Ujjayant is heading the Architecture & City Studio at AVANI. It revolves around inquiries on civic architecture. The architecture of spaces situated in sites of spatial, social, geographical, religious & political friction more so than a public resolve, often stands as an object of witness to mimicries of times passed. Its often observed that in the discourse of architecture that tends to people, there is very little thought to indulge the people, their publicness, cities, and their intangibles. More often than not, Civic Architecture ends up becoming an insensitive residue that is either fetishized or belittled where intangible translations are overpowered by tangible replicas. This self-declared ‘Public’ architecture strikes a self-indulgent note, dressing up as “The neo-modern or neo-traditional architecture of the third world”. The story of how people are forced to adapt to such spaces and forms that Political Propaganda, Capitalism, Poor Planning, Systemic Corruption, and several other contaminations foist upon them; which pulls the Architecture of a Democracy into eternal limbo and how the form or architecture ends up becoming a caricature is never told or heard. The studio shall attempt to respond to these inquiries through the question :

WHAT IS THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DEMOCRACY?

The new library building in Mahatma Gandhi Road, Palayam-  which has been recently constructed remains a caricature of the old building and leaves the most pertinent question of What is the architecture of democracy.  What could be the new State Library?

The studio attempts to reimagine this public typology by asking the pertinent question of what the architecture of democracy means in civic buildings like state libraries and how can we rethink this civic architecture.  What would be the negotiations of this civic architecture in this administrative core of the state? How would we programmatically define publicness in this civic architecture? What would be the democratic/responsive gesture to the city and civic?