The Resilience issue.
After the water recedes, the building remembers. This issue reads resilience as thought, not a checklist — Laurie Baker's architecture of less, the lime walls that breathe, designing for the flood line, and the recovery an Indian home owes itself once the rain has eased.
The Resilience issue, in full
27 stories · 4 books
What the Flood Left Behind
A note on resilience as a way of thinking — not a checklist.
04In ConversationNewArchitecture LimitlessStudio ALL on how a friendship became a firm — and the seventy per cent of the job architecture school never teaches.
In conversation with Studio ALLRead
14The BriefThe post-monsoon news deskThe flood line the season just redrew, the drainage-code confusion worth clearing up, and the audit every building owes itself now the rain has eased.
Studio Matrx Editorial
20DispatchThe Pritzker goes to Chile — and to fragilitySmiljan Radić has won architecture's highest honour for buildings that look about to vanish — and the jury's words read like a design brief.
Studio Matrx Editorial
28The Third PositionThe false ceiling, honestlyIt is the first thing we add and the last thing we question. A measured case for using far less of it.
Studio Matrx Editorial
32We Did the MathNewDoes a rainwater tank pay for itself?Every brochure says yes. We costed one against Bengaluru's actual water tariff — and the honest answer is no, not in the system's lifetime.
Studio Matrx Editorial
38MaterialLime — the buildings that breatheBefore waterproofing, walls managed moisture instead of resisting it. Why lime is being rediscovered.
Studio Matrx Editorial
42Trend PulseDesigning for the flood lineThe new architecture doesn't fight the flood — it makes room for it. Stilts, permeable ground, sacrificial floors and the sponge city.
Studio Matrx Editorial
48Book ReviewThe Vanishing Stepwells of IndiaVictoria Lautman's photographic reckoning with the water architecture India forgot — engineering, art and climate wisdom, centuries ahead of its time.
Studio Matrx Editorial
- 54Cover Project · The Three-Cut FeatureNewPobitora Mahout Barracks
Architecture that learns from water — a flood-resilient bamboo settlement in Assam, read three ways for the homeowner, the architect and the student.
Studio Matrx EditorialRead 
58FeatureNewTen materials that could rebuild how we buildSelf-healing concrete, walls grown from mushrooms, glass that makes electricity — a field guide to the next decade of construction, with the honest catch on each.
Studio Matrx Editorial
66FeatureThe island the river is takingOn the world's largest river island, the Brahmaputra is winning — and Majuli's monasteries and stilt houses build as if nothing lasts.
Studio Matrx Editorial
72InterviewWater taught me to designKerala architect Amala Babu on a lifetime of building for the rain.
In conversation with Amala Babu
76ProjectThe house that lets the flood pass throughA home raised on columns so the water can come and go without ending a life inside.
Studio Matrx Editorial
82ProjectReclaiming a ground floor that kept floodingHow one low-lying Chennai house stopped fighting the water and learned to let it pass.
Studio Matrx Editorial
86ProjectThe home that never buys a tankerA Bengaluru house designed around rain, with wells that quietly refill the borewell.
Studio Matrx Editorial
92In ConversationNewWater is a design decisionA.R. Shivakumar — the Rain Man of Bengaluru — on why water belongs on the drawing board, not in the services drawings.
In conversation with A.R. ShivakumarRead
100Building of the MonthLaurie Baker: the architecture of lessWhat India's most beloved architect can still teach us about climate, community and building for the future.
Studio Matrx Editorial
104Studio VisitInside a practice that builds for the waterOne small studio that reads the site in the rain, models water before form, and treats resilience as ordinary.
Studio Matrx Editorial
110Design DestinationsTwenty-two hours in AlappuzhaA day and a night in the Venice of the East, reading a backwater town through its long argument with the water.
Studio Matrx Editorial
114How It's MadeWhere does the water go?The anatomy of site drainage — a raindrop's path from roof to earth.
Studio Matrx Editorial
120Design DestinationsNewKinderdijk: nineteen windmills against the seaA place Amogh walked — where the Dutch learned to live with water, and the clearest lesson this issue could ask for.
By Amogh N PRead
126The PracticalReading your contractor's quoteEvery line item tells you something — how to read a construction quotation, where hidden costs hide, and the questions to ask before you sign.
Studio Matrx Editorial
130Ask the ArchitectAsk the architect: water, damp and drainageExpert answers, curated by Studio Matrx — the fifteen questions we hear most about keeping water out and letting it drain.
Studio Matrx Editorial
138The MasterclassThe resilient sectionGive me a house in section and I will tell you whether it survives the water — read from the ground up.
Studio Matrx Editorial
144Reader HomeWe raised our house after the floodThe water came one August night and never fully left our minds. So we lifted the house to meet it.
In their words
148Student WorkDesigning for the flood line: the student showcaseFive studio schemes that stop fighting the water and start designing with it.
Studio Matrx Editorial