MOD Institute is an international collective of architects, designers, researchers, curators and practitioners with engaged interests in, and interests for engagement with, the urbanisation processes in India. MOD emerged out of cross-national concerns and engagements with the present state of debate about urbanisation in India and its representations in Europe. A growing discomfort with the way ‘
design’ – both as an approach for making sense of one’s surroundings and the interactions with it, and also as an instrument of intervention – is practiced and talked about, necessitated the creation of mod. The goal of MOD is to establish an integrated information platform for various kinds of data – from topographic surveys to emotional maps – on Indian cities, which will be open-source, multi-authored and open to debate/modifications. Learning to observe and describe the urban field – to demystify and to help to design them further.
