Shades of Theory is an umbrella term I have been using for a long time. Theory is often seen as elite and cerebral, which perhaps explains the general distaste around it. But I believe theory exists across a spectrum of shades — from a diagram to a text — each carrying different roles. Through this series, I want to gather fragments that may not intuitively feel like theory at first. As this collection progresses, the meaning of theory might slowly shift into something more palpable and accessible.
There are two notions I completely subscribe to. First: “theory is an organizing tool” (link) (Malcolm Gladwell). Second: “There is nothing so practical as a good theory” (Kurt Lewin). These two ideas anchor my premise of what theory can be. Through this sub-series on the blog, I will collect and share multiple fragments to extend and test this proposition. These fragments may fall within a field formed by two perpendicular axes: dense–light, text–non-text.
Here is the first in the series

This passage is from “Theory and Elements of Architecture” by Atkinson, Robert and Bagenal, Hope. This text is exactly 100 years old to this year : published  in 1926 

2. MEANING OF ” THEORY”

“ But when information is in process of being collected and knowledge begins — how apply it? How shall deductions from the experience of the past be used in new problems and new plans? Only by means of “Theory.” Theory provides the link between the necessary knowledge and the activity of design. Theory is the first act of simplification in the mind, it is the planning of planning. A student can make no single design without having first drawn upon some source and linked and arranged a number of confused elements on some kind of a system. That system is likely to be but still it implies a criticism, a picture 1 of the relative factors, a recognition of the enemy chaos and of the fortress design, in other words a “theory?” Theory is the framework of our whole thought it is the wealth plus the critical power we bring to our job. Upon theory unconsciously depends our standard, our range, our direction of development.
“This training is worth while, these preferences are sincere. I will go in thisdirection and not in that.”
Those are the kind of statements a student must be able to make, and to make upon sufficient grounds. His grounds are likely to correspond to his grasp of ” theory.” “

(All the bold emphasis are mine)

My note on this text : 

I just love the precision and claim of this text: “Only by means of Theory” — that feels like an excellent point of departure for this series. I deeply align with its emphasis on “how apply it?” and how theory “provides the link between the necessary knowledge and the activity of design.” It establishes theory as something practical rather than rhetorical — not in opposition to experience, but as a sequence and structuring of it. “First act of simplification in the mind” suggests a clarification of thought, while “planning of planning” introduces a crucial meta-level: thinking about thinking. “Deductions from experience” and the sense of thought being “compounded of his borrowings from others plus his native intelligence” strongly reinforce my premise: theory + experience, not theory versus experience.

This paragraph is drawn from the brilliant opening chapter of the book. What follows are chapters focused on the elements of architecture — walls, roofs, materials, and so on — but the clarity of this initial framing, at architecture’s threshold of modernism, is remarkable. The book’s grounding of theory before moving into architectural elements reveals an intellectual precision that feels both rigorous and very relevant 100 years later 

The book is accesible on this link to read: https://archive.org/details/theoryelementsof00atki/mode/2up

About the workshop 

This post takes a peek into the KVDF Workshop I participated in earlier this year. The workshop was spread over three days (Jan 30 – Feb 01, 2026). Kurula Varkey Design Forum is one of the key annual academic events in the country, revolving around shortlisted final year thesis projects from various schools. An event completely organized by the students at CEPT, which has been a consistent and distinguished platform since its inception. It is a vantage point to the finest thesis in the country. The previous formats had thematic discussions around curated categories of thesis projects . The discussions revolved around particular projects and spiraled from there to many delightful de tours attended by various mentors over the years.  I had attended these forums between 2008 and 2010 at CEPT as a student. The ‘basement’ at CEPT would be buzzing with intellectual arguments for those 3 days. This is the 25th year since its inception. 

KVDF, marking its 25th anniversary, embarked on an innovative format for its event. This year’s event was centered around workshops, featuring selected thesis students and CEPT students. Each group consisted of four thesis students whose work had been selected (and those who also have graduated since), along with three CEPT students from various years. They had to work together to create a project ( the outcome was open-ended; anything from a drawing to a video or a collage).

This is the list of participants from my group : Keerat Kaur Gill (SEA,Mumbai), Harshitha N Kumar ( SPA, Vijayawada ), Ria Desai (LS Raheja, Mumbai), Sachith Vithange (University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka),  and CEPT Students – Kunal Barve, Priyanshi Shah, Nikhil Joshi

The other mentors were an impressive line of heavy hitters like Smit Vyas, Kunjan Garg, Ujjwal Dawar, and Saurabh Malpani. Before the workshop started and when the list was announced, I was intimidated by this list and the past legacy of the forum. It almost took me the first day of the workshop to settle. The new format and the premise of the workshop also challenged me. It was a nice opportunity to step from the everyday classes at Mysore and to experiment a bit with students whom I had not met before. The format was also an experiment, where I got to test some of my pedagogical ideas of drawing, tracing, and collaboration in creative work.

Note for the theme of the workshop – ( I wrote this before I went to the workshop as the premise to operate.) 

The workshop will be anchored in the notion of tracing—both as a medium and as an act of thinking. 

Building on this premise, the workshop will begin with the creation of a large base drawing (digital collage print to save time), conceived as a stitched collage of plans. This composite drawing will act as a ground. Over this, multiple layers of tracing will be developed—varying in scale, theme, and intent—using overlays to incrementally build meaning. The emphasis will be on layering, deviation, refinement, and the productive tension between continuity and departure. The workshop will be drawing-intensive, supported by a small number of short interactions to frame and reflect on the process. This is more on the method yet, finding a way to anchor with the theme of ‘time‘.

Process:

As this was an open-ended workshop, the mentors were given a theme note two weeks earlier, while the students’ work was shared only two days prior to the workshop.One of the starting points for me was the question: how can four students—deeply embedded in their thesis work, yet now carrying some distance after graduation—engage with the workshop together? Alongside them were three CEPT students from the third and fifth year. I was keen to explore collaboration within this mix. The students came from varied schools and backgrounds, with very different methods of enquiry. Coincidentally, all the theses in this group were related to adaptive reuse. At a personal level, I have been revisiting tracing as a way to slow down—an embodied mode of thinking and exploration. This became the premise I set for the workshop. The concept note on Tracing from Jessica Helfand and Niall McLaughlin explorations on the same theme (shared below) are key anchors and precedents for this workshop. 

Act of drawing:

On Day 1, the four theses were collapsed into a single digital drawing and printed as a 6’×3’ sheet on cartridge paper. We spent time discussing the idea of collage—assigning each thesis a colour, negotiating scale, and determining the size so that all seven participants could sit around intimately around the drawing and work on it simultaneously.

Day 2 was devoted entirely to tracing. Each student worked on an A3 tracing sheet. A session of tracing lasted about 40 minutes, followed by an equally long break. In each session, students traced using a single colour. For the next session, they shifted positions and began again. After every round, we paused to discuss what each layer would engage with—colour, pattern, method, or emphasis. Over five such layers, the drawing began to transform. And the participants too. The original base both dissolved and re-emerged, gradually becoming a composite where individual authorship receded into the larger act of making.

[ Sachith, a team member, upon reading this blog, shared a much sharper perspective on how the 5 layers and stages of drawing advanced. His note :

“The layers had different approaches. The first layer was about drawing intuitively on others’ drawings, though by the end some of us felt we needed some kind of guidance. So for the second layer, we worked with the term ‘movement.’ We felt the first layer was better at collapsing the drawing, but we still needed some motive through which we could work together. In the third layer, we introduced a physical constraint: drawing a continuous line over the drawing, while still keeping the freedom to start and end at any point we liked. This layer was transformative. We felt that all of us really started to collaborate, and the base drawing truly collapsed and became ‘one.’

The fourth layer was about adding shapes and hatches. After that, we felt we had to add another layer similar to the third, so we ended the tracing process with the fifth layer—not as a point of end, but as a base to begin another process” ] Note added to original post on May 3, 2026

On Day 3, the students independently presented the outcome as a video with a voiceover, reflecting on both the process and their learnings.

Through this process, four distinct theses became one shared drawing. The slow act of tracing created space—for conversation, for digression, for ease. Much of the learning happened within this act of drawing itself.

Below are the key slides from the final presentation I gave, which covered the intent, method and precedents for this approach. Also some photos from the event

Notes:

A note of thanks to Shreyas Baindur and Madhuri Rao for all the constructive feedback at the initial idea stage.
All photos and videos are credited to the KVDF organizing team, participants in my team, Shubhanshi, myself and other members of the event.

For my second semester here, I am testing notebooks as the primary recorder of the semester’s learning. I am not sure if this is a teachable habit. I came to keeping a notebook rather late. It was at CEPT that I first noticed everyone carrying one, almost as an extension of themselves. It felt like a fertile ground—to note ideas, to hold fragments, to plant seeds for later. A recent sketch by Nick Sousanis (bottom of the this blog post) , on how AI is affecting learning, brought this back to me. In a time when so much is quick, searchable, and already available, there is value in recording ideas by hand, in one’s own way. There is nothing radical about it. Perhaps that is exactly why it feels more important now. I have hesitantly brought this into the lesson plan for the Theory course I teach. I have tried it before and failed, as it takes constant followup and editing. I may be failing at it again. But I still think it matters. I have been introducing the notebook, or the journal, as a base for collecting ideas and finding patterns. It is beginning to seem like a necessary place to hold the rawness of analog teaching—its slowness, its immediacy, and its small surprises.

This is a note I shared with students:

In a time when so much is quick, searchable, and already available, there is value in recording ideas by hand, in one’s own way. There is nothing radical about it. Perhaps that is exactly why it feels more important now. Simon Unwin’s books have been a steady source of hope in this regard. Analyzing Architecture and 25 Buildings Every Architect Should Know come out of reading, and those readings are captured in notebooks—a collection of ideas, thoughts, and observations. It is a simple act, but a powerful one. I also came across two videos on keeping a notebook, and they were quietly encouraging. There was a glimpse into one of his sketchbooks, which he generously shared. It felt like a rare peek into the working mind of an author.

Here are very resourceful links to the videos and notebooks he has generously shared
Video 1 : https://youtu.be/56FoldUYFk0
Video 2 : https://youtu.be/ziHwroH0VXM

And the link to access his note books. http://simonunwin.com/notebooks/entrance.pdf?v=2
More on his website : http://simonunwin.com
The screen shots in this post are extracts from the notebook named ‘Entrance’

There is that old saying, often attributed to Chinese wisdom: “The faintest ink is better than the strongest memory.”

That line stays with me.

The idea behind the notebook assignment is to build a habit along those lines: to write, to observe, to collect, and to return.