Conferences & Symposiums

VST convenes critical conversations across India and internationally — bringing together designers, thinkers, policymakers, and communities to interrogate the spirit of our age and chart more humane futures for design and place.

Curated by

Lect. Arch. Alexandra Afrasinei, UAUIM Bucharest, La Sapienza Roma · Prof. Arch. Shaleen Sharma World University of Design India

INTRODUCTION
In a world of constant motion, to pause within a place and listen to it is not to interrupt time but to enter its continuity — to recognise the present as the unfolding of a longer temporal trajectory. Discovering the nature of a place begins with sensing and understanding the historical and cultural process embedded in its evolution. The spirit of place, or genius loci, reveals itself beyond physical form: it is both a formation and a becoming.

As architecture, urban design, art and material culture confront a moment shaped by rapid urban transformation, contested heritage, ecological pressure and the loss of contextual specificity in a globalised built environment, Genius Loci Revisited proposes a decisive shift — from genius loci as a fixed essence to be uncovered, to genius loci as a living process to be sensed, read, understood and designed with. Grounded in Heidegger’s philosophy of dwelling and Christian Norberg-Schulz’s phenomenology of place, the conference brings together architects, urban designers, artists, conservationists to trace a progression across four registers of engagement, moving from the sensitive experience of place to its conscious re-inscription through design. This is a discourse concerned with the becoming of character, through which genius loci acquires both a temporal and an operational dimension.