The pages of the February 2020 edition of Domus India focus on directions in which a robust community of arguments and histories can be built where design, culture and politics could engage towards a social sphere that is vibrant through good and bad times.

Aparna Andhare reads through ‘Your Silence Will Not Protect You’, a collection of essays and poems by Audre Lorde — an icon for women of colour, the queer community, and those facing discrimination. The book acknowledges their struggles, offering love and self-respect as a means to protecting oneself and one’s identity.

In Indian Aesthetics, Anuradha Shankar visits the Konark Museum in Odisha. Marked by its simplicity, the many galleries in the museum are dotted with sculptures of gods and goddesses, and apsaras and mythical creatures occupying pride of place.

Tucked away on a dense street in Chennai with mixed-land use is the newly-built office for local practice KSM Architecture Studio. Built by the designers and engineers of the practice for themselves, the studio is a refreshing example of how ‘wisdom’ and ‘technique’ can find an amicable meeting point.

The issue also highlights three art exhibitions — Fields of Eros and Enchantment, 1:2500 (One is to Twenty-Five Hundred) and Concrete Ciphers

We further look at the recently concluded edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial where RMA Architects (Mumbai + Boston) presented a research project mapping the sanitation landscape in Mumbai and beyond. It explored the associated social, technical and cultural challenges and suggested potential design and planning solutions.