Draft:Vikramaditya Prakash

Vikramaditya Prakash is an architect, architectural historian, and theorist. He is professor of Architecture at the University of Washington.

Prakash is known for his work focusing on themes of modernity, postcolonialism, global history and architecture. Prakash's focus on Indian architectural history is noticed through his work, particularly his 2012 book, The Architecture of Shivdatt Sharma (Mapin Publishing), on the work of prominent 20th century Indian architect Shivdatt Sharma. Prakash is the son of Aditya Prakash, a prominent late 20th century Indian architect and academic. He co-founded the Global Architectural History Teaching Collective (GAHTC) initiative with Mark Jarzombek in 2013. In 2020, Prakash published One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash in which he explored the life and work of his father Aditya Prakash.

Early Life
Prakash was born in Ludhiana, India, to parents Aditya Prakash and Savitri Prakash. He graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Punjab University in Chandigarh, before moving to the United States to pursue an M.A. and Ph.D. in History of Architecture and Urbanism at the Cornell University.

Career
Prakash serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Washington's College of Built Environment. From 2002 to 2007, he served as Chair of the Department of Architecture from 2002 to 2007 and Associate Dean for External Affairs at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Prakash's career includes collaborative projects with other scholars, in particular Mark Jarzombek at MIT, that examine contemporary architectural history, theory and practice from a global perspective. He has also previously worked as a visiting assistant professor at the Arizona State University's Department of Architecture in Tempe, Arizona and as visiting faculty at the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (now CEPT University) in Ahmedabad, India. These include the following:

Podcast
Prakash hosts Architecture Talk a bi-weekly podcast featuring interviews with contemporary architects, architectural historians, and scholars in the field. As of April 2024, the podcast had 151 episodes. American historian James McWilliams in The American Scholar described the podcast as a show that "seeks brilliance in the mundane" and "leaves us looking at the everyday space around us with greater curiosity, piqued by the weirdest and most beautiful of stuff."

Office of (Un)Certainty Research (OUR)
Prakash is co-design lead (with Mark Jarzombek) of OUR - Office of (Un)Certainty Research, a "research practice aimed at rethinking architecture in relation to the emerging scientific and socio-political parameters of the 21st century". OUR's design projects include 'Cenotaph for Niels Bohr', 'Tirtha: Recomposting Temple Complex' and Kishkindha: New York'. The office has exhibited at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale where it collaborated with the Global Architectural History Teaching Collective (GAHTC) to exhibit 'Many Houses/Many Worlds'. It has also exhibited its work at the European Cultural Centre in Venice as part of the Time, Space, Existence' exhibition in 2021 and 2023.

Global Architectural History Teaching Collective (GAHTC)
The Global Architectural History Teaching Collective consists of over 200 teachers of global architectural history and was founded by Prakash and Jarzombek who were co-PI's of a total of a $3.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation that funded this project. The collective provides practical lecture material for teachers of global architectural history and its library now consists of over 300 free lectures on its teacher to teacher platform.

Chandigarh Urban Lab (CUL)
Prakash is the director of the Chandigarh Urban Lab - a series of interdisciplinary international studios focused on contemporary Indian architecture and urbanism.

Books

 * One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash (Mapin Publishing, 2020)
 * CHD Chandigarh Architectural Travel Guide (Altrim Publishers, 2015)
 * Modernism in India: The Architecture of Shivdatt Sharma (Mapin Publishing, 2012)
 * Chandigarh's Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India (Mapin Publishing, 2002)

Edited volumes and collections

 * Prakash, Vikramaditya, Maristella Casciato, and Daniel E. Coslett, eds. Rethinking global modernism: Architectural historiography and the postcolonial. Routledge, 2021
 * A Global History of Architecture (Wiley and Sons publishers, 2006 - 1st edition) (2011 - 2nd edition) (2017 - 3rd edition)
 * Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon (Routledge Publishing, 2007)