Studio-X Presentations at SALT Beyoğlu & Summer Design Workshop

July 18, 2013

Architect Rajeev Thakker will present Columbia University’s Studio-X project in Mumbai, which focuses on creating a collaborative platform for architects, artists, planners, developers, activists to engage in research, exhibitions, debates and various other processes with regard to the future of cities. Architects Jennifer Broutin Farah and Kamal Farah will present their current research and discuss strategies for cities as adaptive technologies.

The event is part of a week-long design workshop organized with Studio-X Istanbul for a second year in a row, comprising architecture students from Columbia as well as a number of Istanbul-based universities. Together they will be exploring facets of Istanbul’s urbanization process through lectures with local experts and activists as well as through studio-based work.

Rajeev Thakker
Rajeev Thakker received a B.Arch. from Syracuse University and an M.S. in advanced architectural design from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He has served as the director of Studio-X Mumbai since 2010. He worked for several offices including SOM and the Arnell Group in New York on conceptual and architectural projects. Thakker moved to Mumbai in 2000, where he has been actively engaged at several institutions including KRVIA, NMIMS and Raffles. In 2003, he started his own practice a-RT, which provides consultancy and design services for architectural and interior projects, as well as taking a keen interest in documenting the city and various spatial conditions through cartographic, architectural and other creative processes. These processes are conceived and initiated to redefine and discover novel methods of viewing the relationship between subject and object, in this case, the city of Mumbai and himself.

Jennifer Broutin Farah
Jennifer Broutin Farah received a professional B.Arch. degree from the University of Miami, and an M.S. in advanced architectural design from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Farah is a Ph.D. candidate in MIT's Media Lab’s Changing Places group. Her expertise includes adaptive infrastructure, energy innovation, food systems, and human-centered design in constructed environments. She has worked with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Arquitectonica Intl., and has taught at Columbia University and Pratt Institute. A recipient of multiple awards, she has been featured on Discovery Science and in documentaries for GOOD Magazine and at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center (where she was an artist in residence), in addition to contributing to Wired Magazine and the Financial Times, among others.

Kamal Farah
Kamal Farah received a B.Arch. degree from the University of Miami and an M.S. in architecture and urban design from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he is also a faculty member. Farah is a research assistant in the Changing Places group at the MIT Media Lab, where he is developing future urban systems, investigating the impact of emergent technologies and virtual networks on physical space. Farah has advised organizations including IBM and the Ford Motor Company and led projects combining design, strategy and management for multinational clients at SOM and Ateliers Jean Nouvel.