Over the last weekend, Ravi Punde took us to visit the Navrachana University in Baroda in oder to look and learn from the Year-end Student Exhibition hosted by the school. For the first time, I had been taken to a trip with a purpose of learning from peers, and I must admit that it was quite refreshing to step out of one's own confined bubble and gain a fresh perspective at oneself through the works of another school.
The Navrachana University, like SEA, is a young architecture college. It was established in 2009, and the architecture wing is headed by Ar. Gurudev Singh - an individual dedicated to educate young minds. Gurudev is on the academic council of SEA, and a close friend of Ravi Punde. The visit thus became more productive, for beyond merely seeing the exhibition, the two institutions also exchanged notes on their pedagogies.
Instead of turning to the exhibition, we found the workshop more inviting. It was full of machines, and each corner filled with wood. Part assemblies of models lay all around, and Gurudev was happy to begin from there itself - explaining to us how each machine worked, and what it could do! His energy was contagious, and immediately gripped all of us. Gurudev believes in learning by making, and in the first two years, the students spend considerable time in the workshop devising structures and making simple contraptions.
We were walked through the exhibition by Gurudev Singh himself, along with some of his colleagues. It was so inspiring to look at his enthusiasm and dedication, more than any thing else, honesty and commitment towards educating his students. We walked across numerous models made by the students using not only the wood workshop that was on their floor, but also the metal, welding and other tools like laser cutter, etc from the engineering department.
The school of architecture in Navrachana exists on a single, but large floor plate. The top floor is what the design students occupy. It consists of a full fleged wood workshop, about 5 studio-classrooms, administration and large lobby areas which double up as exhibition spaces. The floor also has a computer room and several other facilities like meeting rooms, restrooms etc. There is ample natural light on the floor. However, the school is soon to shift in a new building that is being built right opposite to the present one.
In the present case, when we reached, one part of the lobby hosted the exhibition, while the space right outside the lift area was taken up by a gang of students who had finally found some time after their year long slog to jam some songs. Guitars and hums filled up the background of our journey through the exhibition.
We were explained each and every work by the faculties in detail. It didn't bore me at all - infact, I was quite elated to listen to them speak so beautifully. They certainly added a mature dimension to the student projects they described, but I believe their oratory intervention was essential to theoretically mobilize the otherwise skill-heavy work. Much of their work took me back to my own school days from Academy of Architecture, where extremely crafted drawings were produced in good number, often craving for a better assisting narrative. This visit could have possibly turned out to be dry if the faculties had not taken over. However, I also believe that many of the students may have been on vacation and unavailable to assist a walk through to audiences.
Perhaps it was pre-decided that Ravi Punde would give a presentation to the students there, as much as talking about how SEA operates. This had to supercede the lovely musical time students were having after completing the rut of their classes for the year. I found it particularly annoying, inspite of being on the other side, for pulling the students off their music zone into a yet another building lecture! In fact, Ravi eventually also got Prasad and Rupali to present the work they displayed at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. While they promised to keep their respective presentations short, in apology of disturbing the students' music session, the discussion seemingly went on for far too long. I was bored, partly because of the heat, but moreso because I was hardly interested in listening any more to any one.
However, the presentations revealed to me much interesting work by Design Cell, headed by Ravi Punde. I requested Ravi to share with me his presentation so that I could study and review it. On the other hand, Prasad and Rupali's was the first public presentation of the Venice Biennale work. They have not discussed their work openly with any one before. The simplicity with which Prasad oriented the students with their work "Transactional Objects" was incredible. I had to pull out my notebook in order to make notes!
Later, we sat with the core faculty of Navrachana University to discuss ideas to keep exchanging notes regularly and do more work in collaboration. We discussed dilemmas with regard to grading, discipline and interests of students. We also discussed the merits and possibilities of our pedagogical approaches and how they could be improved upon. I just felt that the SEA team was a bit too optimistic and over-confident with our methods and results. We often tend to put others behind in order to convince ourselves of our superiority. However, these are merely myths, and only time shall prove the success of our doings.
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