Speaking Spaces: Architecture, History and Urban Experiences in the Medieval Cities of Delhi and Agra

Speaker: Monica Juneja

October 30, 1998
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

This talk looks at the points of intersection between architecture and history and examines the multiple ways in which structure, forms, and spaces intervene in the everyday life of men and women through specific historical conjunctures. It discards the assumption that architectural creations are either static or passive for forms and spaces are believed to create experiences rather than simply reflect them. Nor do their meanings remain fixed but grow with the cultural uses that individuals put these structures to.

While the monuments of medieval Delhi and Agra that are available to us for scrutiny today were largely a product of royal patronage and therefore intended as a mouthpiece of imperial ideologies, we shall attempt to uncover the networks within which these structures were interwoven – networks formed by conquests, ritual movements, migration of rulers and artisans and the creation of marriage alliances between families. All these fostered collective experiences of spaces and forms whose semantics continue to acquire fresh dimensions with the changing needs and identities of these cities and their peoples.