Kadambari Baxi, architect and educator, works on design, media and spatial projects. Currently, she is working on projects addressing concerns for climate justice, fair labor and reproductive rights. Forming interdisciplinary teams on project basis, most often, she works collaboratively with artists, curators, scientists, academics and students. As a professor of practice in architecture at Barnard + Columbia Architecture Department at Barnard College, Columbia University, she teaches design studios and environmental visualizations seminars.
Recent projects include: Climate Justice WTF, a filmic montage that pairs news-clips of protests at the UN Climate Summits and court-footage from a youth climate lawsuit; Air Drifts, an installation that explores how local pollutants drift beyond national air space, change global climate, and establish new toxic zones of responsibility; WBYA? (Who Builds Your Architecture?), exhibitions that examine challenges faced by migrant construction workers on architectural sites worldwide and advocate for fair labor practices; Trigger Planting and Found (abortion) Monument installations on reproductive freedoms. Using diverse representational techniques to connect dispersed sites and unseen problematics, her projects offer ways to view architecture from within many other domains and highlight what is often outside its frame. Conversely, her projects mobilize art, design and architectural concepts for diverse yet specific ways of seeing the world, and reflect on potentials to change it.
Her work circulates widely and internationally, latest solo and collaborative exhibitions were featured at: Architekturmuseum TU Berlin, Frieze New York; Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism; Boston Art College; Oslo Architecture Triennale; Art Institute of Chicago, and others.
Her recent professional initiatives also include: cofounding the advocacy group WBYA? (Who Builds Your Architecture?); co-organizing the A-B-C (Architecture Beyond Capitalism) School and serving on the board of The Architecture Lobby; and
co-curating the exhibition Building Information.
Her research-based architectural practice is based on a longstanding partnership and an ongoing exchange of ideas with Reinhold Martin. Their work, co-authored as
Martin / Baxi Architects, is excerpted in two books: Multi-National City: Architectural Itineraries (Actar, Spain, 2007) and Entropia (Black Dog Publishing, London, 2001).
She was born in New Delhi. She votes in New York.
She may be contacted directly via email: kbaxi(at)kbaxi(dot)net