PATIO and Architectural Knowledge Exchange in the Global South:
Indian Ocean Rim as a Framework for Decentring Architectural Historiography


Saptarshi Sanyal, Sarah Melsens, Yakin Kinger, Amit Srivastava

This paper proposes the ‘Indian Ocean Rim’ as a conceptual frame that can help decentre traditional narratives of knowledge transfer. It reflects on the intellectual exchanges within the newly established scholarly network PATIO (Platform for Architectural Transfer in the Indian Ocean rim), to demonstrate how this maritime geography functions not merely as a connector but as a generative space for building practices.

Drawing on Pankaj Mishra’s conceptualisation of the Global South to describe decolonisation processes, we examine how architectural knowledge circulates through what Sugata Bose terms an "inter-regional arena," and focus on the circulation of materials, labour, and building knowledge that transcend imposed terrestrial boundaries. PATIO, we argue, follows Isabel Hofmeyr's concept of ‘ocean as method’ to challenge the primacy of fixed national boundaries.

By analysing the first year of PATIO’s scholarly exchanges, we make a case for reconfiguring architectural histories by centring flows of construction techniques, material practices, and spatial knowledge alongside, beneath, and sometimes in resistance to colonial and neo-colonial power structures. This paper therefore questions persistent epistemologies that reinforce distinctions of Western and non-Western traditions, and proposes a critical understanding of ‘extremities’—particularly the Indian Ocean Rim—as a generative rather than peripheral site to forge new architectural histories.

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