Amit Srivastava

Amit Srivastava is an architectural theorist and construction historian specialising in socio-technical innovation. His work establishes a new approach to architectural innovation grounded in material agency and distributed socio-technical systems, spanning postcolonial construction networks and lunar habitation. Bridging Construction History and Space Architecture, his research reframes innovation as emerging from dynamic interactions between materials, technologies, and human actors in resource-constrained environments, whether in postcolonial contexts or on the lunar surface. As Director of the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA), he leads research into how knowledge, labour, and materials circulated through South–South technical cooperation networks across the Indian Ocean Rim, complicating dominant narratives of techno-centric progress. His collaboration with the non-profit Platform for Architectural Transfers in the Indian Ocean Rim (PATIO) extends this work through regional research capacity building. Publications in this area include India: Modern Architecture in History and South–South: Non-Alignment and Cooperation in the Construction of the Global South. Extending these insights beyond Earth, he investigates how material intelligence, repairability, and distributed agency inform the design and construction of lunar habitats. As Head of Lunar Architecture at the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources (ATCSR), he explores human factors in lunar hypogravity, human–robot collaboration, and adaptive construction systems for resource-constrained and extreme environments. He is a member of the Space Architecture Technical Committee (SATC) and serves as Chair of the Australian Space Architecture Challenge (ASAC), supported by the Australian Space Agency. Related publications include Human Uses of Outer Space: Return to the Moon. Across both terrestrial and extraterrestrial domains, his research develops design methodologies that foreground the agential capacities of materials and the distributed character of innovation. By placing postcolonial construction systems and lunar habitation within the same analytical horizon, his work expands architectural theory beyond conventional geopolitical and planetary boundaries. He supervises doctoral research in construction history, transnational technical exchange, distributed design systems, socio-technical innovation, and extraterrestrial habitat construction, and welcomes collaboration with the local space industry and research institutions across the Indian Ocean region. Architectural Design, Architectural History and Theory, Building & Construction, Design History and Theory, Design Innovation, Space sciences

2026 - Joseph, A., Kroll, D., Srivastava, A., Datey, A., & Sharifi, E. (2026). Collaboration in architectural design studios: a document analysis of professional and institutional policies in Australia. International Journal of Architectural Research: Archnet-IJAR, 1-27. DOI: 10.1108/arch-12-2025-0598 2026 - Srivastava, A., Scriver, P., Roskam, C., & Dearnley, A. (2026). Beyond Sydney School: Australian Architects and the Encounter with Asia (1950s--1980s). Architectural Theory Review, 30(1), 39-66. DOI: 10.1080/13264826.2026.2659202 2025 - Scriver, P., Srivastava, A., & Pieris, A. (2025). Report on South Asian Modernisms: Australian Scholarship and Global Perspectives, Travelling Exhibition, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Launceston, and Sydney, July 2023-March 2024. FABRICATION