Mod Institute, founded in 2010, is an interdisciplinary urban action and research institute that engages with the specific contexts and processes of urban transformation in India. It is an international collective of architects, designers, researchers, curators and practitioners with engaged interests in, and interests for engagement with, the urbanisation processes in India.
Mod emerged out of cross-national concerns and engagements with the present state of debate about urbanisation in India and its representations in Europe. A growing discomfort with the way ‘design’ – both as an approach for making sense of one’s surroundings, our interactions with it, and as instrument of intervention – as practiced and talked about, necessitated the creation of Mod.
These common concerns, emphasized by the need for cross-cultural, interdisciplinary collaborations have fuelled Mod’s work. Based in Bengaluru and Berlin, the team works with on exploring the underlying socioeconomic- ecological dimensions of the designs of urban fabric, everyday spaces and objects, visualising information and analyses, disseminating visuals, participatory design and mapping techniques in order to;
- Observe the socio-cultural, ecological and economic specificities in modern India
- Analyse the multiple Indian modernities
- Develop alternative forms of modifying the built environment and
- Design implementable models for the same
The goal of Mod is to establish an integrated information platform for various kinds of data – from topographic surveys to emotional maps – on Indian cities, which will be open-source, multi-authored and open to debate/modifications. Learning to observe and describe the urban field – to demystify them and to help to design them further.
