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!