The Brief

Calicut has since time immemorial offered a place for people from afar to settle down, conduct trade and express their ethnic culture through art, cuisine, architecture, and literature. It is truly a palimpsest directed by maritime trade, colonial politics and living communal heritage; often drawing and redrawing its invisible boundaries of new and old! Such a context that is perpetually renewed and ageing simultaneously. It offers room for timeless architecture to survive, while others to be replaced and rewritten through a linear progression in time. Thus, we argue that everything is historical, and context is nothing but fluid.

How do we interpret 'historical' in architecture?

Is it simply an artifact of 'a' past or a being in the present?

What can the future offer to such architectural artifacts of 'a' past?

What is Calicut's critical vernacular?

YAF 2022 calls for an exploratory architectural workshop where participants are invited to offer design interpretations that are critical interventions within historical contexts.

The identified site is situated along Calicut Beach Road and measures roughly 1.5acres. It houses an existing abandoned and dilapidated building (erstwhile Municipal Office Building) of the colonial era dated roughly from 1860’s. The Department of Tourism has proposed a Centre for Curated Memories at this site, with a vision to celebrate Calicut's rich culture and history. The workshop teams are invited to reinterpret the program of the proposal and offer a critique to the city's tangible heritage.

The expertise and criticality in built environment design of the mentors will surely offer the young architects a new direction to engage with the site and expand on the critical discourse on architecture of heritage cities. We envisage to host five mentors and approximately 30 young architects as part of this workshop.