A New Architecture of Socialities

Can architecture and sociology exchange their ‘objects’ meaningfully? I explore one side of this dual possibility by focusing on the Indian architectural non-profit, Hunnarshala Foundation, through a mix of oral history, participant observation and qualitative interviews. Hunnarshala’s work shows how the central ‘building task’ (Norberg Schulz 1961) of architecture may be reconfigured as one of building a participatory and collaborative sociality in and through the process of design and construction. Carrithers (2017) sees sociality as ‘the propensity of beings to associate with one another’ which he relates to the human world’s ‘overflowing inventiveness in institutions’. Incubated around the 2001 earthquake in Bhuj, India, Hunnarshala is now well known for, among other things, participatory post-disaster reconstruction in diverse contexts across India, Nepal, Iran and Indonesia. Its work demonstrates advances on many fronts: conserving and updating traditional building practices for disaster readiness; technical innovations for building sustainably; policy impact; artisan training; and, a remarkable new aesthetic of profoundly habitable spaces. However, I argue that the production of new equitable, nurturing socialities - marked also by mutual accountability - in different spheres of spatial production is the prime object of Hunnarshala’s architectural practice. I will explore the architecture of new socialities in three arenas of relationality within the process of spatial production: a) Hunnarshala’s organisational sociality, arguably modelled on a ‘fluid social collective’ (Roth Smith 2022, 1818), b) relationships with disempowered ‘end users’ (cast as ‘owners’), artisans and labourers (makers), and c) with collaborating organisations. A key analytical focus is the tension between the pursuit of more nurturing and empowering socialities on the one hand, and the institutionalised power and status relations (for instance, those related to authorship or expertise) in each arena, seen in the context of diverse cultures of self-making by all actors involved.