New Faces at the South Asia Center

-Haley Kulakowski

We would like to welcome Sarosh Anklesaria, Assistant Professor of Architecture, to the South Asia Center community. Anklesaria joined Syracuse University in Fall 2011. Before joining academia Sarosh worked in Europe, the United States, and ran his own award winning practice, which continues to thrive today. Sarosh grew up and studied in Ahmedabad, India, a city renowned for both its historic and modern architecture. He says, “In a sense, I was very privileged to grow up in that environment and to have many famous architects’ work looming large.” He subsequently graduated from Cornell University with a Masters in Architecture, where he studied the intersection of postindustrial landscapes and urbanism in the Northeast corridor of the United States and furthered his interest in the rapid urbanism of the developing world.

Sarosh's research interests lie in the vast spectrum of architectural production that happens without architects. He says, “There’s a billion people in the world who are essentially living in squatter settlements and these are sites that have historically been underrepresented, under researched and under theorized. If growth in the developing world must also allow for a reduced carbon footprint, develop alternatives to automobile dependency and accommodate high densities, then the sites of the urban informal offer a fantastic opportunity to develop a truly alternative model of the contemporary city.” In keeping with this theme, Sarosh is currently teaching a Thesis Research Studio titled ‘Informal Redux’ which investigates ways of meaningfully engaging with urban informality in developing world contexts –specifically South East Asia and Latin America.

This summer, Sarosh plans to take a group of students on a summer program to Mumbai entitled “Mumbai: Landscape of Urban Misuse”. The program will study the various contrasts and juxtapositions in Mumbai's everyday urbanism and the numerous micro cities that thrive within the larger metropolis. Coming from the heat of western India, what does Sarosh think about the Syracuse winter? Well, he is happy to report that he has been bicycling through every single winter at Syracuse! He hopes to keep it up in the future. Good luck with that, Sarosh!