UNDERGRADUATE STUDIO COURSE

RESILIENCE THRIFT

CEPT UNIVERSITY

13 JAN -17 APR, 2026

Catherine Desai
& Melissa Smith

COURSE BRIEF

Medium:
Films, Participatory Discussion, Multimedia Engagement

Outcome:
Public exhibition called “100 Ways of Representing Mumbai”

“How can the Nagari Film Archive be used as a primary resource to critically examine urban life in India?”

The Resilience Thrift studio at CEPT University explored architectural and urban responses to climatic stress in informal settlements, focusing on issues including extreme heat, flooding and the conditions of densely populated urban environments. The studio worked with students across architecture and urban design to examine these challenges through close observation of sites, engagement with residents and consideration of responses at both building and collective scales.

The studio emphasised approaches to ecological practice including circularity, material reuse, vernacular knowledge and building less. Students explored how design interventions could respond to climatic conditions while remaining sensitive to existing social, spatial and material contexts.

METHODOLOGY

Through a screening of selected Nagari films and a discussion on filmmaking as a tool for documenting and engaging with communities. The screening provided an opportunity for students to reflect on how narratives are developed through immersion in place and interaction with communities, and to consider how these approaches could inform their own observational work in informal settlements.

Nagari films screening

Workshop on how filmmaking can be used as a tool to better document and work with communities

Close reading of literary and visual texts

Guided discussions and reflective classroom dialogue

Connecting cultural narratives with architectural and urban questions

Exploring different ways of representing the city

LECTURES | RESOURCE EXPERTS

LECTURE

Gopal MS

As part of “100 Ways of Representing Mumbai”, students engaged with urban photographer and archivist Gopal MS, followed by a screening and discussion of three Nagari films, including The Chaviwallahs of Mumbai. The session explored photography, film, and other ways of representing Mumbai, with Gopal discussing his photographic practice. Through Mumbai Paused, he documents the everyday textures and social rhythms of Mumbai’s streets, drawing attention to overlooked details as living archives of urban life.

NAGARI FILMS

Four Nagari films were screened as part of the session, each engaging with a different dimension of informal urban life and the relationship between communities and their environments:

NAGARI FILMS IN THE CLASSROOM

Beginning the elective with several Nagari films established a common experiential ground before introducing theoretical concepts. Students first encountered the city through observation and storytelling, and only afterwards through critical frameworks.

This sequence made classroom discussions richer and demonstrated that architecture and urbanism are inseparable from the cultural narratives through which people understand and inhabit the metropolis. The themes discussed are as follows:

  • Multiple perceptions of the metropolis
  • Identity, belonging, memory, displacement, and freedom
  • Everyday urban life
  • Memory and place
  • Public space and urban behaviour
  • Informal and formal urban practices
  • Changing metropolitan cultures
  • Architecture as lived experience rather than simply built form

OBSERVATIONS AND LEARNINGS

The elective used Nagari films as a starting point for exploring Mumbai as a cultural and lived environment, bringing questions of urban representation into discussions around architecture and urbanism.

The course encouraged students to understand the metropolis as a cultural and symbolic construct rather than solely a physical environment. Through discussions across different forms of representation, students explored how urban meanings are constructed through media and the relationship between representation, social behaviour, urban change and place-making.

This approach contributed to the development of “100 Ways of Representing Mumbai”, a student-led public exhibition exploring the different ways the city is experienced and represented.

Want to implement the Nagari Education Program at your own institution?

Email us at: nagari@charlescorreafoundation.org