Exhibiting architecture presents a unique challenge. Unlike an exhibition of say painting or sculpture, where the original works are brought to the gallery space, it is impossible to bring original works of architecture - buildings - to populate the gallery. This infirmity is usually addressed by presenting architecture through its representations such as drawings or models. But architecture must be experienced by us being bodily there; by the observer being inseparable part of the spaces sensing the ever changing quality of light and the very materiality of its construction. A few museums have recently attempted to reconstruct an entire building or a facade of an historical building within the gallery space but these too are removed from their context, which being either the street of the city on which the building stands or the whole body of the building of which the facade is a part. But then, these artefacts are represented only as works of art devoid of their meaning as places of human habitation. 

Does it then mean that architecture cannot be brought to the galleries? Certainly not. The engagement of arts with the observer goes beyond the sensuous and involves the cerebral faculties too. All arts embody ideas and architecture, being a public art, more so. It’s expression may thus range from poetic to political. An architectural exhibition thus offers an opportunity to foreground and highlight the ideas and concerns that have informed and determined the formal choices. Architecture’s representation in publication, lectures or exhibitions therefor is an opportunity and a site to instigate further inquiry in the mind of the viewers regarding that which may not be so obvious and which may be missed in simple pictorial representations. This is especially true for an architect whose career has not seen many realized projects but whose practice has also been an attempt to straddle the two horses of profession and academics at the same time. 

Jaimini Mehta is a practicing architect and an independent academic based in Baroda, India. He studied architecture at M.S. University of Baroda and at University of Pennsylvania in the Louis Kahn Studio,and went on to work in the offices of Louis Kahn and Mitchell/Giurgola Associates in Philadelphia. At present he is a Hon. Director of the Baroda based Center for the Study of Urbanism and Architecture, which he instituted in 2006. He was an Adjunct Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, NY and at CEPT University in Ahmedabad, India. He has also worked as Head of the Schools of Architecture at Baroda and Goa. Following his traveling exhibition which will be opened in Ahmedabad at CEPT Archives in collaboration with FAAA, architect has also decided to archive his works with the archives for future generations to refer.