Kshiraja Krishnan
About
Kshiraja is a design practitioner turned historian and writer who is interested in the entanglements between the forces that shape policy, design and public culture.
During the MA, Kshiraja’s research explored a range of themes through interdisciplinary approaches, framing design as a node in the complex network that both facilitates and is facilitated through it. Her dissertation located the spatial production of cinema halls in late-colonial Bombay, and through them the cartography of the city itself, in the contestations of power that shaped its built environment. By employing methodologies that ranged from archival research to walking as a form of spatial reading, and mapping as a way to process and analyse data, her thesis aimed to develop an interdisciplinary framework for the design-historical reading of colonial cities.
Her fascination with urban design took root during her practice as a visual designer engaging with academia and the development sector in India. She is interested in how the urban built environment — particularly in South Asian cities —shapes, and is shaped by, the forces of power and resistance.
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