Parts of Ateya Khorakiwala’s doctoral research focused on grain silos in India and how they were a post-colonial import - built not just for the purpose of creating food security after witnessing one of the worst famines in the country but also to serve as a currency for exchange. In this conversation, Ateya talks about the history of silos, its construction materials and her course Feasting and Fasting at Columbia University.

Ateya Khorakiwala is an architectural historian and is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia University GSAPP. Her research focuses on India’s development decades, examining the aesthetics and materiality of its postcolonial infrastructure and ecological and political landscapes. Her current book project, Famine Landscapes, is an infrastructural and architectural history set in India’s postcolonial countryside.

Link to Ateya’s upcoming conference on material landscapes: https://www.arch.columbia.edu/events/2569-material-landscapes

Her website: http://ateyakhorakiwala.com/