Senior Lecturer in Architecture
Overview
Dr Manu P. Sobti is an Islamic architecture and urban historian, previously Associate Professor at the School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee USA. He has a B.Dipl.Arch. from the School of Architecture-CEPT (Ahmedabad - INDIA), an SMarchS. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge - USA), and a Ph.D. from the College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta - USA).
As a recognized scholar and innovative educator, Sobti served as Director of SARUP-UWM’s India Winterim Program (2008-15). This foreign study program worked intensively with local architecture schools in Ahmedabad, Delhi and Chandigarh, allowing students and faculty to interact actively, often within the gamut of the same project. He also set up a similar, research-focused program in Uzbekistan, engaging advanced undergraduate and graduate students to undertake field research at sites, archives and cultural landscapes. In partnership with the Art History Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and SARUP colleagues, Sobti also coordinated the Building-Landscapes-Cultures (BLC) Concentration of SARUP-UWM’s Doctoral Program (2011-13), creating opportunities for student research in diverse areas of architectural and urban history and in multiple global settings. He served as the Chair of SARUP's PhD Committee between 2014-16, leading an area of BLC's research consortium titled Urban Histories and Contested Geographies.
Sobti's research has been supported by several funding bodies, including the Graham Foundation of the Arts (USA), the Architectural Association (UK), the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (USA), the French Institute of Central Asian Studies (UZBEKISTAN), the US Department of State Fulbright Foundation (USA), the Aga Khan Foundation (SWITZERLAND), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (USA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), the Centre for 21st Century Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA), the Institute for Research in the Humanities University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), Stanford University (USA), in addition to city governments in New Delhi/Chandigarh/Ahmedabad (INDIA), Samarqand/Bukhara (UZBEKISTAN), Erzurum (TURKEY) and New Orleans (USA).
Research Impacts
Mapping urbanity and its myriad of scalar geographies features prominently in Dr. Sobti's ongoing research projects and fieldwork explorations. He views this examination as a vantage that determines how future urbanists explore the multiplicity of emergent stakeholders within the contentious realms of the historical city with its continually changing meanings. Besides examining place, culture and world-view in the mercurial, Asia-Pacific region of the future, his position also underscores how and why these urbanities serve as a lasting legacy of cultures and peoples, and especially so in settings where urban artifacts frame the memories of space and time.
Dr. Sobti's recent explorations have focused on the urban histories of early-medieval, Islamic cities along the Silk Road and the Indian Subcontinent, with specific reference to the complex, ‘borderland geographies’ created by riverine landscapes. Within a trans-disciplinary examination of medieval Eurasian landscapes straddling the region’s Amu Darya River, he is completing a manuscript entitled The Sliver of the Oxus Borderland: Medieval Cultural Encounters between the Arabs and Persians (expected completion Fall 2020). This unprecedented work on the historical, geo-politics of the Amu Darya, collates extensive fieldwork in libraries and repositories employing multiple Arabic, Persian, Russian and Uzbek sources. The Oxus borderland is also the subject of his ongoing film documentary project entitled Medieval Riverlogues (90 minutes, intended for Public Television) which captures archival research within a re-drawn map series, state of the art computer-generated renderings and live footage on this Central Asian cultural crucible, suggesting provocative connections to our enduring questions on cultural ‘indigeneities’ and identities, sustainability and resources. Mapping and the spatial humanities also remain central to his work on the fast-changing urbanscapes of Delhi, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad & Bhopal, documented in the completion of two forthcoming book manuscripts - the first titled Space and Collective Identity in South Asia: Migration, Architecture and Urban Development (under contract with I. B. Tauris Press, expected Summer 2020); the second titled Riverine Landscapes, Urbanity and Conflict: Narratives from East and West (under contract with Ashgate Press, expected Fall 2019). His continuing work on contemporary architecture and urbanism in the Asia region has resulted in multiple student exchanges, exhibitions and international seminars (2008-15), and a third publication entitled Chandigarh Rethink (ORO Press-USA, published March 2017; see https://www.amazon.com/Chandigarh-Re-think-Transforming-Ruralities-Urbanities/dp/1939621364).
Qualifications
- Masters Degree, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Doctor of Philosophy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Altanta USA
Publications
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Book: Chandigarh re-think: transforming ruralities & edge(ness) in global urbanities
Manu P. Sobti ed. (2017). Chandigarh re-think: transforming ruralities & edge(ness) in global urbanities. Novato, CA, United States: ORO Editions.
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Book Chapter: Transforming ruralities and edge-ness in global urbanities
Sobti, Manu P. (2017). Transforming ruralities and edge-ness in global urbanities. Chandigarh re-think: transforming ruralities and edge(ness) in global urbanities. (pp. 10-37) edited by Manu P.Sobti. Novato, CA, United States: ORO Editions.
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Sobti, Manu and Hosseini, Sahar (2016). Persian civitas: revised readings on networked urbanities and suburban hinterlands in Erich Schmidt’s flights over ancient cities of Iran. The Historiography of Persian Architecture. (pp. 14-40) edited by Mohammad Gharipour. New York, NY, United States: Routledge.
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Book Chapter: Mobile urbanism: tent cities in medieval European travel writings
Sobti, Manu P. and Gharipour, Mohammad (2015). Mobile urbanism: tent cities in medieval European travel writings. The city in the Muslim world: depictions by western travel writers. (pp. 22-56) edited by Mohammad Gharipour and Nilay Ozlu. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge.
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Book Chapter: The hues of paradise: examining color design in the Islamic garden
Sobti, Manu P. and Gharipour, Mohammad (2011). The hues of paradise: examining color design in the Islamic garden. And Diverse are Their Hues: color in Islamic art and culture. (pp. 304-325) edited by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. New Haven, CT, United States: Yale University Press.
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Sobti, Manu P. (1993). Urban form & space in the Islamic city: a study of morphology & formal structures in the city of Bhopal (central India). Ahmedabad, India: Vastu Shilpa Foundation and School of Architecture - Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology CEPT.
Supervision
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(2022) Doctor Philosophy
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MAPPING THE ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURES OF THE ARABIAN PENINSULA
Doctor Philosophy
-
Networks of Commerce across Medieval and Pre-Modern Persianate Iran
Doctor Philosophy
Available Projects
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Borderlands & Borderscapes across greater Asia
My emphasis on developing the biographies of Borderlands and Borderscapes challenges prevalent notions of the so-called ‘left-behind’, the inconsequential, and the spaces of abandonment that characterise ‘cultural’ passages and choreographies of peoples in space and time. Liminal spaces evolved and produced at borders/frontiers are viewed as provocative junctures of disciplinary and trans-disciplinary inclusions and exclusions, allowing opportunities for multiple methodological experimentations. In effect, our research on Borderlands and Borderscapes will engage not just the formal and spatial nature of these limiting zones, but also interrogate the situations of conflict that potentially result from these contested demarcations.
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Riverine Landscapes and Ecologies across Asia
Our studies on Riverine Landscapes and Ecologies shall strategically describe, re-visit and re-frame ways of critically examining socio-cultural and ecological settings that lie in close proximity to rivers and water bodies, especially the 'transect' created by these interactions. As generative elements that play a critical role in the morphological genesis of settlements and urban networks, these riverine landscapes have profound impact on the macro, intermediate and micro scales of settlement patterns (termed as XL/L/M/S). These ‘scalar or grain’ shifts also determine the morphologies of these places and the socio-cultural-economic processes over time. Our continuing research in the Riverine Landscapes and Ecologies sub-area will develop new ways to map and diagram this diversity of scales by specifically combining the notions of the normative (conventional) archive with the ‘unique’ archive of site.
-
Asian and Islamic Urban Palimpsests
The Urban Palimpsests Research sub-area will qualitatively examine the multi-layered narratives of urban settings, creating diagrammatic and filmic renditions that explain the generative logic of these settings. The ‘descriptions’ of site are leveraged to address unprecedented questions that compel the re-writing of histories and geographies. Within these palimpsests, observations will also be directed on the constantly shifting meanings and politics of cultural landscapes, and their perplexing survival (or degeneration) in the context of rapidly-transforming cultures.
Publications
Featured Publications
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Chandigarh re-think: transforming ruralities & edge(ness) in global urbanities
Manu P. Sobti ed. (2017). Chandigarh re-think: transforming ruralities & edge(ness) in global urbanities. Novato, CA, United States: ORO Editions.
-
Transforming ruralities and edge-ness in global urbanities
Sobti, Manu P. (2017). Transforming ruralities and edge-ness in global urbanities. Chandigarh re-think: transforming ruralities and edge(ness) in global urbanities. (pp. 10-37) edited by Manu P.Sobti. Novato, CA, United States: ORO Editions.
-
Sobti, Manu and Hosseini, Sahar (2016). Persian civitas: revised readings on networked urbanities and suburban hinterlands in Erich Schmidt’s flights over ancient cities of Iran. The Historiography of Persian Architecture. (pp. 14-40) edited by Mohammad Gharipour. New York, NY, United States: Routledge.
-
Mobile urbanism: tent cities in medieval European travel writings
Sobti, Manu P. and Gharipour, Mohammad (2015). Mobile urbanism: tent cities in medieval European travel writings. The city in the Muslim world: depictions by western travel writers. (pp. 22-56) edited by Mohammad Gharipour and Nilay Ozlu. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge.
-
The hues of paradise: examining color design in the Islamic garden
Sobti, Manu P. and Gharipour, Mohammad (2011). The hues of paradise: examining color design in the Islamic garden. And Diverse are Their Hues: color in Islamic art and culture. (pp. 304-325) edited by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. New Haven, CT, United States: Yale University Press.
-
Sobti, Manu P. (1993). Urban form & space in the Islamic city: a study of morphology & formal structures in the city of Bhopal (central India). Ahmedabad, India: Vastu Shilpa Foundation and School of Architecture - Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology CEPT.
Book
-
Chandigarh re-think: transforming ruralities & edge(ness) in global urbanities
Manu P. Sobti ed. (2017). Chandigarh re-think: transforming ruralities & edge(ness) in global urbanities. Novato, CA, United States: ORO Editions.
-
Sobti, Manu P. (1993). Urban form & space in the Islamic city: a study of morphology & formal structures in the city of Bhopal (central India). Ahmedabad, India: Vastu Shilpa Foundation and School of Architecture - Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology CEPT.
Book Chapter
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Re-eimagining Eurasia: past Flatland stories of urban and landscape heritage
Sobti, Manu P. (2020). Re-eimagining Eurasia: past Flatland stories of urban and landscape heritage. The Routledge handbook on historic urban landscapes in the Asia-Pacific. (pp. 80-97) edited by Kapila Silva. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780429486470-4
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Eurasia’s historical space of palimpsest—desert, border, riparian and steppe
Sobti, Manu P. (2019). Eurasia’s historical space of palimpsest—desert, border, riparian and steppe. Architecture on the borderline: boundary politics and built space. (pp. 15-35) edited by Anoma Pieris. New York, NY USA: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315103419-2
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Transforming ruralities and edge-ness in global urbanities
Sobti, Manu P. (2017). Transforming ruralities and edge-ness in global urbanities. Chandigarh re-think: transforming ruralities and edge(ness) in global urbanities. (pp. 10-37) edited by Manu P.Sobti. Novato, CA, United States: ORO Editions.
-
Sobti, Manu and Hosseini, Sahar (2016). Persian civitas: revised readings on networked urbanities and suburban hinterlands in Erich Schmidt’s flights over ancient cities of Iran. The Historiography of Persian Architecture. (pp. 14-40) edited by Mohammad Gharipour. New York, NY, United States: Routledge.
-
Mobile urbanism: tent cities in medieval European travel writings
Sobti, Manu P. and Gharipour, Mohammad (2015). Mobile urbanism: tent cities in medieval European travel writings. The city in the Muslim world: depictions by western travel writers. (pp. 22-56) edited by Mohammad Gharipour and Nilay Ozlu. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge.
-
The hues of paradise: examining color design in the Islamic garden
Sobti, Manu P. and Gharipour, Mohammad (2011). The hues of paradise: examining color design in the Islamic garden. And Diverse are Their Hues: color in Islamic art and culture. (pp. 304-325) edited by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. New Haven, CT, United States: Yale University Press.
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Sobti, Manu P. (2010). Migration, urban form, and the courtyard house: socio-cultural reflections on the Pathan Mohallas in Bhopal, India. The courtyard house: from cultural reference to universal relevance. (pp. 65-81) edited by Nasser O Rabbat. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge.
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ON DIRT: Figuring the Urban Ground Workshop + Urban Ecotone Design Competition 2007
Sobti, Manu P. (2009). ON DIRT: Figuring the Urban Ground Workshop + Urban Ecotone Design Competition 2007. Calibrations 3: positions. (pp. 58-60) Milwaukee, United States: School of Architecture & Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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Dwellings in the Steppes and Deserts of Inner Asia
Sobti, Manu P. (2003). Dwellings in the Steppes and Deserts of Inner Asia. Asia’s Dwellings: Tradition, Resilience and Change. (pp. 393-430) edited by Ronald Knapp. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
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The Oases Settlements of Central Asia
Sobti, Manu P. (2003). The Oases Settlements of Central Asia. The Interaction between Land and People in Central and Inner Asia. (pp. 145-173) edited by Michael Gervers and Uradyn Bulag. London, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
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Sobti, Manu P. (2002). Urban metamorphosis and change in the central Asian region after the Arab invasions: an analysis of archaeological findings, literature and scholarly writings. Continuity and Change in Central and Inner Asia. (pp. 199-233) edited by Michael Gervers and Wayne Schlepp. Toronto, Canada: Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies.
Journal Article
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Sobti, Manu P. and Scriver, Peter (2022). Personal journey or tectonic practice: thick descriptions of curated residential interiors by four Indian architects. Fabrications, 32 (1), 82-109. doi: 10.1080/10331867.2022.2091838
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The Last Apples of Kazakhstan: Modernity, Geo-Politics and Globalization in Central Asia
Sobti, Manu P. (2011). The Last Apples of Kazakhstan: Modernity, Geo-Politics and Globalization in Central Asia. Global Currents Bi-annual Bulletin, 7 (2), 8-9.
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Reflections on the Indian City: SARUP-CCA Urban Mapping Workshop 2009
Sobti, Manu P. (2010). Reflections on the Indian City: SARUP-CCA Urban Mapping Workshop 2009. Indian arch'09: annual NASA convention 2009-10, 56-63.
Conference Publication
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City in Suburbia – Metamorphosis and Change in Central Asian Cities after the Arab Invasions
Sobti, Manu P. (2009). City in Suburbia – Metamorphosis and Change in Central Asian Cities after the Arab Invasions. ESCAS IX, Krakow, Poland, 2005. Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars.
PhD and MPhil Supervision
Current Supervision
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MAPPING THE ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURES OF THE ARABIAN PENINSULA
Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor
Other advisors:
-
Networks of Commerce across Medieval and Pre-Modern Persianate Iran
Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor
Other advisors:
-
Traditional Construction Materials for Future Sustainable Architecture. The Case Study of Ladakh (Western Himalayan Region), India
Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor
Other advisors:
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An evaluation of sustainable management of complex cultural landscape- a case study of scotourism site in Malaysia
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Completed Supervision
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(2022) Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor
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(2021) Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
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Re-Imagining Rural Places: An Examination of Rural Morphological Transformation in the Tehran Region
(2021) Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
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Resistant Mediations: The Colonial Camera and the Art of Indian Pilgrimage
(2020) Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
Possible Research Projects
Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.
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Borderlands & Borderscapes across greater Asia
My emphasis on developing the biographies of Borderlands and Borderscapes challenges prevalent notions of the so-called ‘left-behind’, the inconsequential, and the spaces of abandonment that characterise ‘cultural’ passages and choreographies of peoples in space and time. Liminal spaces evolved and produced at borders/frontiers are viewed as provocative junctures of disciplinary and trans-disciplinary inclusions and exclusions, allowing opportunities for multiple methodological experimentations. In effect, our research on Borderlands and Borderscapes will engage not just the formal and spatial nature of these limiting zones, but also interrogate the situations of conflict that potentially result from these contested demarcations.
-
Riverine Landscapes and Ecologies across Asia
Our studies on Riverine Landscapes and Ecologies shall strategically describe, re-visit and re-frame ways of critically examining socio-cultural and ecological settings that lie in close proximity to rivers and water bodies, especially the 'transect' created by these interactions. As generative elements that play a critical role in the morphological genesis of settlements and urban networks, these riverine landscapes have profound impact on the macro, intermediate and micro scales of settlement patterns (termed as XL/L/M/S). These ‘scalar or grain’ shifts also determine the morphologies of these places and the socio-cultural-economic processes over time. Our continuing research in the Riverine Landscapes and Ecologies sub-area will develop new ways to map and diagram this diversity of scales by specifically combining the notions of the normative (conventional) archive with the ‘unique’ archive of site.
-
Asian and Islamic Urban Palimpsests
The Urban Palimpsests Research sub-area will qualitatively examine the multi-layered narratives of urban settings, creating diagrammatic and filmic renditions that explain the generative logic of these settings. The ‘descriptions’ of site are leveraged to address unprecedented questions that compel the re-writing of histories and geographies. Within these palimpsests, observations will also be directed on the constantly shifting meanings and politics of cultural landscapes, and their perplexing survival (or degeneration) in the context of rapidly-transforming cultures.
-
Urban Morphologies & Typologies - Thick Descriptions
The Morphologies & Typologies research sub-area will undertake detailed examinations of architectural and urban typologies that range in scale from the territory to city, macro to micro, and through the combinations of diverse methodologies derived from the works of multiple scholars, including Muratori. Caniggia, Castex, Conzen and Petruccioli. The exemplar of architecture and cities of the non-Western, specifically the Islamic world within Asia and the Middle East, will form the core of these studies, and will be viewed within a comparative, cross-cultural context wherein these artifacts are characterized by historical process and design idiosyncrasies.
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Historical Continuity & Change
Our examination of Continuity & Change in past, present and future built environments will describe how layers of cultural process morph over time. In looking at the urban cultures of Asia, Eurasia, the Middle East, and the Far East, we will interrogate not just “why the past matters”, but also ‘why should it matter’ within the unprecedented scenario of global and place transformations. We will collate observations on how designers should react within these contexts, and why their actions could transform the nature of the design profession. The Historical Continuity & Change sub-area will also connect to the UQ School of Architecture's offerings of Design Studies at global sites across Asia.
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Islamic & Non-Western Architecture and Urbanism
