Seed

25/01/2026

The Foundation Studio is designed as a layered pedagogical framework to equip students with the skills and vocabulary necessary for the directed studios in the subsequent years. Conceived as a year-long program, the first semester focuses on building ways of seeing, thinking, and making. Conscious parallels are established between the Design Studio, Technology, and Humanities to develop a cross-disciplinary understanding of ideas.

Studio Team
Kunjan Garg Thomas Kariath .chitra.valiyaparambil .notes

The semester began with Seeding, an orientation workshop led by Through ice-breaking, theatre, body-movement and team-based exercises, students built confidence and trust. This was followed by two days in Muvattupuzha, led by where they undertook odd jobs and cooked for the student community as an early lesson in responsibility and collaboration.

The journey continued with Making Matters 1, where students explored materials and techniques through making for the sake of making without the pressure of producing a finished product. Guided by .a.u.m.y.a.p.a.n.d.e and , the workshop emphasized hands-on experimentation and an understanding of material behaviour.

The AD Studio then moved on to the Drawing Module, where learning to see through observation, proportion, and representation became the central focus. In parallel, the remaining studio subjects were structured collaboratively, ensuring that each learning informed the next and continuously fed back into the Design Studio.

The semester culminated with Making Matters 2, where .mmma .alappatt , along with the Foundation Studio team, guided a two-week construction workshop resulting in six large-scale, interactive structures across the campus, bringing together ideas of force, balance, structure, and collective making.

31/12/2025

30/12/2025

“The Room of In/Enquiring Practice” was conceived as a studio to dwell onself within the process of a practice (methodologies of working). The studio, offered at the third semester level, stressed on experiencing the architectural project through process than by definition or output. The studio process moved between process and practice, where the students assembled and documented their own professional working space throughout the semester.
The studio’s focus was to develop a semantics of architecture through conceptualization and visualization. Throughout the semester, which was constructed in three modules, employing tools like constructing and reading analytical drawings, experiential narratives, critical dialogues, and model making to think through different concepts and processes of space, volume and form. Students took inspiration from literature, art and visual culture. They constantly engaged with the meaning of architecture and introspected design process through dichotomous practices of seeing/observing, listening/hearing, reading/writing.
The first module looked at space through the “in-between”, intervening by means of experienced parameters. Here, the students looked at interventions in space also from a sculptural lens, and the module wrapped up with a sculpture workshop. The second module was designed around critical thinking and reflecting, where students used a combination of AI, architectural diagramming and model making processes to understand constructed space. The studio culminated in understanding “architecture as an object” where they interpreted an existing context to create an object which was inspired by and responded to what they experienced.
Throughout the 16-week studio, students learnt and indulged their understanding of what a “practice” was – right from their initial sketches, they recorded how to absorb, interpret, draw, represent and archive their ways of seeing and thinking. The site was approached and understood outside of the variables in and around it, enabling the students to question their experiences on various levels, and to look at space introspectively.

27/12/2025

25/12/2025

Team: .r_arjun

The S5 climate Studio at SEED functions as a testing ground for environmental design. By applying a rigorous, evidence-based process across four unique sites—Kochi, Munnar, Ahmedabad, and Kutch—the studio demonstrates how climate can drive key design decisions.

Students collaborated to derive site-specific strategies, creating a institutional campus masterplan unique to their climatic zone.
Each student developed a specific block, translating the group framework into a detailed architectural resolution.
Validation: Using a blend of analog tools and digital simulations, the designs were refined to create envelopes that actively mediate the local climate.
The studio work presented here is an exploration of this regional adaptation, where a single brief yields distinct architectural outcomes.

1. Climate Responsive Design Studio - Semester 5
2. ⁠4 Chosen sites in 4 climatic zones of India
3. ⁠Precedent studies and study trip to Khamir, Bhuj
4. ⁠⁠Precedent studies and study trip to LLDC, Bhuj
5. ⁠⁠Precedent studies and climate analysis of CDS, Thiruvananthapuram
6. ⁠⁠Precedent studies and study trip to Malabar Headquarters, Calicut
7. ⁠⁠Precedent study models of Cochin International School
8. ⁠⁠Visit to Hunnarshala, and student interactions with Prof. Neelkanth Chhaya and Ar. Surya Kakani
9. ⁠Site zoning iterations - Kochi site
10. ⁠Final site zoning and climate strategies - Kochi site
11. ⁠Individual block plan and sun path analysis - Kochi site by Mubarak
12. ⁠Munnar site zoning model and individual block model by Aromal
13. ⁠Bhuj site model
14. ⁠Sunpath analysis and facade detail of individual design by Gopika PJ
15. ⁠Envelope strategies and radiation analysis by Anfas
16. ⁠⁠Envelope strategies and shading mask analysis by Aromal
17. Student work by Gopika PJ, Athul, Aromal and Safwan
18. Exploded Axonometric view of individual block by Anna
19. ⁠Individual block models by Kishan
20. ⁠Final Jury interactions with Ar. Surendran Alone and Ar. Pratheek Sudhakaran

25/12/2025

Housing forms an integral part of the urban whole and the Semester 7 Architectural Design Studio engages with this premise. The studio addresses the role of housing in determining urban transformations in the city and architecture as a means of bringing positive change. We look at this through the lens of Kerala and its rapidly changing ‘urbanscapes’ over the past decade.

In Kochi, this change is visible in the way that urban plots are getting denser and more gentrified- commercial activities taking prominence, infiltrating most neighbourhoods in the city, including the predominantly residential enclaves. All this development however neglects the need for public infrastructure, spaces for community in the city, and urban mobility for its residents.

The studio tries to address this condition by looking at one of the earliest planned housing neighbourhoods in the city, Gandhinagar, which was developed by the Greater Cochin Development Authority in the late 1970’s along with Panampilly Nagar. Once wetlands and paddy fields, this area now contains LIG, MIG and HIG Housing along with certain civic infrastructures such as hospitals, schools, indoor stadium and parks for its residents. However, the predominantly low rise development of the 1970s struggles to confront the rising market demands on land and the need to densify.

This is the fundamental question that students try to address while redeveloping the existing GCDA housing quarters in Gandhinagar, a live project set forth by the GCDA itself. The studio encourages students to strike a balance between a high density development and the organisation of density to create sensible, democratic and active urban inserts that contribute to the city’s social, economic and emotional needs. We look at a model of positive gentrification by proposing mixed use housing developments that have the potential to create diversified neighbourhoods that offer places for living, working, playing and communal activities.

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Studio Team:

20/12/2025

The Semester 7 architectural design studio begins the first step in the specialisation stage of the curriculum and preparation towards a critically engaging thesis project. The studio addresses the role of housing in determining urban transformations in the city and architecture as a means of bringing positive change. We look at this through the lens of Kerala and its rapidly changing urbanscapes where density and the organisation of density come to be of critical importance. Students are challenged to deal with real world complexities, demands of the market and economy, the question of equity and the nature of ‘publicness’ of urban inserts while redeveloping the existing GCDA housing quarters in the heart of the city.

What makes cities desirable places to dwell in? How can living spaces afford great urban freedom to its diverse inhabitants? What is the nature of a ‘place’ in the city? How does it express the social, cultural and emotional life of the city?

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Studio Team: