About

A travel based design studio to understand the vernacular architecture of Ladakh

and design in response to it. Vernacular built forms all over the world are observed to
be intuitive, sustainable and community driven. The workshop prompts the students
to explore context responsive buildings within the background of Ladakh, its local
materials and their craft. Ladakh being at the cusp of a very fast cultural-economic shift
makes it a place to explore the true potential for this project.

The workshop will be conducted in collaboration between,

Field Architects and Achi Association India.

Venue:
Palay House, Phey, Ladakh, a collaborative project between Achi Association India
and Arthshila. It is being set up as a Makerspace and Research Centre of Himalayan
material culture to be the pioneering influence on the process of urban development in
this fragile ecosystem, by generating circular economies deeply rooted in the region’s
geo-cultural heritage. We hope to do so with exchange of professional and creative
expertise in generating infrastructure and entrepreneurship, training and education
programs in collaboration with artisans working with local materials which exemplify our
commitment to access, inclusion and social justice.

Proposed Dates: 15 May - 28 May 2024

CONTEXT and ANATOMY

Architecture through the lens of
Vernacular and Conservation

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 Tutors

Faiza Khan
Founding Partner
www.fieldarchitects.in
Faiza Khan earned her B Arch from AoA, Mumbai, and pursued M Arch from Barcelona
Institute of Architecture in 2011. She has worked with Serie Architects, Malik Architecture,
Stantec, and Studio Mumbai. She is an avid learner, and observant towards the local
context and lifestyle that help her mould, appropriate, and execute the wide variety
and scales of projects with utmost sincerity. She is trained under Ruedi Krebs, a Swiss
master artisan, for lime and earthen finishes while working on Ganga Maki Textile Studio.

Suril Patel
Founding Partner
www.fieldarchitects.in
PROJECT PROJECT STAGE DRAWING NAME DWG NUM SCALE DD/MM/YY
Suril Patel has worked with Serie Architects, in Mumbai, Beijing, and London for about a
ALL THE DIMENSIONS ARE IN 'unit' A3 ## / ## FIELD ARCHITECTS
decade, and experienced working with Studio Mumbai for Ganga Maki Textile Studio in
Uttarakhand. He pursued his B Arch in 2005 from IED, Gujarat. He regards processes
related to design, representation, and construction as the fundamental aspects of the
practice and is a perfectionist for details. His methodical approach, engineering mindset
always push design boundaries.

Field Architects was formed by Faiza Khan and Suril Patel in 2017, evolving around their
cognitive travel experiences, immersive vernacular lifestyle, and critical observations.
It aims to deconstruct the indigenous built forms, traditional artisanship, and formal
geometry. While engaging with contextual practices the duo explores the deeper potential
of vernacular architecture aligning with contemporary aspirations. Their collaborative
spirit brings rich dexterity to the project.

For the past few years, they have actively collaborated on adaptive reuse and conservation
projects of various scales with Achi Association India, a non-profit organization working
to safeguard the outstanding but endangered cultural heritage in the Himalayas.

They have coordinated and taught the Passive Solar and Earth Building two-year course
and worked on various Passive Solar Buildings with SECMOL and HIAL in Ladakh. Faiza
has also curated the Sun and Earth festival of Ladakh in 2017, which had multiple hands-
on workshops exploring earth-building techniques and design principles for climate-
responsive buildings.

They have executed projects across many sectors and scales, and their recent projects in
Ladakh employ passive-solar-heated design. While practicing contemporary vernacular
architecture, they explore the adaptive potentials of local materials and aesthetics of the
trans-Himalayas. Their multidisciplinary team is made of masons, plasterers, structural
carpenters, furniture makers, and architects.

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 Resource person

Abeer Gupta
Director, Achi Association India
www.achiassociationindia.org

Abeer Gupta heads the visual Arts at Arthshila, recently led the Arali Katte: Celebrating
Nature Culture Relationship at WCS-India. He is also the director of the Achi Association
India in New Delhi and Leh. He has directed several documentary films and curated
art, education and community media projects. His research and practice are based in
the western Himalayas, in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir around oral histories, material
cultures, and visual archives.
He has participated in several shows, such as Project Cinema Cinema City (2012), Fibre
Fables (New Delhi, 2015) and Witness to Paradise, (Singapore Biennale 2016) and
curated, Atoot dor: Unbroken Thread: The Banarasi Brocade Sari at Home and in the
World (National Museum, New Delhi 2016), Old Routes, New Journeys II (Indira Gandhi
Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal 2017) Graphic Storytelling in India (KNMA, New
Delhi, 2018) and Urban Frames, Visual Practices and Transitions, Hyderabad 2019)
His publications include, The Visual and Material Culture of Islam in Ladakh (2014),
Discovering the Self and Others in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh (Sage, 2014), A
Sense of Place: Islam in the Western Himalaya (Marg, 2018), Material culture and art
practice in Ladakh: notes from a collaborative art project, in Arts in the Margins of World
Encounters, (Vernon Press, 2021) and Constructing Traditions: The Jamdani within
Exhibition Practice of Handicrafts in (Projects / Processes Volume I, Serendipity Arts
Festival, 2021). He has taught full-time at the Social Design programme at Ambedkar
University Delhi, between 2013 and 2018 and as visiting faculty to NID, Ahmedabad and
Vijayawada since 2010.

Dr. Quentin Devers is a permanent researcher at the French National Centre for
Scientific Research (CNRS, Paris). He trained as an archaeologist at the University
of Lyon 2 (France), the University of Pennsylvania (USA), and the École Pratique des
Hautes Études (France). His PhD about the fortifications of Ladakh won a prize from the
Chancellery of the Universities of Paris. He has been documenting the overall heritage
of Ladakh since 2007, including fortresses, temple ruins, stone Buddhas, rock carvings,
cave complexes, etc. He collaborates closely with the Indian National Trust for Art and
Cultural Heritage (INTACH, Delhi) to create a series of books on the historical sites of
the different subregions of Ladakh. Five volumes are already completed, in the areas of
Purig, Changthang, Zanskar, Nubra, and Sham. The surveys behind this work represent
over 4300 km of tracks covered on foot for over 1500 heritage sites documented. His
work has brought to light the highest rock carvings in the world, the oldest Buddhist wall
paintings of Tibet and the Western Himalayas, hundreds of rock inscriptions, etc. which
help bring to light unsuspected chapters of the history of the region. The results of this
work are presented and analysed across two dozen publications.

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 Resource person

John Harrison is a British historic buildings architect who has been working for some
thirty years in the Himalaya on research, documentation and building conservation. Born
in 1941 in the north of England, between the Pennine hills and the Irish Sea, he graduated
from the School of Architecture and the Department of Civic Design at the University of
Liverpool, and then worked on historic buildings in local government and architectural
practice. For the last thirty years he has travelled and worked in India, Pakistan, China
and Nepal, documenting and restoring the buildings of Tibet and the Himalaya.
He has written and lectured on his survey and building work in the Himalaya, and produced
and toured three exhibitions. He is the author of ‘The LAMO Centre: Restoration and
adaptive reuse in Leh Old Town’, and co-author of a monograph on a Tibetan temple
in Mustang, Nepal. He has recently authored Mustang Building, Tibetan Temples and
Vernacular Architecture in Nepal Himalaya, published by the Taragaon Museum.

Dr. Edoardo Paolo Ferrari is an Italian architectural conservation specialist with almost
ten years of experience in Ladakh. He holds a degree in architectural design from the
University of Florence and a PhD in architecture and anthropology from Oxford Brookes
University. He specialised in traditional construction techniques and the transmission of
craft knowledge. His main focusses are the repair and protection of historical buildings,
vernacular architecture and its building methods with a special interest for earthen
construction and other non-ultra-processed local materials such as stone and wood.
He is an independent researcher who published several journal articles and books on
the topic. He has worked in India, Iran and Italy, dedicating protracted fieldwork as an
apprentice with traditional masons and craftspeople utilising ethnography as one key
tool for research.

Curt Gambetta is an architectural historian and designer with research interests in

the history and politics of building materials, modern South Asia, fieldwork in the built
environment, and the spatial politics of waste. His current book project, Mold House, Mud
House, Marble House: Substitution and House Making in Postcolonial India, examines
the widespread substitution of imported and inaccessible materials in the production of
housing in postcolonial India.

Dr. Saloni Bhatia, Fellow, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies – Centre for Environment and
Development @ Atree, Bangalore. Saloni strives to contribute to global sustainability
efforts by complementing scientific rigour with compassion and inclusivity. She is
interested in inter and transdisciplinary research focused on understanding the psycho-
social dimensions of multispecies interactions, human-wildlife coexistence using
biocultural approaches, community-led monitoring, evaluation and learning, and capacity
enhancement of communities. She primarily works in the high-altitude Himalayan region.
For her PhD, Saloni studied people’s relationship with snow leopards and wolves in
Ladakh.

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