Reimagining living in the city was an online exhibition by third-year architecture students at Heriot Watt University Dubai campus curated by Dr. Harpreet Seth and Manupriam. The exhibition showcased social narratives as architectural collages of drawings, sketches, photo montages as voices of the end user; a social design experiment with the end user.

Designers across the globe are creating architecture that is at the unimaginable crossroad of innovation and client brief. These new paradigms have shaped our habitats, place of work and interactions. They impact our living in the city. In the present times we are forced to pause and re imagine how city life is organised and reclaim more livable, human eccentric friendly places and cities.

This design project delved into the plethora of living typologies across the world, dissecting through the project lenses of aesthetics, sustainability, context, materiality and structures through detailed drawings, modelling and photography.

These living units were re imagined through the innovative lenses of redefining the context, envelop or function creating a re imagined narrative in architectural collages of sketches, doodles, models and photo-montages. The re imagined living in the city is a social, lively, fun, open, experiential, adaptive design experiment encouraging building community.

This is an innovative social design experiment that addresses local conditions and the complex needs of the end user within an urban setting. A new urban story to reclaim the vital interactions, exchanges and narratives in our day to day living. Symbolically we are ready to reclaim what makes us human in living in the city, in our community and in the aspiration for a sense of belonging in the city.

View the exhibition here.

About Harpreet Seth

Dr. Harpreet Seth, Head of Architecture, Associate Professor at Heriot Watt University Dubai has teaching experience of 20 years. She was instrumental in establishing the Architecture program at the Dubai campus. She supervises PhD and MSc. students with a keen interest in the built environment. Well known for her innovative studio project-based teaching and learning approaches has won her accolades including EIGS Graduate Award and Learning and Teaching Oscars from Heriot Watt University. She is a member of the Council of Architecture in India and founder member of Association of Professional Interior Designers (APID) in UAE. She is an avid sketcher and founder member of Urban Sketchers Dubai (USD), the Dubai chapter of the International Urban Sketchers.

D6 Architecture Year Student Works, Heriot Watt University Dubai.