The March 2020 edition of Domus India discusses the complex life of planning and cities, the nature of practice and its avatars, as well as accounts for the many reflections on design and nature, or the world as we see it through architecture, art, design, and city studies. With this edition, we also join the Domus team worldwide in welcoming David Chipperfield as the special editor for the ten issues though 2020.

Aparna Andhare writes about Marjorie Hillis’ Live Alone and Like It (1936). Best read with a pinch of salt, it reminds women how the struggles as well as the perks of being single have not changed much in almost a century.

In Indian Aesthetics, Anuradha Shankar and Sudha Ganapathi assess two recently concluded exhibitions in Mumbai which used the theme of miniaturisation distinctly yet effectively.

We also feature the work of artist Nibha Sikander, who creates stunningly lifelike creatures — birds, insects and moths — all handmade from paper. It is her preternatural rendering of the natural in all its gorgeous detail that summons forth, in the viewer, a wave of rapture.

Suprio Bhattacharjee writes about an office building in Bengaluru by architect Madhusudhan Shridhar and engineer Manjunath B L. Conceived as a base for Shridhar’s practice, it puts forth a convincing argument of the spatial wonders achievable when two practitioners from differing disciplines choose to turn the tables upon a historically fraught relationship.

Through their new book ‘Smart City in India: Urban Laboratory, Paradigm or Trajectory?’, Binti Singh and Manoj Parmar reflect upon questions surrounding new planning initiatives and the role of urban design in creating spatial and cultural transformations in second-tier cities across India.