CRUNCH: The Architecture of Imminence

About

The rivers of the Lower Gangetic Plains in Bengal have haunted modern cartographic and administrative imaginaries since the mid-eighteenth century. The flood-prone region and its frequently shifting rivers have become bywords for imminent catastrophe.

Drawing on lessons from this riverine landscape and its historical representation in British colonial surveys, government reports, as well as literary texts and field observation, Swati Chattopadhyay proposes how we might reimagine the architecture of imminence.

The seminar introduces ways of discerning, experiencing and dwelling that urge us to rethink the material and durational parameters of architecture. These practices challenge the prejudice of permanence that defines architectural history and practice, and invite a conversation on how we might acclimatise our architectural imagination in the face of global warming.

With responses from PhD students Christina Garbi, Vaishnavi Gondane and Aylin Gürel, and chaired by Stylianos (Stelios) Giamarelos.

This event is part of the flagship CRUNCH Series at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Speaker biographies 

Swati Chattopadhyay is Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture with an affiliated appointment in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. An architect and architectural historian, she specialises in modern architecture and urbanism, and the cultural landscape of the British empire. Her recent publications include Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire (Bloomsbury, 2023) and Routledge Companion to Critical Approaches to Contemporary Architecture, co-edited with Jeremy White (2019). One of her current book projects, The Art of Sovereignty: Making and Unmaking the British Empire, is funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. A Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians, and former editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, she is a founding editor of PLATFORM.

Christina Garbi is an MPhil/ PhD candidate in Architectural and Urban History & Theory, with a background in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture (Architecture BSc and MArch). Christina’s research aims to rediscover the built environment’s entanglement with water ecologies, within the context of water and cultural crises, assessing the role of architectural media and authorship. Her research employs a lens informed by multidisciplinary contemporary theory, situated histories and disobedient methodologies, grounded through a case study in Naarm/Melbourne. Christina practises through architectural media, including writing and reusable spatial/installation/exhibition design. Christina previously worked in residential architecture.

Vaishnavi Gondane is an MPhil/PhD candidate in Architectural and Urban History & Theory. Her research examines the intersections of architecture, territory and environmental change, with a particular focus on South Asia. Her work engages questions of temporality, materiality and landscape through historical archives, critical theory and spatial practice. Her doctoral project, ‘Maritime Architectures: South Asian Lascars and 19th-Century British Colonial Space’, investigates the lives and spatial experiences of South Asian sailors through decolonial and environmental frameworks. Her research draws on architectural history, postcolonial studies and the environmental humanities.

Aylin Gürel holds a master's degree in architectural theory and history from the Architectural Association. Her research focuses on migration and displacement in relation to the built environment, visible in forms of cultural growth, collective labour and the transformation of spatial traditions. She is the programme head of the Visiting School In Other Latitudes, which examines the in-between spaces of Mediterranean port cities in relation to urban politics and displacement. Previously, she worked as a visiting researcher for the UNESCO Chair on International Migration, where her research examined the histories and contemporary conditions of human movement as means for cultural processes and political expression. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Architectural and Urban History & Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Stelios Giamarelos is Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, with a multidisciplinary background in architecture engineering, architectural history and theory, and history and philosophy of science and technology. He is author of Critical Regionalism Abroad: Aris Konstantinidis without Greece (Zurich: gta, 2025) and Resisting Postmodern Architecture: Critical Regionalism before Globalisation (UCL Press, 2022), and co-editor of Deafness, Disability, and Neurodiversity in Architecture (special issue of Architectural Research Quarterly, 2024), Resilience in Architectural History (Special Collection of Architectural Histories, 2019) and ATHENS by SOUND (Athens: futura, 2008).

Image: Boritir Beel, West Bengal, 2025. Photograph: Swati Chattopadhyay