Winner
Excellence – Educational
Manisha Agarwal, Mobile Offices, Mumbai
Manisha Agarwal is an architect, urban designer, academician and is the founding partner of MO-OF Architects/Mobile Offices in Mumbai. After a brief professional training period at Reinhold Pingel in Auroville, she worked with Kiran Kapadia Associates, Bombay after finishing from Ahmedabad.
She further pursued her Masters in Architecture (Urban Design) during 1998-2000 at Cornell University, New York where she received several scholarships. In 2000-2001 she worked as a project architect at Rafael Vinoly Architects in New York. In 2001, she founded MO-OF along with her partner Shantanu Poredi in Mumbai. Her areas of interest and concern are community housing, educational institutions, hospitality and environmental aspects of design.
How has interactions with artists, architects and designers in WADE developed your perspective towards art and architecture?
WADE provides a great platform for a very diverse group of women designers and architects from different parts of India with very varied practices of design to come together. They can discuss several concerns and strengths which is both a great learning and a unique platform for all participants.
Do you think architecture has the power to build better communities?
Social sustainability or building of communities is a very integral aspect of all our design work. Our engagement with architecture attempts to create organisational variation, change and flexibility by integrating program with non-programmatic spaces fostering both the collective and the individual. Spaces such as streets, courtyards, bridges, verandas and terraces with living are integrated, creating a variety of chance interaction between the diverse communities.
Your opinion on WADE ASIA and its objectives.
This was my first year of participating in both the seminar and the awards. This platform provided by WADE is a memorable one, and I hope this platform in the near future can also reach to neighbouring countries in the Asian subcontinent. Another observation was is that as there are currently more
“This platform provided by WADE is a memorable one, and I hope this platform in the near future can also reach to neighbouring countries in the Asian subcontinent.”
Girls enrolling in Architecture schools, this platform could also be a great experience for students to see the concerns and potentials of practices led by women. This
could help re-imagine newer frameworks of professional practice which do not get addressed in school curriculum.
Some suggestions for the future.
The endeavour undertaken by the organisers is a great effort, and I am thankful to entire WADE team for inviting and giving me an opportunity to share our work here.
I have a few suggestions for the future:
1. The spaces where presentations are conducted could be closed such that the presenters become more audible and focussed.
2. The schedule of each presenter should also be streamlined strictly. This way everyone will give due jury attention.
3. There could be more jury members.
Note: This article was originally published on Surfaces Reporter December 2019 Issue.
