Dr Naina Gupta

I trained as an architect in India. Following that I have postgraduate qualifications and a PhD from the Architectural Association, School of Architecture in London (AA). I have worked in practices as an architect/architectural researcher in India, Singapore, Russia and the Netherlands (OMA), and I have taught internationally in Aarhus in Denmark. 

My doctorate was supervised by Mark Cousins, Dr Mark Morris and Dr Pier Vittorio Aureli. It narrates an alternative history of internationalism looking at the role that peace and other social movements played in fostering an international sensibility in the progressive era that in turn, contributed to a modern lifestyle. It is due to be published by Routledge in 2025. I have translated this research into a module on research methods that questions who the subjects of architecture are discussing the role that architectural research and the methods that we develop can widen its scope.

Since 2021 I have been researching swimming pools in different registers. I organised a symposium titled Swimming Pool Stories with the support of the Public Programme at the Architectural Association in January 2023. The symposium was a day long conversation about pools that included students, academics, practitioners and members of the public. I have taught a Diploma History and Theory seminar at the AA on the topic and presented different strands of the research at several conferences. My paper about FDR, polio and the role of the pools in its rehabilitation is due to be published by the end of 2024 and a book for general readership dedicated to the swimming pools designed by architects is in its final proofs ready to be published by Batsford in the UK and Princeton University Press in the US in spring 2025. I am one of the RIBA Research Fund recipients of 2024, for the research about a tale of two pools—one in India and the other in London. I have recently signed up as a signatory for a group that attends to urban waterways.

In 2010 I was part of the first cohort to research Moscow as part of the Rem Koolhaas + OMA and Strelka Media, Architecture and Design Institute collaborative research project. I studied the automobile industry arguing for the role of electric vehicles as a global strategy for Russia and a way to wean it off its fossil fuel industry. It was a welcome contribution to the discussions in the country at the time.