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(Excerpt from Pedagogy in the times of Digital / DIY / New Media Ecologies a part of Annual Symposium Post-Institution/ Four Conversations on Spatial Pedagogy, hosted on 06th February 2021 by the School of Environment and Architecture)

I want to share my journey through the institutional ecologies. I entered the School of Environment and Architecture about seven years ago. In 2014, the school was conceptualized and was being put together by a team of architects. It was a collaborative venture where four practices were coming together to initiate a much-needed shift in architectural education. From conceptualization to actualizing the idea, one passes through many institutions and associations as one needs several permissions, approvals, affiliations and associations. Needless to say, one needs to engage through a series of hierarchies and bureaucratic processes. I was caught entirely unaware of these complex systems and loaded frameworks. Entering this unknown territory of institutional terrain and its complexities was nothing less than entering a labyrinth—a complex maze of processes and frameworks loaded with hierarchy and positioning. This labyrinth is further loaded with a set of frameworks—the rules and regulations which are the Minotaurs of these complex webs which must be pacified at various stages. To deal with these minotaurs, different institutional processes are developed. Being involved with the school since its inception made me enter into the realm of academic administration to raise new questions, to find and construct new forms of institutional ecologies.

Being new to the system, we started scanning through several thick booklets of rules and regulations and noting various nuances of the procedures. Every time we would get an email from the university, there were several slippages and overlaps which were difficult to comprehend. Being the person I am, to shift gears away from the set frameworks was difficult, and these slippages of information caught me off guard. To deal with these thick frameworks, one needed to first create a system to understand, decode and then sequence the practices to develop institutional frameworks. Some questions which emerged were: Can digital systems and new ecologies help us to create slender systems to navigate this labyrinth? What would be new emergent ecologies which can smudge the hard boundaries?  What role does the hierarchy play in any institution? Can we work with a network of people who hold equal responsibility?

While dealing with all the norms and rules, conversations and discussions became necessary. It made me connect to various schools across Mumbai to understand and build new systems. These networks and friendships created a new alternate system which passed through the formal top down bureaucratic system. The alternate network of friends thus allowed us to open up new conversations and possibilities to navigate through the formal systems. Digital space has allowed these networks to grow and sustain bigger conversations. This network is non-hierarchical and everyone helps each other to negotiate. Can such a network be multiplied? Can institutional frameworks be based on friendships, collaboration, networks and not on hierarchies? What would be an institutional framework that would allow such friendships to emerge and sustain?

Various technological interventions and networking possibilities are allowing us to destructure/dismantle the hierarchy and move towards a more flexible organizational form. We have been constantly experimenting at the school to rethink and reconstruct the institutional landscape. At the school, we are moving towards restructuring the hierarchical framework to generate a network of individuals who collectively anchor various school verticals in terms of administration, operation, and pedagogic thinking. The school is working towards a collective interface of practices that ask each other questions, build new knowledge and develop strategies to counter institutional fragilities. The aim is to move from person and post-centric working systems to a multidimensional grid which will perpetuate and never collapse due to individual lapses.

Complete panel discussion can be accessed HERE.