Tuesday, February 19, 2008

4-6 pm, 914 Gladfelter Hall (Russell Weigley Room)

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, University of Hawai'i, School of Architecture
"Raga India: Architecture in the Time of Euphoria"

About his talk at Temple, Kazi writes: "The Indian subcontinent is undergoing an exuberant cultural and social shift. The astounding transformations that are underway in India (as well as China) are predicted to have the greatest global impact in years to come. Triggered by the combined condition of new economic growth, participation in a global media and technology, and accelerated consumerism, India is emerging out of an earlier exclusionary position. It is a decisive moment for India. Yet, as the political writer Sunil Khilnani notes, the world’s sense of India, of what it stands for and what it wishes to become, seems as confused and divided today as is India’s own sense of itself. India’s strongest characteristic is its extraordinary diversity – no other country in the world embraces so many ethnic groups and languages, nor simultaneously advocates accelerated change while also remaining entrenched in its histories and traditions. The talk is an enumeration and critique of that ongoing dynamic through a narration of the new and emerging architecture and changes in the urban landscape."

About the speaker:

Educated at Penn, MIT, and Bangladesh University, Kazi Ashraf teaches design, history and theory at the University of Hawai'i's School of Architecture. He is the author of numerous books including, Sherebanglanagar: Louis Kahn and the Making of a Capital Complex (with Saif Ul Haque), (Loka Publications, 2002); An Architecture of Independence: The Making of Modern South Asia (with James Belluardo), on the work of Charles Correa, Balkrishna Doshi, Muzharul Islam and Achyut Kanvinde (The Architectural League of New York, 1997); and Louis I. Kahn: National Capital Complex of Bangladesh (GA Edita Publications, Tokyo, 1994). He writes regularly on architecture and the city for The Daily Star, the largest circulating English daily from Dhaka, Bangladesh and is also an occasional editorial artist with works appearing in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, and Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

2008 ushers a special issue of Architectural Design edited by Kazi and devoted to the "new" architecture of India.