Studio Mumbai - Cartier Foundation

Studio Mumbai is the eponymous architectural firm that refers to India’s largest city. Bijoy Jain founded the practice in 2005, which is a physical studio, but metaphysically may be more accurately described as a collective of craftsmen. The “master musicians” who participate are architects, engineers, carpenters, masons—a team assembled by Jain for their talent and craft.

Bijoy Jain imagines the exhibition as a physical and emotional experience. Breath of an Architect is an invitation to breathe, wander in quietude and rediscover silence: "Silence has a sound, we hear its resonance in ourselves. This sound connects all living beings, it is the breath of life. It is synchronous in all of us. Silence, time and space are eternal, as is water, air and light our elemental construct. This abundance of sensory phenomena, dreams, memory, imagination, emotions and intuition stem from this pool of experiences, embedded in the corners of our eyes, in the soles of our feet, in the lobes of our ears, in the timbre of our voices, in the whisper of our breath and in the palm of our hands."

"As an architect it is about the consideration one gives to the making of things, about being immersive and attentive to the environment, the materials, and its inhabitants, in the possibility for space and architecture to be inclusive."

Convening light and shadow, lightness and gravity, wood, brick, earth, stone, and water, the architect composes a sensory experience, in resonance with the materials. Crafted in rhythm with the breath and shaped by hand, the exhibition’s installation is composed of architectural fragments.

Bijoy Jain, born in 1965 in Mumbai, studied at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He worked in Los Angeles and London before returning to India in 1995 and founding Studio Mumbai. The studio operates as an interdisciplinary group of architects, engineers, master builders, artisans, technicians and artists across continents.As a collective, they are involved in the research and development of projects, using process and time as an integral part of its expression; water air and light being the basis of all materiality in the synthesis of the work... Humankind in nature - nature in Humankind.