PATIO Conversations
Classical architectural knowledge system:
from ideation to manifestation
Founder Neena Zutshi spoke at PATIO Conversations on the Tools of Building Practice on July 09, 2026.
This talk examines the tools of architectural production through the lens of the Samrāṅgaṇasūtradhāra, examining a premodern design system in which textual instruction and embodied craft function as primary instruments of building. In response to drawing and model-centric paradigms, the treatise articulates a mode of ideation that is fundamentally three-dimensional, generated through codified textual procedures and possibly, realised through full-scale operations on site. Evidence of direct carving and marking on stone suggests that the building itself becomes a design surface, collapsing distinctions between representation and construction.
By situating these practices within the relationships between architect, patron, and construction team, the talk interprets tools not merely as technical devices but as mediators of authority, knowledge, and labour. The paucity of evidence of portable representational tools such as drawings suggests a distributed model of authorship and demonstrates how classical knowledge systems enacted through collaborative processes that integrated textual authority with embodied craft practices and vernacular knowledge. This is reinforced with suggestions from the Samrāṅgaṇasūtradhāra - “allow the individual creativity of the mason to decide (certain aspects) on site”. The selective adoption of tools reflects specific socio-cultural and material conditions embedded within building processes.
The Samrāṅgaṇasūtradhāra offers a critical framework to rethink architectural tools as architecturally empowered and culturally situated systems that configure both the conceptualisation and production of built form.