AAYUSHI JOSHI

Portrait courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

Architectural Designer at Handel Architects

Student at GSAPP, Columbia University

Aayushi is an Architect and Researcher originally from Mumbai, India. She studied Advanced Architecture at Columbia University, New York, and is currently working at Handel Architects as a Designer. She is the recipient of the Student Award- Kinne Travel Fund at GSAPP as is carrying funded research on the contemporary ruralities of Hampi, India (UNESCO WHS). She believes that building programs should be driven by the community, context, and city. She seeks to explore the power of architecture in making conscious and sensitive designs that even with their limited boundaries can hold the urban fabric responsible towards the users.

Discord and Critical Narratives

What inspired you to pursue a career in architecture, especially sustainable architecture?

Ever since my childhood, I was extremely inclined in human anatomy, in fact, I was studying to become a doctor. How a large body is supported by numerous members and how each plays a critical function thrilled me. While I was prepping for the same, I started seeing similar patterns in my immediate surroundings, and they spoke to me more vividly through buildings. I started observing how my building doorman used his cabin space during lunch hours, how the commute route occupancy from my college to my residence changed at different hours. These naive observations started building my affection towards exploring cities, public and built spaces. I started observing similar patterns of the human body and the city: how the symbiotic coordination of buildings, cities, roads keeps the users and city alive, just like our organs.

Building studies came naturally to me. I was curious to understand the influence of spatial qualities on humans and their behavior. This eventually grew on me to understand it’s really a synergic relationship. That the user and the building feed onto each other there are so many factors that come to play. This drove me further to explore the ever-existing argument between the two.

Architecture, in my opinion, is that one profession that integrates various realms of human existence like culture, economics, societal context, etc. I see ‘sustainability’ a little broadly. In my opinion the codependence and synergy of the building along with the community, urban fabric, natural ecosystem branch out to be either ‘sustainable’ (cordial) or not. It’s not just about the building ratings, it’s about the kids enjoying their class, the birds being able to take their migratory routes, the grandfather enjoying the bench in the park.

Exploring functions and intertwining cities of Copula Hall based on China Miéville’s fictitious book City and the City at GSAPP. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

Congratulations on recently graduating from GSAPP Columbia University with an MS in Advanced Architectural Design! Tell us about your journey at Columbia University. What was your favorite memory? 

Thank you! I loved studying at GSAPP and I am so honored to be a Columbia Alumnus. I was fortunate to be surrounded by such thriving, motivated and brilliant peers and an amazing faculty.

I was oriented towards breaking away from monotonous architecture and with my prolonged interest in serving the community, I sought conscious and meticulous guidance to architectural exploration. I urged to get familiarised with methodologies and operations in architecture form findings, alongside theoretical and practical applications. GSAPP helped explore this array of design strategies and investigations in various urban scales and develop conscious training to solve bigger problems.

Presenting Comity during the Fall Final-Review with Ghaidaa Gutub to Bernard Tschumi and invited critics. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

I was fortunate to have Bernard Tschumi as my fall semester studio professor. It was so insightful to hear about his experiences and ideologies directly from him and not through a podcast or interview (which I remember I fondly used as references plenty during my undergraduate thesis). My fondest memories were the multiple conversations with him along with my studio partner Ghaidaa Gutub on various territories of program types and theories. Our reviews (midterm and final) had so many important invited critics and personalities like Mark Wasiuta, Enrique Walker, Anna Puigjaner, Jimenez Lai it has been my highlight of the year!

Fall Final Presentation with Studio Partner- Ghaidaa Gutub at GSAPP. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

Tell us about your recently awarded Kinne Travel Prize. 

My research proposal labeled Contemporary Rurality is actually extended research of my under-graduate thesis that was designed for the communities residing in the UNESCO WHS site of Hampi, India.

The Kinne Travel Prize proposal seeks to investigate the repercussions and aftermath of the demolition and relocation of this community. The proposal is bent to understand the formal language of the current fabric and infrastructure to suggest an appropriate situation of the community residence in the larger context of the heritage site. It aspires to understand the need for the amalgamation of the community in the process of the tourism experience fostering the appreciation of their existence in the world heritage site. Hence the research tends to look into the resilience of such communities and their placements in such historically significant landscapes.

Model of one of the prototypical designs of the project Lines X Cities: Architecture of the Thoroughfare with Wei Wang at GSAPP. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

Throughout architecture school, many students are hesitant to participate in extracurricular activities due to demanding deadlines and studio culture. What inspired you to serve as an Assistant Editor for GSAPP’s Publication? What is the importance of practicing writing and becoming good writers for emerging professionals? How do you think writing about architecture helps you become a better designer and communicator? 

Expression is so fundamental in Architecture. Being in a profession that has so many ongoing crucial contentions, arguments, and debates, being an expressionist is as crucial as being a good listener. We are so lucky to be in a field where expression has so many forms; be it drawings, sketches, writing, audio, visuals, paintings, poetry. For me personally, even though being in a predominantly visual-heavy industry, I have always found comfort in words. Writing and reading help me channelize my thoughts and arguments that might not have an obvious visual to them. Being in such an introverted and absorbed design community, texts also help us stay in touch and aware of the world outside of architecture, eventually making us better listeners and communicators.

Trying to forward my investigation of the several discords between the city and the people, I saw the opportunity of working at Publications as a medium to get closer to the ongoing themes and narratives of various classes. I wanted to be a part of them all. While it’s impossible to do so physically, I saw the assistantship as a portal to dip my foot into realms that weren’t only restricted to my course but also urban design, real estate, and curatorial practices.

Spring Studio Meetings - Copula Hall based on China Miéville’s fictitious book City and the City at GSAPP. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

During these difficult times, you were able to earn a job post-graduation with Barrett Architecture Studio (BAS). Tell us a little bit about that. How did it feel becoming a designer, fresh out of school, during a pandemic? How does it feel to work at a women-owned firm? As a woman, how does that shape you? 

The pandemic has been really harsh on fresh graduates. It was a difficult time to hunt for a job in this fallen economy. BAS had won the competition of reactivating exterior spaces of the Brooklyn Public Libraries in 2018. While generally most projects of the industry were either on hold or running slowly, BAS was commissioned to redesign the exterior spaces of the libraries to make them responsive to the new covid-19 oriented needs of the community and neighborhood. We were working with new parameters like social distancing, increasing wifi connectivity, facilitating spaces for kids to study, and in general to engage community activities in this new world. These new parameters made me realize how crucial our role is as an architect in helping people adjust better to this changing world and how important it is for an architect to keep adapting and breaking boundaries.

Working at a women-owned firm was no different from any other firm. We worked as hard, as dedicated and Annie Barett, the Principal, and Founder of BAS is an extremely hardworking yet grounded architect. During the pandemic, I have personally seen her juggle work with kids and for me- it’s set a new precedent of respect and admiration for her multitasking.

Defending Under - Graduate Thesis, Living Hampi at Mumbai, India. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

What is one piece of advice you’d give to recent graduates and current seniors who are still in the middle of job searching? 

This journey has personally been so difficult and draining. It’s such a helpless circumstance for everyone and it gets even more difficult to make peace with the circumstance when we have no face to blame. In times like these, it’s easy and apparent to blame oneself for not landing up a job or not being able to see yourself through, this is when we should orient ourselves, count our blessings, and never look down on ourselves. For everyone who’s still going about it, I just have one word- Perseverance.

Presenting Final Review: Summer Studio- Lines X Cities with Wei Wang at GSAPP. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

As a young woman, how did you earn a position as a professor to teach Computation Design at Rizvi College of Architecture, Mumbai? How do you think computation design will advance architectural techniques and methods?

The pandemic put the entire world in a remote mode. This has been a curse and a boon both. Staying in New York, something like teaching in my hometown Mumbai was a far-off thought. But as the world switched to remote learning; it opened possibilities for me to endeavor on this journey. I was approached by my fellow peer at GSAPP to co-tutor with him. It's been a learning process for us as well. Unfamiliar with the education process of an entirely new college, it's been a new change to sit on the other side of the table.

Computation design methods have been swiftly developing in my country. We’ve been transitioning from the stringent syllabus to open methods of elaborating our ideas. Computation Design was precisely important for the students in a pandemic as it enabled them with tools to ace their ideation and represent them in the ‘zoom’ reviews. In my opinion, parametric techniques have a great ability to stretch the boundaries of architectural discourse into exploring forms, strategies and sculpting minds to think beyond restrictions. This is very important for a designer to keep constantly developing, challenging, and critically thinking design whilst keeping the stagnancy at a distance.

Copula Hall based on China Miéville’s fictitious book City and the City at GSAPP. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

Architecture plays a major role in shaping society and the community. Tell us about your project as a Co-Founder of a Sanitary Pads Factory in a rural village of India. How do you hope the factory becomes a prototype to serve additional resources to better serve women who are in need of sanitary and hygienic items? 

Coming from a family of teachers, lawyers, I was determined to choose a socially impactful profession. I took up the responsibility of participating in a social work organization- Leo Clubs, the youth wing of Lions Clubs international. During my tenure as a club president at the age of 21, we launched a social enterprise- Project Aasma.

The mission was to solve the poor hygiene and sanitation problems of women in rural India by educating and providing them with easy access to sanitary napkins at an affordable cost. In our target sites- 2 rural regions on the outskirts of Mumbai – Kasara, and Wada, an alarming 98% of the menstruating women didn’t use sanitary napkins, and a majority were even reluctant to switch from the unimaginable alternative methods currently in practice. With my fellow team members, we set up a production unit that was run by the women for the women. The non-profit organization was strategized to be self-sustainable and eventually reach out to all the women in the regions to get familiarized, educated, and access basic hygiene.

Seeing this project through has grounded me as a human and made me inquisitive about the potential of architecture to solve greater problems. Aasma has been a pivotal project in my professional as well as a personal journey.

Prototypes for the Project Lines X Cities: Architecture of the Thoroughfare with Wei Wang at GSAPP. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

Based on your experiences as an architectural student, and now, a designer in New York City, how do you hope to imagine how user-oriented design within different scales may help communities thrive? How do you hope to improve community circumstances in Mumbai? 

New York is such an excellent and appropriate example to see and experience the participation of the people in the designs around. From public plazas to privately-owned-public spaces, we can see people’s participation in policy-making as well as implementation. From journalists, designers, users, libraries, museums, everyone has been oriented towards creating spaces that are symbiotic with the needs, aesthetics as well usability. I do not mean to imply that all the designs have been perfect, there is too much contention to that. But I am saying, widely, there has been good faith, motive, and intention to build for the people. And in case there isn’t, New Yorkers are very vigilant with what they want! And this is such a fun way to think and create. I am hoping to participate, listen and learn to these silent nuances and instances in the city and customize solutions for the same.

Having said that, Mumbai is not far from this participative goal. I hope personally I get a chance to make these impacts and take decisions at various scales that orchestrate the movements and flow of people in and out of a building to the city.

Programmatic experimentation of movement and type at Fall Studio by Bernard Tschumi with Ghaidaa Gutub at GSAPP. Image courtesy of Aayushi Joshi.

 In terms of rising concerns and problems (in the architectural profession) over the past year, what is one change that you wish saw would happen and it did not?

Architects and Designers have this tendency of misunderstanding over-working in the name of ‘passion’. This tendency of cleaning each and every line of the drawing at micro zoom (which might not be relevant on the plot), creating nonstop iterations, and overburdening themselves with unrealistic deadlines have an irreversible impact on mental health. I am not saying creating several iterations is wrong, my opinion is that there needs to be a clear consciousness of the limitations as designers and the worth of your time and efforts. The line of the design itself is a blurry one. We often tend to overstep the boundaries and undermine the value of the compensation we receive and the time we invest. This in fact leads to being unsatisfied with work always. It’s saddening that aspiring and passionate designers are overworked, underpaid, and always tired, especially after paying such heavy architecture school fees. I wish we as a community become a little more aware of our own boundaries (subjectively differing as it may) and discipline ourselves to manage time, funds, and energy in the right balance. In a conversation with a fellow architect peer, we reflected on what will turn out to be if we quote our fees as designers against the success or resale price of the buildings and in turn get the valued compensation for the work along with the respect that this profession gives us.