Madhavi Desai

Madhavi Desai starts the conversation by reminiscing the time she has lived and spent in Ahmedabad since she was born, except for the five years she spent in the US for her post-graduation and the additional two years she spent working.  While talking about her family background, she remembers observing her father’s medical practice and not feeling a similar passion for his work. Instead, she felt intrigued when she noticed an architecture student’s models and this led to her journey of joining an architecture school in 1967. After graduating from the standardized Gujarati-medium education model, she observed stark differences in the entrance examinations of college. She was among the six girls in her class and she fondly recollects her experiences, lecturers, and new concepts that she was exposed to over the six years at architecture school. She recalls her first international field trip to Kathmandu as well as her first internship, where she was trained under Ar. Jal Gobat in Mumbai in 1971. Bombay in the 1970s was quite different as compared to the milieu and society she was used to in Ahmedabad at the time. 
On stumbling onto her early subject of research, which eventually became a book, she describes how the experience of working with the Bohra community is something she cherished all her life. Subsequently, she expands on how their culture was reflected in architecture, with a focus on Ahmedabad, and her learnings from this research. Moving on to her journey to pursue higher studies in the US, she reveals that it was a turning point in her life, and goes into detail about the flexible curriculum, access to vast research resources and faculty, and such elements she became privy to. In 1976, she got married in Austin, which eventually marked a shift in her life experience and she notes how her comfortable job soon began to look less exciting. Thus began a journey that led to her and her husband’s decision of coming back to India, after which they had their two daughters. Once they started a joint practice together, she began to face the challenges of multitasking between being a mother and a practitioner.

 
Continuing the conversation on mapping the past two decades of her career, Madhavi Desai notes how they couldn’t be business-minded while designing for clients in Ahmedabad. Soon after, she also applied for a fellowship at the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) for her research on Bora houses in Gujarat. Based on that, she moved on to taking up an Aga Khan Fellowship. She further talks about the long journey of publishing her book, which eventually came out in 2017.  Regarding studying colonial and modern architecture, she fondly recalls the fieldwork involved in her study which was turned into a book. 
In regards to her experiences of engaging with feminist causes, she recalls how she participated in organizing an exhibition and meeting with women architects in Ahmedabad which led to establishing the collective Women Architects Forum and its purpose and evolution.  They held a Symposium on Gender and the Built Environment at ATMA Ahmedabad, the learnings of which were assimilated into a book published by Zubaan. She also talks about another book project she is currently working on, called Gender and the Indian City: Revisioning Design and Planning, which got stalled in the pandemic.  There are few funding opportunities available for architectural research and this imposed several bottlenecks on her study. She talks about the process of interviewing as part of her research, the questions in focus, and the learnings that come out of it. 
Her first book, Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity: India 1880 to 1980, which she co-authored, and her book on the bungalow in twentieth century India were very well received abroad while her book on Bohra houses was well received by students in India. Moreover, her book on women architects was also internationally well-received. She dwells on the concept and research involved in some of these works, which was driven by her interest in colonial architecture. She also talks about the challenges that the pandemic posed to her research. While addressing the conceptualization of the Feminist Collective forum and the Gender and Academic Leadership project, she talks about the story behind them both and their evolution. Concluding with a description of the purpose and afterlife of the collective, she talks about her aspirations for their future.

Madhavi Desai goes into detail about the projects she engaged in during her short joint practice with her partner Miki Desai, after coming back from the US. She recalls the kind of clients that approached her and the difficult experiences that led her to observe them as unprofessional. As a woman practitioner, she dwells on her engagements with gender and architecture. She remarks how it was tough to work while simultaneously caring for her young children and how she found it complex to juggle various roles within her joint family. 
Upon discussing her role as an educator, she recalls her first teaching position as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Texas, Austin, and then taking up more responsible roles in the later stages of her career. The first course she began teaching was – Introduction to the Regional Architecture of Gujarat, which she found to be quite challenging due to the lack of material available on the subject at the time. She maps her experience with the subsequent courses she designed and taught till she resigned around the early 2000s. She talks about her collaboration with Dr. Mary Woods of Cornell University and gets into the structuring of the project and the lack of resources available for the research and writing of her book; while also discussing the learnings of the women architects she interviewed. 
Expanding on the representation of women practitioners, she talks about the changes she witnessed in the architecture sector. She remarks that only in the past five years has any recognition for her work been sought and that the many challenges of publishing academic work in India are still prevalent. She concludes by reflecting on several topics, like gender parity issues in the practicing and education world, the National Symposium’s concept that was supported by the Feminist Collective, the feminist movement in India, and her experience in supporting bodies such as the Council of Architecture (COA),  The Indian Institute of Architects (IIA).