Deciphering Doshi: Creating and Connecting Communities

We invite the community to join us for this free event at the BAC's McCormick Gallery for the closing ceremony celebrating our featured original exhibit: Architecture is Within Us: The Selected Works of Balkrishna Doshi, with thought-provoking and insightful explorations on the life and work of one of the most important architects of our time.

Join this special symposium and exhibition to celebrate the illustrious work of Balkrishna Doshi, with co-chairs President Mahesh Daas and Dean of Architecture Karen Nelson.

The symposium aims to provide scholarly, professional, and film perspectives on Doshi's life and work, situating his work relative to his times and unpacking the densely interwoven richness of the fabric of his life and work in architecture, urban development, and education.

With a career spanning over 60 years and a portfolio of projects ranging in scale, Doshi's work exemplifies the crucial role architecture plays in connecting society and promoting wellbeing, a sense of identity, and communal spirit.

Organized by the BAC, this symposium brings to the fore the need for social, economic, gender, and racial diversity in architecture and allied design fields. The original exhibition curated by Khushnu Panthaki Hoof, and commissioned by the BAC, draws our attention to the potency of Doshi’s work and legacy.

Doshi's approach to architecture can be summarized by his belief that one must choose to be a "child of the universe" with humility, curiosity, presence, and joy. His work draws inspiration from context, climate, culture, and craft, resulting in a steady stream of consciousness that reflects multiplicities of being, thinking, and manifesting.

While Doshi's architecture has been analyzed and viewed critically through the lenses of humanism, empathy, and experience, the exhibition uncovers his search for the intangible, explored through journeys across built projects and the contexts that made them possible. It is a journey through the architect-artist's interior landscape, written with ideas and outlined by the perpetual practice of introspection, recording, and questioning one's location in the cosmos of life.