After a visit to Chennai with the MONASS team, I spent some weeks this summer exploring other parts of Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu was created out of part of the former Madras State when the administration of India was divided based on language in 1950, three years after independence. Though Chennai is the capital, it […]
[ 27 July 2017, 03:30, MAA ] As the plane landed on the tarmac, my introduction to both Chennai and Monsoon Assemblages had officially begun. For the past two years, I’ve been based in Jakarta, Indonesia–a neighbouring coastal megacity in Southeast Asia. On approach from the air, the glow of ship lights in the Jakarta […]
Lindsay Bremner, Beth Cullen and Christina Geros reported on field work conducted in Chennai in July and August 2017 at the University of Westminster’s Architecture Research Form on 19th October.
Two weeks ago I attended a workshop, ‘Bringing Climate Change Home: Researching Weathered Society’. The event was organised by Heid Jerstad, an anthropologist and postdoctoral fellow with the Global Environment and Society Academy at the University of Edinburgh. I made contact with Heid some months ago via her online hub Weather Matters which facilitates conversations […]
Chennai Field Trip Report Monsoon Assemblages is concerned with understanding large-scale and complex phenomena, namely changing monsoon climates and processes of urban development. As an anthropologist used to working at a more intimate spatial resolution, my challenge has been to find a way of understanding aspects of these phenomena at a more relatable scale. It […]
Chennai Field Trip Report The MONASS team of researchers – Lindsay Bremner, Beth Cullen and Christina Geros – spent six weeks in Chennai during July and August 2017, undertaking field work to better understand the ways in which the monsoon is entangled in urban life and space in the city. Our work was facilitated by […]
I am very pleased to welcome Christina Geros to the Monsoon Assemblages team as Research Fellow. Christina joined us while we were undertaking field work in Chennai in July and has just returned to the London office. Christina is an architect, landscape architect and urban designer educated at the University of Tennessee College of Architecture […]
The design research on Chennai undertaken by Design Studio 18 at the University of Westminster as part of the MONASS project, was exhibited at the Department of Architecture’s OPEN Exhibition from June 16 until July 02 this year. For more on the exhibition go here. For more on the studio brief and student outputs go here. […]
Videos of the Monsoon [+ other] Airs symposium are now available to view for those who could not attend the event, see below. You can also find them on the MONASS YouTube channel. Please share! A symposium publication with papers by the speakers will be available later this year. Key Note Sean Lally, Weathers: ‘Night White Skies’ […]
Next Thursday, 15th June at 18.00, the end of year exhibition of the work of DS18, the M Arch design studio at the University of Westminster associated with Monsoon Assemblages will open. This past year students have been working on Chennai, from the perspective of how the city and its human and nonhuman inhabitants interface with monsoon rain. Some […]