About

Dr. Vikramaditya “Vikram” Prakash is an architect, architectural historian and theorist. He is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington with adjunct appointments in Landscape Architecture and Urban Design and Planning. He received his B. Arch. from Chandigarh College of Architecture, India, and his M.A. and PhD in History of Architecture and Urbanism from Cornell University. Vikram works on issues of modernism, postcoloniality, global history, and fashion & architecture. His books include Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India, A Global History of Architecture (with Francis DK Ching & Mark Jarzombek), Colonial Modernities (co-edited with Peter Scriver), The Architecture of Shivdatt Sharma, and Chandigarh: An Architectural Guide. A Global History is widely used as a textbook and is being translated into five languages. His next book, One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash, is due in summer 2020. Vikram is also the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Built Environments and has previously served as Associate Dean for External Affairs, Chair of Architecture, and Director of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Programs. His public service includes terms on the Boards of Seattle Center and the Seattle AIA, and he directed Chandigarh Urban Lab, a series of interdisciplinary international studios.

Research topics

• History
• Art
• Aesthetics
• Engineering
• Environmental science
• Geology
• Oceanography
• Economics
• Aeronautics

Selected publications

• Modern architecture: A house deconstructed

  Open Access Government · 2025-01-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Modern architecture: A house deconstructed Mark Jarzombek and Vikramaditya Prakash, Co-Founders of the Office of (Un)Certainty Research (a collaboration dedicated to rethinking modern architecture), take us on a journey of a deconstructed house. Professor Vikramaditya Prakash of the University of Washington and Professor Mark Jarzombek of MIT are co-founders of the Office of Uncertainty Research. This collaboration is dedicated to rethinking architecture in a modern context. The office investigates different aspects of architectural production at the planetary scale. They recently studied a just-completed, modern house in Seattle, asking a simple question: Where do all the materials come from? As it turns out, the building industries, even some of those associated with sustainability, make it difficult to trace the origin and flow of materials. Some of this is because materials like rubber are obviously involved in a complex array of processes, many of which are proprietary in nature. Some of it is simply because there are no publicly available records, whether purposefully or not.

  PublisherDOI

• Maristella Cascciato. Le Corbusier Album Pumjab, 1951

  LC Revue de recherches sur Le Corbusier · 2024-11-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Prakash, Vikramāditya. (2024). Maristella Cascciato. Le Corbusier Album Pumjab, 1951. LC. Revue de recherches sur Le Corbusier. (10). https://doi.org/10.4995/lc.2024.22772

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Democracy: Symbolism at the Capitol Complex

  2023-08-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Information Technology: The Genealogy of the Museum of Knowledge

  2023-08-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Notes on an Indian Future Modernism

  2023-08-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Le Corbusier's Chandigarh Revisited

  2023-08-10 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  What is the relevance of the Chandigarh experiment today? Written by an esteemed scholar and former resident of the city, this fascinating book reevaluates Le Corbusier’s work in Chandigarh in terms of the pressing challenges of the present, in particular climate change, globalization, neo-nationalism, and information technology. Through a lively poststructuralist and postcolonial framework, this book explores issues of preservation, identity, meaning, and change, comparing how the Chandigarh we see today compares to the original plans and drawings. But this book also asks whether Chandigarh’s aesthetics, as well as the ethical tenets on which it was based, are still relevant to urban planning and architecture today. What lessons, if any, does the utopian ethos within modernism offer in the face of the climate crisis, rising authoritarianism, and the digital explosion? Via chapters focused on the hydrologics of the master plan, the symbolism of the Capitol buildings, and the archeology of the unbuilt Museum of Knowledge, this book makes the future-preservation case for Chandigarh as an ‘open’ work, a project that was set up by design to be ‘completed’ by others in times yet to come. Engaging and erudite throughout, this book will appeal to any student, scholar, or professional with an interest in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  2023-08-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ecology: Hydrology and Modernist Master-Planning

  2023-08-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985

  Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians · 2022-12-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Book Review| December 01 2022 The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985 The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985 Museum of Modern Art, New York 20 February–2 July 2022 Vikramaditya Prakash Vikramaditya Prakash University of Washington Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2022) 81 (4): 535–539. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2022.81.4.535 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Vikramaditya Prakash; The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 December 2022; 81 (4): 535–539. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2022.81.4.535 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search The Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective on South Asian modern architecture was a long time coming. As director Glenn D. Lowry notes in the foreword to the catalogue produced in to accompany The Project of Independence, following MoMA’s 2015 show on Latin American modernism and its 2018 show on Yugoslavia, this exhibition “reflect[ed] the commitment of the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Architecture and Design to expanding its outlook beyond the European and North American canon.”1 It could be argued that some of the earliest MoMA exhibitions on non-Western topics, including Brazil Builds of 1943 and the Japanese Exhibition House of 1954, stood just as much for themselves as they did to verify the architectural canon of avant-garde Western modernism. The question is, how do the exhibitions of this newer generation change or complicate the conventional narrative? Organized by Martino Stierli, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture... You do not currently have access to this content.

  PublisherDOI

• The ‘Islamic- Modern’ Project in this Age of Uncertainty

  Intellect Books · 2022-05-13

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Islamic Architecture Today and Tomorrow - (Re)Defining the Field; Scholars and practitioners from the realm of 'Islamic architecture’ consider its changing nature and continued significance. Reflective essays address the meaning of ‘Islamic’ in built environments, and the geographical, chronological, disciplinary diversity of a dynamic field of study encompassing far more than mosques and tombs. 118 b/w illus.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• G. A. Ramadass

  National Institute of Ocean Technology

  29 shared

• R. Ramesh

  Aalto University

  17 shared

• D. Sathianarayanan

  National Institute of Ocean Technology

  16 shared

• S. Ramesh

  16 shared

• N. Vedachalam

  15 shared

• Rajiv Kathpalia

  14 shared

• V Jyothi

  National Institute of Ocean Technology

  13 shared

• Pratik Desai

  11 shared

Education

• B.A.

  Chandigarh College of Architecture, India

• M.A., History of Architecture and Urbanism

  Cornell University

• Ph.D., History of Architecture and Urbanism

  Cornell University