Embedding time in urban imaginaries. A Conversation with Rahul Mehrotra

Abstract

Rahul Mehrotra is on sabbatical leave from his academic activities at the Department of Urban Planning and Design that he directs at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), where he has taught for years. He is in Mumbai, his hometown, where he founded RMA Architects in 1990. Moving between Mumbai and Boston, Mehrotra has built a very distinct discourse that has materialized into a vast collection of publications, studies and research papers —all of which were on display at the 18th Biennale di Venezia in 2023—, and architectural projects, most of which were developed in India. This ambiguous, binary standpoint between professional practice in India and academic practice in the United States, between urban design and architecture, between the large and the small, between political action, to which he lays claim as an “activist”, and reflection on humane and inhumane habitability conditions, was the starting point for the conception of this issue of ZARCH and also somehow steers this conversation. Mehrotra articulates a torrent of sometimes sophisticated, at other times apparently self-evident, but always inspiring and transgressional ideas, which revitalize our outlook on the world and shake up our prejudices.