PhD Defense: Itineraries of Residue

Join us in Didakteket for Asha Sumra’s PhD Defense. You can also watch via Zoom.

About the project

Materials make architecture, but there is frequently a disjuncture between the production of materials and the construction of architecture. This project investigates this separation through a specific building material: the Mangalore tile.

On 26 July 1862, Basel Missionary engineer George Plebst requested permission to fabricate an iron mould in Europe. He intended to carry the mould to the mission field to begin pro­duction of interlocking clay roof tiles in South India. The product of this endeavour, the Basel Mission tile, contributed to development of the Mangalore tile, a roofing product used throughout India and the Indian Ocean.

Using archival work, fieldwork and a background of practical en­gagement with tile factories, Itineraries of Residue shifts focus away from considering the tile as an isolated unit of construction to the construction of the material itself. Journeying across France, Germany and Switzerland to South India and the Indian Ocean, the project finds that the Mangalore tile was not one but one of many tiles, each speaking of commonality in production and multiplic­ity in material, place and identity. This reveals how a product of South Indian resources and a ‘civilising mission’ embodies a drainage imagination, a building system and a system of beliefs.

Distinguishing between remnant and residue, the thesis applies conceptions of the re­mainder from the Vedas, Jacques Derrida’s essay Reste (2002) and Charles Malamoud’s book Cooking the World (1989) to interpret tangible and intangible residue through the tile within cyclical processes, identifying the ‘Cascades of Remainders’ (Malamoud 1989; Derrida 2002; DeArmitt 2016) as a way in which residue holds potential as the foundational force for cycles of creative actions, constructing environments and producing knowledge.

Programme

13:10 Lecture / Asha Sumra, PhD Fellow, Cand.arch., Aarhus School of Architecture

13:55 Examination / Professor, Katie Lloyd Thomas, Newcastle University

14:25 Break

14:35 Examination / Professor, Kazi Khaleef Ashraf, Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements

15:05 Examination / Associate Professor, Jonathan Foote, Aarhus School of Architecture

15:35 Contributions from the auditorium

15:50 Closing / Claus Peder Pedersen, Head of PhD School

– afterwards, drinks and snacks