Creatives in the time of Corona

Long before the pandemic and its aftermaths started bothering us, making us aware of the binaries in our society, shocking us into realizing and acknowledging our privilege, Kruti and Sebastian had been working on ground, with people of underrepresented communities – identifying and solving the problems of their day-to-day living. Their association goes back to 2016, when both got acquainted while pursuing Masters at CEPT University. Sebastian had come down from Bogota (Colombia) and Kruti from Mumbai. They both stayed back after graduating, to explore opportunities within academia to look at bridging the gap between the urban and architectural realm. They offered immersive design studios at Faculty of Urban Design, where they grappled with various methodologies to make meaningful interventions within fringe communities in the city. They identified the glaring lack of infrastructure provisions, but also recognized that there are short term and long term, as well as larg...

Centre for Human Habitat and Alternative Technology – CHHAT  has been always active in designing emergent structures for emergency needs, focused specifically on providing for the under-represented strata of the Indian society. This has also earned them the coveted Buckminster Fuller award for socially responsible design. With their background in architecture, engineering and education, Chhat has always been agile and proactive in offering their expertise whenever the need emerged. With this medical emergency and a man-made disaster in the form of COVID-19, the team found themselves overwhelmed as, although they had designed and prepared for natural disasters, they had never anticipated a calamity of this form. They were looking at it, trying to see where designers could fit it, especially young architects who can build with their own hands. It required them to quickly re-configure themselves – all spread across various cities in the country. They processed all the ...