UPDATED: Dec. 6, 2017 at 1:31 a.m.

Multilanguage books, decorative blueprints and colorful trinkets line the shelves in Mitesh Dixit’s cramped office. The architecture professor hunches over a small, black notebook to sketch the plan he created to address Florida’s rising sea levels crisis.

Dixit is an assistant professor at Syracuse University’s School of Architecture. He’s worked with the United States Department of Education, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Delft University of Technology and other national and international institutions.

In the days following the end of the fall semester, Dixit will take the next steps with his architecture firm, DOMAIN Office.

Based in New York City and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, DOMAIN heads international projects on residential and public buildings, master plans and graphic design. The firm was founded in 2012 by Dixit and most recently opened an office in Belgrade, Serbia, in early November. The company’s newest location will be the base for a five-year research project, the focus of which is yet to be determined.

Aside from his successes as an architect, philosopher, lecturer and educator, his passion for urban issues is the foundation to his work.

“I think the point of our work is that we don’t know what we’re going to discover when we begin,” Dixit said. “The first thing we’re going to do is collect data. We’re going to get all the information we can, sort of organize it and then begin to rigorously map it and draw it.”

The assistant professor took an interest in Belgrade when he completed a series of lectures there. He found a city that rejected the major political ideologies of the past several centuries and was looking for a way forward. The young architects and students in Belgrade don’t follow the “careerist corporate culture” that is often found in the U.S., Dixit said, so they have a different outlook on education, politics and architecture.

Courtesy of Mitesh Dixit

But this history had largely gone without being researched, and Dixit began to question its influence on the city’s urban planning, infrastructure and housing.

The architect began developing the foundation for these questions at DePaul University in Chicago, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and political science — an atypical route for architects. It was in those four years that he began to develop his methods for self-evaluation.

“Philosophy gives you the techniques to critically examine your own work: ‘Am I doing what I say I’m doing?’” Dixit said. “The method of removing myself from my own work and then trying to as objectively as possible evaluate it from infinitive perspectives.”

Outside philosophy classes, Dixit stood out to his professors. Harry Wray, a professor of political science at DePaul, said that, as a student, Dixit’s “capacity for original thought” and generosity toward other people’s ideas set him apart.

After earning his degree in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis, Dixit began his international career. The architect spent time working in San Francisco and Chicago before moving to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. There, he worked at the OMA, which was founded by world-renowned architect Rem Koolhaas, and Delft University.

“He was sort of far more committed, far more ideological, far more rigorous; he cared far more than anyone else and definitely cared far more than a lot of professors,” said James Westcott, a journalist at AMO, the publisher and think tank for the OMA.

Courtesy of Mitesh Dixit

Westcott and Dixit met through a lecture series while both working at the architecture firm and have since collaborated and taught together. While Dixit was teaching at Delft University, he asked Westcott to give a lecture on research, editing and writing to one of his classes.

“He would just come in like a hurricane and really demand absolute excellence and draw out people who he didn’t think were capable of it,” Westcott said.

The journalist described Dixit’s teaching as demanding students to master two poles of architecture: critical engagement and “pure practical skill.”

This comprehensive approach to architecture is reflected in Dixit’s personal career. To him, education and intellectual pursuits cannot be approached without architecture, and vice versa, explained Tim Clemmons, an architect, adjunct professor and longtime friend of Dixit.

Clemmons said that as Dixit began looking into teaching jobs in the U.S., he was in part drawn to SU’s School of Architecture because of its direction under the school’s dean, Michael Speaks. The dean’s direction is clear and strong, Clemmons said, and it’s in that kind of environment when the assistant professor thrives.

“He’s always done best when I think he’s had a strong (protagonist),” Clemmons said, “and that doesn’t have to be a person in an architectural project. It can be the program, or the budget or the size.”

Dixit will spend the coming days finalizing his first semester at the university and traveling to Belgrade to begin his research.

“I think what I’m trying to do as a teacher and what I really want to do here, is expand the notion of what we call architecture,” Dixit said.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, Mitesh Dixit’s degree was misstated. Dixit has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and political science. Michael Speaks’ degree was also misstated. Speaks has a PhD in English literature from Duke University. The Daily Orange regrets these errors.

Published on December 4, 2017 at 11:18 pm

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