The new winter program 2025, focused on Environmental and Architectural Design and Health offers a 10-day course at the interface between disciplines concerned with design of the built environment and scientific disciplines concerned with human perception and behavior.  The course is open to design professionals, including architects, urban planners, landscape architects, interior and product designers, historians of architecture and design, artists, environmental experts, health professionals, educators, researchers in neuroscience, cognitive science, sociology, anthropology and psychology, as well as graduate and postdoctoral students in the above disciplines. This course will be held in English, entirely on-site.

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Spatial Ecology 

People’s relation to nature has been transformative to human civilisations. From haptic experiences, multivalent spiritual and social associations, the discourse has traversed into statistical and numerical efficiencies. Conflicts and contestations seem to have reached a crisis point, with issues related to climate change, impacts of the built environment on health and human behavior, resource management, and technological developments. Over time, people have been alienated from a fundamental, primordial and essential connection with nature. Many kinds of knowledge, systems, networks, infrastructures, have been made invisible. 

 

The concept of Spatial Ecology prompts a shift towards design of human habitats that reveal and bring into view the interconnectedness of relationships that construct our world. 

Working at the interface and dissolving boundaries between multiple human sciences, including neuro and cognitive science, environmental psychology, anthropology, sociology and landscape design/architecture disciplines, this course intends to unpack the world of connections, the visible and the invisible, to decipher our intimate connection to the world. As our bodies experience the air, water, land and other life around us, we intend to discover the means by which spaces help us to connect to the rich, diverse knowledge structures around us. The process situates architecture as intrinsic to the negotiation between natural and human. Shifting paradigms, the intention is to disrupt this deeply rooted dichotomy and see architecture as part of a relational network that emphasizes processes and flows over objects. 

 

At MB India, the winter program will include lectures, masterclasses, discussions, workshops, field trips, landscape and architecture tours and multiple social events and networking opportunities. We will learn how scientific concepts and methods can help develop new tools and strategies in architecture, landscape design, city planning and design education. We will also explore the importance of history, regional culture and identity in the making and experiencing of architecture and landscapes. Every participant will receive a Certificate of Completion at the end of the course. Please read our Mission Statement for more information.

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​​Grounded in the culture of western India, participants will experience the rich cultural context of the Gujarat region, including the dynamic city of Ahmedabad, which holds many treasured works of architecture and landscape design including those by Balkrishna Doshi, Charles Correa, Louis Kahn, Le Corbusier and many others. Participants will be offered unique tours of work by many of these architects and will also enjoy day trips outside the city, to see traditional water systems and temple sites. In addition to local architecture, we will experience local crafts, music, dance, cuisine, and other rituals and traditions which make this region of India so important. At the heart of these activities, all part of the culturally immersive Moving Boundaries program, the notion of Spatial Ecology, as central topic, prompts a shift towards design of human habitats that reveal and bring into view the interconnectedness of relationships that construct our world. 

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