The January 2020 edition of Domus India brings together a range of features comprising both art as well as architecture.

We look back on the designs of the covers of Domus India from the last three years — each cover specially designed by a designer, artist, architect or photographer in discussion with the editorial and design team of the magazine.

Aparna Andhare reads The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris, a book that responds to the culling of language with a commitment to the natural world. Here, words and images inform each other, thus reflecting the poetic nature of the book.

The archival material we present from Charles Correa is an indication towards the ability of the architect to think beyond sites and commissions towards the making of public and cultural spaces, politics and social environments, and is strikingly relevant in today’s day and age.

Suprio Bhattacharjee writes about the Crescent School of Architecture in Chennai, designed by the studio architectureRED.

Through Sheetal Mallar’s photographs we learn that her protagonists — her human subjects as much as the environments she so memorably records—occupy a precarious threshold between the powers of vitality and the forces of extinction.

We also look at a recent exhibition, Can You Hear Me?, artist Nalini Malani’s first solo show in India in five years, marking her return home after she became the first Asian artist to win the prestigious Joan Miro Prize in 2019.

In Vadodara-based artist Utkarsh Makwana’s works, we look at how he navigates the tropes of philosophy as well as comedy and touches upon the wonder one derives from the mundane. Alluding to historical, architectural and mythological references, his visual interpretations are arresting, owing to his choice of colours, well-thought-out compositions, and use of geometry.