Kadambari Baxi

Kadambari Baxi, Professor of Practice in Architecture, joined Barnard faculty in 2009 where she teaches design studios and seminars.

Baxi's practice creates design, media and spatial projects. Currently, she is working on projects addressing concerns for climate justice, fair labor and reproductive rights. Forming interdisciplinary teams on project basis, most often, she works collaboratively with artists, curators, scientists, academics and students. 

Recent projects include: Climate Justice WTF, a filmic montage pairing news-clips of protests at the UN Climate Summits and court-footage from a youth climate lawsuit; Trigger Planting and Found (abortion) Monument two installations on reproductive freedoms; Air Drifts, an exhibition and short-film that explores how local pollutants drift beyond national air space, change global climate, and establish new toxic zones of responsibility; WBYA? (Who Builds Your Architecture?), a series of exhibitions that examine challenges faced by migrant construction workers on architectural sites worldwide and advocate for fair labor practices. Using diverse representational techniques to connect dispersed sites and unseen problematics, her projects offer ways to view architecture from within many other domains and highlight what is often outside its frame. Conversely, her projects mobilize art, design and architectural concepts for diverse yet specific ways of seeing the world, and reflect on potentials to change it.

Baxi's work circulates widely, latest solo and collaborative projects were exhibited at: Architekturmuseum TU Berlin, Frieze New York; Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism; Boston Art College; Oslo Architecture Triennale; Art Institute of Chicago, and others. 

Her most recent initiatives also include, cofounding the advocacy group WBYA? (Who Builds Your Architecture?); co-organizing the A-B-C (Architecture Beyond Capitalism) School; serving on the board of The Architecture Lobby; and co-curating the exhibition Building Information. These initiatives are devoted to her interests in setting new agendas connecting arts, design, ethics, culture and politics in architecture, arts and education.

Baxi maintains a research-based architectural practice in partnership with Reinhold Martin. Their work, co-authored as Martin / Baxi Architects, is excerpted in two books: Multi-National City: Architectural Itineraries (Actar, Spain, 2007) and Entropia (Black Dog Publishing, London, 2001). Formerly, she also led a new media design firm imageMachine that worked with large nonprofits, including: Vera Institute for Justice, Center for Court Innovation, The Architectural League, and others.

At Barnard and Columbia Colleges architecture department, Professor Baxi has spearheaded senior design studios that traveled to China, Germany and Jordan for research on architecture, diplomacy, climate and cultural exchange. Her other teaching initiatives have focused on innovative pedagogical methodologies for incorporating multimedia technologies in architecture courses. She has collaborated with interdisciplinary faculty across campus in anthropology, astronomy, film studies, science and graduate architecture departments. Her teaching and research  activities were awarded grants from Barnard Teaches: Real Place + Digital Access, Mellon Foundation Grant and Barnard Presidential Research Award.   

She was born in New Delhi. She votes in New York.