Thomas Oommen

Global histories of architecture and urbanism, visual, material, and architectural culture of modern South Asia, eco-critical art, architecture, and urban history, Indian Ocean histories

I am an architect, urbanist, and historian of global modernism, focusing on South Asia and its diasporas. My work looks at  “small places” - ordinary buildings, urban-rural continuums and ecologies, local actors, place-specific epistemologies, and visual and material cultures. My dissertation titled, “Global Histories from the Oceanic Edge: Monsoon, Migration and Material Cultures of Dwelling on the Malabar Coast of Kerala, India ca. 1970-2022” is an alternate history of the period of decolonization in India. The project is a multi-sited, ethnographically driven study of the ‘house-in-the-garden’ typology and contemporary building culture in the urban-rural landscapes and ecologies of the  Malabar Coast of Kerala in Southern India. Through three parts – Developmental Politics, Migration histories, and Material histories  – the project shows how ordinary dwellings and landscapes in Kerala were entangled within the global politics of modernism, development, and alternate technologies in the 1970s.  The project argues that small places can help build a truly inclusive global history that is sensitive to historical and aesthetic difference and does not merely repeat existing metropolitan-centric, (nation) statist narratives.

My work is situated within the environmental turn in a larger tradition of postcolonial history and anthropology, drawing on eco-critical art and architecture history, Indian Ocean Histories, and the history and philosophy of science. His teaching in India and the US draws on these traditions of scholarship to rethink studios and seminars as well as survey courses in global histories and theories of architecture and urbanism.

Architectural Theory (2012-2014, 2015-2017) for B.Arch program at Sushant School of Art and Architecture (SSAA), Gurgaon as Associate Professor of Architecture,

Research Methods/Studio – Reading the City (2015-2016) for M.Arch program at Department of Urban Design.

School of Planning and Architecture Delhi as Visiting Faculty in Urban Design,Contemporary Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (2014) for M.Arch (Urban Design) at R.V. College of Architecture (RVCA), Bangalore, as Assistant Professor of Architecture.

Architecture Design Studio (3rd, 4th year) & Urban Design Studio (5th year) from (2012-2017) for B.Arch at SSAA and RVCA – as Asst. and Assoc. Professor.

ARCH 230, Advanced Architectural Theory (Spring 2018, Spring 2021), Graduate Seminar, CED, UC Berkeley – as Graduate Student Instructor (GSI)

ARCH 270, History of Modern Architecture (Fall 2018), Graduate Seminar – as GSI, Prof. Greg Castillo

ARCH 170A, A Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism - pre 1400 CE, as GSI, Prof. William Littmann (Fall 2019), Prof. Andy Shanken (Fall 2021)

ARCH 130, Introduction to Architecture Theory and Criticism, (Fall 2022), GSI, Prof. Greig Crysler

The Center on Contemporary India Dissertation Research Grant, UC Berkeley, 2023-24

The John L. Simpson ABD Research Fellowship in International & Area Studies, UC Berkeley, 2023

Junior Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies, 2022

International Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2021, Social Science Research Council

UC Berkeley Graduate Division Fellowship, 2020-2021

Stevens Scholars Program, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley, 2019

Everyday Built Environments and Modern Architecture of South Asia, Eco-Critical Art, Architecture and Urban History, Histories of the Indian Ocean.

Oommen, Thomas, (2024) “Catherine Bauer's passage through India: Frontier Urbanization and the Construction of 'Interdisciplinary Urban Research at the College of Environmental Design, Berkeley”, Journal of Planning History.

Oommen Thomas, (2022) "The Glazed Eyes of Architectural History: Reflections on the (Dis)Contents of Global History Survey Courses", Architectural Histories 10(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.16995/ah.8280

Oommen, Thomas and Sequiera, Ryan C, (2021) "The politics of infrastructural aesthetics: a case of Delhi’s Bus Rapid Transit corridor", International Development Planning Review, 2021, 43, (4), 479–500. https://doi.org/10.3828/idpr.2020.21

Oommen, Thomas, (2019), "Rethinking Indian Modernity From the Margins: Architectural Politics in Thiruvananthapuram in the 1970s," Architectural Theory Review, March 19, 2019, 1–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2018.1516684

Oommen, Thomas, (2016) "Modern Urban Heritage and public engagement: The case of Thiruvananthapuram" in The Future of Historic Cities: Urban Heritage in South Asia, Special edition: Context: Built, Living and Natural, Volume XII, 2016. Aryan International Books, Delhi.

Oommen, Thomas and Pal, Shreyasi, (2015). "The Politics of Architecture", Economics and Political Weekly, Vol – L No. 14, April 04, 2015. Mumbai, India.
https://www.epw.in/journal/2015/14/commentary/politics-architecture.html

Oommen, Thomas and Singh, Radhika, (2013), "From the ground up: Re-Appropriating Urban Infrastructure in Delhi" in Critical Planning, 20th anniversary edition, December 2013. University of California at Los Angeles. Los Angeles
https://criticalplanning.squarespace.com/volume-20-1