Professor Adam Hardy
MA (Cantab.), Dip. Arch (Cantab.), PhD (CNAA), Registered Architect
Emeritus Professor
- hardya@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 5982
- 2.63, Bute Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3NB
Overview
Responsibilities
Director, PRASADA Director of Postgraduate Research Studies
External activities
Editing posts
Editorial Board member for South Asian Studies, Context, Abacus, Spandrel, Pakistan Heritage, South Asian Arts, Journal of History and Social Sciences
Other external activities
President, European Association of South Asian Art and Archaeology www.easaa.org
AHRC panel member and member of Peer Review Academy (2004-14)
Panel member, AERES (Agence d’Evaluation de la Reserche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur), France
Other information
Funding
| Date | Details |
|---|---|
| 2015 | The historic city of Ajmer-Pushkar. Mapping layers of history, use and meaning for sustainable planning and conservation. AHRC and Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR). £38.035 f.e.c. (one year from 16.1.16). |
| 2015 | The Nagara Tradition of Temple Architecture: Continuity, Transformation, Renewal. Leverhulme Trust. £270, 284 (three years from 1.10.15). |
| Cardiff University Research Leave Fellowship awarded 1.9.14-31.8.15. | |
| 2014 | 'North Indian Temple Forms: Reconstructing Lost Origins', £8,865, British Adademy (two years) |
| 2013 | Temples of Ashapuri, conservation feasibility study, World Monuments Fund, first phase Rs. 16,00,000 (about £75,000) |
| 2012 | Ashapuri and the Formation of Bhumija Temple Architecture, INTACH-UK Trust, £1,608 |
| 2010 | AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership award (with British Museum), £55,050 |
| 2010 | Shree Kalyana Venkateshwara Temple near Bangalore |
| 2010 | Multimedia animation for ‘India: the Art of the Temple’ exhibition |
| 2006 | The Indian Temple: Production, Place, Patronage, £632,186 f.e.c., AHRC. |
| 2004 | ‘Culturally Sensitive Healthcare Environments’, report commissioned by NHS Estates, with Professor Mark Johnson et al. (De Montfort University): shared grant of £29,000. Contribution on architectural issues and the arts in healthcare. |
| 2001 | ‘Indian Temple Architecture and Dance’, collaboration with Dr Alessandra Lopez y Royo (University of Surrey) on connections and parallels between Indian classical dance and Indian classical architecture: shared grant of £5,000, AHRB. |
| 2001 | ‘Paramara Temples in Central India’, £1,964, British Academy. |
| 1997 | ‘Vernacular Architecture of Orissa’, £4,000, INTACH UK, £1,000, Society for South Asian Studies. |
| 1997 | ‘Shekhari Temples in Gujarat’, £1,000, Society for South Asian Studies. |
| 1992 | ‘Temples of the Yadava Period in Maharashtra’, £1,000, The Ancient India and Iran Trust, £1,200, Society for South Asian Studies. |
| 1987 | ‘The Tamil Dravida Tradition’, £1,650, Society for South Asian Studies. |
Publications
We are currently unable to retrieve the list of publications. Visit our institutional repository.Research interests
Adam Hardy's research is largely in the history of architecture in South Asia, particularly Indian temple architecture (Buddhist, Hindu, Jain). This work embraces most of the subcontinent over a long time span, and involves detailed formal analysis. Drawings play an important part in my research, not only for explanation but also as a means of analysis. He has done related work on vernacular architecture in India, and on the nature of multi-cultural art and architecture.
Adam is interested in relationships between architectural history/theory and practice: architectural history can be approached through the eyes of a designer, while architectural design can be informed by an understanding of principles and processes underlying traditional architectures. PRASADA, the centre he started in 1996, aims to bring theory and practice together and to understand them in their broader cultural context.
Architectural History must always be a kind of re-creation, and recently, after more than thirty years of familiarity with the architectural languages of Indian temple-building traditions, projects that have come in Adam's direction involve the ’re-creation’ of ancient temples in different and direct ways: working out forgotten temple designs from thousand-year-old drawings engraved on rocks and from Sanskrit vastushastra texts (see The Indian Temple); designing a new temple in the 12th-century Hoysala style; and recovering lost temple designs from thousands of stone fragments for a World Monuments Fund conservation project in Madhya Pradesh. He is currently leading a large project on the Nagara tradition, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
As first supervisor he has supervised fourteen PhDs to completion. Details of his postgraduate research supervision, research projects and architectural design work can be seen on the PRASADA website.
Main expertise
History and theory of architecture, settlement and art of South Asia.
Supervision experience
Supervised 15 PhDs and 2 MPhils to completion.
Additional supervision interests
Happy to consider all architectural history topics, especially for the medieval period, and proposals for which architectural drawing is either a focus or a method.