Sonal Mithal

Sonal Mithal is an architect and works on the conservation of architectural heritage sites. She is interested in design sensibilities that encourage user experience, as a strategy for effective presentation of heritage sites. From that perspective, a critical understanding of human movement and hence movement as a design tool has brought her to explore performance studies. Her ongoing dissertation, in Landscape Architecture at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, advocates for the constitution of heritage as a function of performativity and temporality grounded in immediacy and the presence of the corporeal body in a landscape setting. The research prompts a shift in heritage theory and practice by accommodating individual corporeal experiences that create temporal landscape. Emerging discourses have guided her towards exploration of the interfaces of architecture with performance studies and landscape. She has conducted workshops with performance and visual artists from the Visva-Bharti University, at a site of river erosion at Santiniketan, India, to explore the significance of body as a medium to represent landscape. She hopes to carry forward her interests in performative strategies to as a means of practice-based research for the holistic understanding of landscape, representation, and heritage.

Saturday April 26 1pm-4pm and Sunday April 27 11am-2pm at Union Square

During a two-day workshop, participants will work in groups to investigate a commercial street and notice multiple narratives at each liminal junction by interacting with people on the street and observing the ways the street naturally guides people. The first day will be dedicated to street exploration, and on the second day will be dedicated to archiving the street exploration. During archiving everyone will develop a coherent narrative describing the communication between spaces and people using a variety of multi-media. There will be a focus on the body’s subjective interpretation of space.