culturally sensitive approaches to building developed within the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne—CIAM) from the 1950s onward—notions rooted in the hygienic and medical discourses of colonial occupation.