session 5

Elemental Coalitions

Friday, 04 September 2026,
5 pm to 7 pm 

VENUE
School of Environment & Architecture
CKP Colony, Eskar Road, Borivali West, Mumbai 400 091

or join virtually via YouTube Live

The grass genus Tripogon flourishes on the ledges of an abandoned basalt quarry. Its three apical awns effectively self-cultivate by drilling themselves into the soil. The awns make the grass tentacular, creating attachments and detachments. As it finds shelter in rock crevices and moves along available surfaces, the grass feels its way to situate itself, weaving networks with the terrain. It does not know where and how it will end up; it is open to possibilities. These acts of detachment and attachment are an outcome of an ongoing practice of what Haraway calls “collective knowing and doing.” Highlighting such stories of elemental coalitions in a ruin, the talk shares an actionable vocabulary for architects to response-ably build in the ongoing regimes of climate crisis. 


discussants

Sonal Mitthal
Sonal Mithal (she/her) is an architect, artist, and educator. She is co-founder of research and conservation studio, People for Heritage Concern. She serves as Chair of the Masters in Conservation and Regeneration program at CEPT University. Her practice, teaching, and writing transects architecture, landscape, queer studies, history, and conservation. She is invested in research-based artistic practice informed by systematic archival inquiry, political critiques, and design environments integrating contemporary ecological factors. She has produced large scale artworks for the Ahmedabad and Surat Metro stations that visualize lesser-known histories of the cities through rigorous archival research Her artwork, Matter in the Future Continuous was exhibited at the Nature/Sci Equilibrium Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2019. The artwork proposed possibilities of using decay, ruination, and agents thereof as triggers for regenerating aging matter. Her artwork, The Sentient Ruin was exhibited as part of the India Pavilion at the London Design Biennale 2021. Some of that work became foundational for the book Living together: More-Than-Human Ecologies for Architectural Thinking (2025). Her other books include Lucknow Queerscapes (2024), and IncLOOsive: Feminist Toilet Architecture (2025).

moderated by
Prasad Khanolkar
(SEA)


This lecture series is partially supported by Urban Centre Mumbai and is free and open to public.