Author: Dev Thakker
Site Location: Nava Raipur, Chhattisgarh
Institute: Kamala Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies
Advisor: Prof. Manoj Parmar

Description

Frustrated by architecture’s loss of its ability to act as a vessel for social reform, this thesis builds on the social ambitions of Brutalism while questioning its monumentality and hierarchical structures to develop Egalitectonism.
Egalitectonism proposes that architecture can actively produce conditions of equity rather than merely represent them. It translates the idea of social equality into spatial principles of access, movement, visibility, proximity, dignity, and shared commons. It therefore shifts architecture from an object of authority to a framework for shared participation.
The Capitol Complex, Naya Raipur, India, becomes the testing ground for this position, where the separation between democratic institutions and citizens exposes a contradiction between democratic ideals and their spatial expression. In response, the project reimagines the Institution as a Park, transforming governance from guarded territory into shared civic landscape.
The central idea the thesis proposes, “Institution as a Park”, positions institutions not as isolated objects, but as smaller interventions within accessible, lived public environments softening the edge between the institution and the individual with increased public equity. A capital should not merely represent the state; it should spatially represent the equality of its citizens.

Drawings

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