School of Environment and Architecture

SEA Open House 2026-27

An opportunity to visit the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA) Campus to meet our faculty and students, explore our studios, resource centre and workshop, understand our approach to architectural education, and learn more about our admissions process.

Our Open House is scheduled on three different days.
3rd July 2026 - 5.00 pm
31st July 2026 - 5.00 pm
14th August 2026 - 5.00 pm

Registration link in bio.

SEA TRANSFER ADMISSION

Vacant Seats Announcement for Transfer Admissions to Third Year B.Arch 2026-27

School of Environment and Architecture (Affiliated to University of Mumbai) announces one vacant seat for third year B.Arch for the Bachelor of Architecture programme, Academic Year 2026-27

The Transfer procedure will be conducted as per Directorate of Technical Education (DTE ) norms and schedule. The seat will be allotted and the admission will be confirmed after scrutiny by the Directorate of Technical Education, Regional Office.

Image Credits: Play(in) Residential Spaces, Varun Shetty

Human Life Forms around Trees
By Sahil Sawant

Sahil's thesis is part of a group show, "Never was a Shade", curated by Prajna Desai at Project 88. The installment will run from 18th June to 18th July 2026. The curated walkthrough is scheduled on Thursday, 18th June, from 6-9 pm.

His thesis explores how human life and social interactions are continuously negotiated around trees, examining how they shape urban space and gain meaning through everyday associations. Rather than viewing them merely as ecological entities, the study focuses on the interstitial spaces beneath their canopies—shaded corners and gathering spots—where communities rest, converse, and celebrate, turning trees into anchors of daily life. It delves into personal narratives of soft ownership, memory, and comfort, highlighting the blurred lines between care, control, and quiet trespass, such as picking fruit or collecting fallen flowers. Ultimately, by documenting these intimate encounters and emotional negotiations, the research positions trees as active participants in structuring space, influencing behaviours, and forming the complex human-nonhuman relationships that define a city's everyday ecology.

Choice Course 05
Interior Architecture and Design
By Rucha Pimprikar Nikam

This course introduces students to the practical realities of interior architecture by teaching them to design a contemporary apartment layout based on a real-world client brief and constraints. Through market research and project estimation, students will develop the essential skills required to execute professional design projects from concept to completion. Working with provided plans, they will devise functional layouts and articulate their design philosophy in a short concept statement. Ultimately, the course aims to equip the students to translate their ideas into detailed technical drawings and 3D models to effectively communicate and present their final design proposals.

Choice Course 04
Introduction to Landscape Design: Site, Ecology, Climate, and Spatial Imagination
By Ravindra Punde and Netra Palkar

The course is a five-week studio that redefines landscape architecture not as mere beautification, but as a dynamic spatial, ecological, and infrastructural system critical to addressing global and regional crises like climate change and urban flooding. Through fieldwork, analytical mapping, and design workshops, students will learn to read site contexts - integrating landform, water, and vegetation - to translate complex environmental issues into resilient design strategies. By translating site analysis into clear design strategies, students will develop the ability to work with natural and built edges and effectively communicate their ideas through drawings, models, and presentations.

Choice Course 03
Product Design
By Siddhesh Kadam

The course aims to bridge the gap between creative concepts and physical reality by teaching students to anticipate material behaviour, master scale, and understand micro-detailing before fabrication even begins. Through an in-depth study of physical properties, market sourcing, and diverse joinery techniques, students will learn to analyse the parameters, advantages, and limitations of various making processes. By integrating hands-on workshop methodology, material laboratory analysis, and field-based vendor research, this course equips students with robust, object-level manufacturing literacy.

Choice Courses 02
Gendered Spaces in the City
By Mario da Pehna

This course explores the historical footprint of diverse gendered and sexualized identities on India's urban landscapes from the Harappan era to the modern day. By examining spaces like harems, bazaars, and sacred sites alongside classical texts and colonial records, students will analyze how gender intersected with caste, class, and political power. Through text and field visits in Mumbai, the journey bridges past legacies with contemporary spaces to cultivate a deep sensitivity toward human diversity.

Image Credits: Shravani Wagh, based on the Painting "Portrait of Shah Abbas I and his page" by Muhammad Qasim (Isfahan, 1627 CE)

Choice Course 01
Whisper Collages: Can we speculate together?
By Prasad Shetty and Rupali Gupte with Mangesh Mahajan and Paras Burande

Beyond traditional maps and statistics, this workshop approaches urban "whispers"—fleeting rumours, fragments, and informal traces—as a potent force for sensing the city’s unseen rhythms and emergent futures. Participants will gather these elusive materials from platform networks, negotiated zones, and contested spaces, using tangible fragments like sounds, sketches, and observations rather than rigid data. Through collaborative reading walks, seminars, and sensorial collaging, the studio will assemble and layer these materials not to draw fixed conclusions, but to compose open-ended speculations on shifting urban formations.

This workshop is a part of the project ‘Urban Interregnums’, an urbanistic project hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona and curated by Teresa Calderia, Edgar Pieterse and Gautam Bhan. A twin workshop with similar methodologies will be conducted for students in Barcelona in October 2026.

Sem 6
SETTLEMENT STUDIES: UPPADA, ANDHRA PRADESH

“The Shifting Edge”
Uppada, a coastal village in Kakinada district along the Bay of Bengal, exists at a constantly shifting edge between land and sea. The study revealed how deeply fishing and weaving occupations shape everyday life and spatial organisation with nets drying in courtyards, boats resting beside houses, looms occupying living spaces, and storage spilling into streets. Facing high humidity, monsoon rains, cyclones, and severe coastal erosion, the village continues to adapt through incremental changes to homes and settlement patterns. Conversations with residents often recalled the 1977 cyclone through stories of displacement, loss, and changing shorelines, reflecting how environmental conditions remain embedded within the life of the settlement.

Our study documented ten clusters across the village through mappings, measured drawings, observations, and conversations to understand variations in occupation, density, and settlement patterns. Narrative drawings were used to trace not only physical spaces, but also routines, shared thresholds, and everyday negotiations within the settlement.

Studio Co-ordinators:
Prasad Khanolkar .pk
Rohit Mujumdar
Dipti Bhaindarkar
Richa Shah

SEA FACULTY ENGAGEMENTS:
CDH Visiting Research Fellows Talks
When: 15 May 2026 13:00-14:30 (UTC+00:00) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London.
Where: Mithras House, 218a

Professor Rupali Gupte, Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Design History, University of Brighton, will share research into non-standard home making across the state of Maharashtra in India undertaken as part of the AHRC funded project ‘Designing Spaces: Making Homes’.

The project fosters collaboration across borders, blending UK and Indian expertise to reimagine what sustainable living can look like by addressing every day practices of homemaking and design.

Rupali Gupte is an architect, artist and urbanist based in Mumbai. She is a co-founder of, director and Professor at the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA). Her work involves research on South Asian architecture and urbanism, housing and urban form, repair and retrofitting and the role of gender in shaping habitation.