“First life, then spaces, then buildings. The other way around never works” - Jan Gehl

Cities are constantly made, by people, buildings, train routes, roads, parks, vendors, skylines, migrants, and their lived experiences, interactions and actions. The city is (y)our workshop, (y)our working ground, and (y)our field.

Cities are places of learning through observation, exploration, interaction and participation. You will venture into exciting learning experiences, working with the city’s multiple identities and platforms of interface. Engaging with communities, NGOs, public and private bodies to identify and devise innovative solutions for products, spaces, systems, services, infrastructures.

The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing. - Bruno Munari (1971)

How many ways can you think? What really is “thinking outside the box?” what kind of thinking is done by the hands and feet?

Experiential learning forms one of the core methods of teaching at the JSAA. You are encouraged to undertake active participation in these areas of study, along with classroom learning. Experiencing spaces through materiality, walking through streets and Mohallas, having conversations with multiple stakeholders, observing, and using varied forms of documentation are key to learning. Experiential learning at the JSAA includes working with a heterogeneous group of professionals, such as architects, artists, masons, bricklayers, contractors, engineers and storytellers.

“Everything we design and make is an improvisation, a lash-up, something inept and provisional.” - David Pye.

Can you make with what you have, and can you make it work?

How do you find your way out of an impossible situation? Is design about freedom or about working with the constraints? Is design a process or a product? At the JSAA we believe that design and making is essentially about thinking innovatively and improvising surroundings and objects for better functionality, comfort, use and longevity. In our studios and projects students dwell into local and not so local improvisational techniques. You learn from the field. You learn to innovate and to make. You learn that design is about making, about change, evolution and sustainability.

"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.” - Susan Sontag

Do you want to chart your own line of Study? How to learn what you want to learn? How do you break through the existing structures of thinking and doing? How do you innovate across disciplines?

The school provides a creative, interdisciplinary and integrated atmosphere. You work across different disciplines learning to think critically and cross-sectionally, create and ask interesting questions, read extensively across disciplines, set new frame works of research and practice. You have access to an outstanding faculty group comprising architects, artists, environmentalists, urbanists, activists, anthropologists, lawyers, engineers and crafts persons. At our interdisciplinary learning centers, you develop expertise in certain aspects, with deep learning and sophistication.