Architect | Teacher | Filmmaker

Rohan Shivkumar is an architect and urban designer based in Mumbai. He has studied at L.S. Raheja College of Architecture, Mumbai for his GD Arch. and at the University of Maryland , USA for his Masters in Regional and International Studies in Architecture. He has worked as Project coordinator for the Churchgate Revival project and the Tourist District project with the UDRI and studies concerning Slum Rehabilitation and open space regulations with groups concerned with development in Mumbai. He was part of the Heritage Listing project with the UDRI, a project by the MMR-Heritage Conservation Society.

Rohan is the Dean of Research and Academic Development at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environment Studies. Rohan teaches Architectural Theory and Design Studio at the KRVIA at different levels in the Masters and the Bachelors courses. He has also headed the Design Cell of the school for many years. Besides his work as a researcher and an academic in the school, Rohan has an independent practice as an architect, has worked with non-governmental and research organizations as an urbanist, and has written extensively on architecture, urbanism and culture. He is also part of many architecture and art collectives like Collective Research Initiatives Trust (CRIT) and Collaborative Design Studio (CODES). Rohan is also a filmmaker, curator and has worked within the visual arts.

He believes that architecture and the city are the powerful indicators of culture. In them are represented the values system of a society, the aspirations it has for the future, along with its successes and failures. He believes that the academic space is a space to critically examine the role that it plays and be able to suggest modes to recalibrating the modes in which it is practiced. He strongly believes that such a critical examination can happen through rigorously re-examining of some of the presumptions that architecture assumes. Multidisciplinary encounters between architecture, visual art, literature, cinema, sociology and other disciplines can create spaces where new and relevant conceptions of the ethical and aesthetic role of architectural practice can emerge.

On shared values in architecture -

“…..I think those can be encapsulated in the very clarified ideas from the French revolution that is Liberty, equality and justice, and Fraternity. If one is able to calibrate what good architecture is based on those terms – is it just, environmentally, socially just. All those resources perhaps are being spent on something. Or equal or free… …But for me what’s most interesting is the word fraternity in that entire group. Fraternity is family, love, brotherhood. So it seems like it places love as the most instinctive and maybe even irrational imagination as a part of those four things. And I think that is nice when you think about it. Is your architecture a gift to someone you love? Or is it something that you’re sharing?.....”

Links to Rohan's Films -

Nostalgia for the Future, 2017

https://vimeo.com/197254894

Lovely Villa, 2019

https://vimeo.com/332947562

Follow us on Instagram for Snippets and Updates on all our upcoming Episodes https://instagram.com/broadcast.interrupted?igshid=n8p244jdy89u

Architect | Teacher | Filmmaker

Rohan Shivkumar is an architect and urban designer based in Mumbai. He has studied at L.S. Raheja College of Architecture, Mumbai for his GD Arch. and at the University of Maryland , USA for his Masters in Regional and International Studies in Architecture. He has worked as Project coordinator for the Churchgate Revival project and the Tourist District project with the UDRI and studies concerning Slum Rehabilitation and open space regulations with groups concerned with development in Mumbai. He was part of the Heritage Listing project with the UDRI, a project by the MMR-Heritage Conservation Society. Rohan is the Dean of Research and Academic Development at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environment Studies.

Rohan teaches Architectural Theory and Design Studio at the KRVIA at different levels in the Masters and the Bachelors courses. He has also headed the Design Cell of the school for many years. Besides his work as a researcher and an academic in the school, Rohan has an independent practice as an architect, has worked with non governmental and research organizations as an urbanist, and has written extensively on architecture, urbanism and culture. He is also part of many architecture and art collectives like Collective Research Initiatives Trust (CRIT) and Collaborative Design Studio (CODES). Rohan is also a filmmaker, curator and has worked within the visual arts.

He believes that architecture and the city are the powerful indicators of culture. In them are represented the values system of a society, the aspirations it has for the future, along with its successes and failures. He believes that the academic space is a space to critically examine the role that it plays’ and be able to suggest modes to recalibrating the modes in which it is practiced. He strongly believes that such a critical examination can happen through rigorously re-examining of some of the presumptions that architecture assumes. Multidisciplinary encounters between architecture, visual art, literature, cinema, sociology and other disciplines can create spaces where new and relevant conceptions of the ethical and aesthetic role of architectural practice can emerge.

On shared values in architecture - 

“…..I think those can be encapsulated in the very clarified ideas from the French revolution that is Liberty, equality and justice, and Fraternity. If one is able to calibrate what good architecture is based on those terms – is it just, environmentally, socially just. All those resources perhaps are being spent on something. Or equal or free…

…But for me what’s most interesting is the word fraternity in that entire group. Fraternity is family, love, brotherhood. So it seems like it places love as the most instinctive and maybe even irrational imagination as a part of those four things. And I think that is nice when you think about it. Is your architecture a gift to someone you love? Or is it something that you’re sharing?.....”

Links to Rohan's Films -

Nostalgia for the Future, 2017

https://vimeo.com/197254894

Lovely Villa, 2019

https://vimeo.com/332947562

Follow us on Instagram for Snippets and Updates on all our upcoming Episodes 

BROADCAST : interrupted on Instagram

BROADCAST : interrupted on Youtube

Hannah Schassner, born in 1988 in the Odenwald and grew up in Adelsheim, Germany, is a freelance theatre-maker from Frankfurt am Main. Hannah studied theatre, film and media science, German literature science and art history in Frankfurt and Vienna. Since 2011 she has been working in different fields of theatre, namely in directing, writing and theatre education – even though she absolutely hates the word ”education”. 

During the course of her studies, she had been concerned with the (political) effects of art, in particular, with the effect of comedy in the performing arts. Her current line of inquiry continues to investigate this theoretical interest through her own artistic practice.

In part I of the conversation, we discuss her obsessions and whims in equal measure but almost always through the lens of the theatre-obsessed-maker. Some of her critically acclaimed works like Kleine Leute, Heilig Blute, and Issa versus Illegal attempt to reveal the state of the discourse on Faith, Racism and Migration.

On different senses of humour -

“….when the audience starts laughing about people - Ha ha ha, he’s so stupid, and the audience ends with crying about themselves. That was actually the thesis. [It’s a kind of a] strategy, so I used the Master’s thesis to analyse a humour strategy which would be political in more artistic or in a more clever way than just being satire, for example or parody. That its always actually about the moment where you feel like, I want to laugh but I can’t anymore and when I laugh, I don’t laugh about the figures anymore, I laugh about myself because I am not able to find my place here anymore.”

Hannah's primary venues in Frankfurt are Landungsbrücken and Theaterperipherie.

Hannah Schassner, born in 1988 in the Odenwald and grew up in Adelsheim, Germany, is a freelance theatre-maker from Frankfurt am Main. Hannah studied theatre, film and media science, German literature science and art history in Frankfurt and Vienna. Since 2011 she has been working in different fields of theatre, namely in directing, writing and theatre education – even though she absolutely hates the word ”education”. 

During the course of her studies, she had been concerned with the (political) effects of art, in particular, with the effect of comedy in the performing arts. Her current line of inquiry continues to investigate this theoretical interest through her own artistic practice.

In part I of the conversation, we discuss her obsessions and whims in equal measure but almost always through the lens of the theatre-obsessed-maker. Some of her critically acclaimed works like Kleine Leute, Heilig Blute, and Issa versus Illegal attempt to reveal the state of the discourse on Faith, Racism and Migration.

On different senses of humour -

“….when the audience starts laughing about people - Ha ha ha, he’s so stupid, and the audience ends with crying about themselves. That was actually the thesis. [It’s a kind of a] strategy, so I used the Master’s thesis to analyse a humour strategy which would be political in more artistic or in a more clever way than just being satire, for example or parody. That its always actually about the moment where you feel like, I want to laugh but I can’t anymore and when I laugh, I don’t laugh about the figures anymore, I laugh about myself because I am not able to find my place here anymore.”

Hannah's primary venues in Frankfurt are Landungsbrücken and Theaterperipherie.