Continuing on the initiatives of previous years, Vastu-Shilpa Foundation this year conducted a two month long habitat design studio, titled "City matrix - Development in Urban Core", from 16th February to 16th April 2004. The emphasis of the studio was to understand the urban Indian context, analyze its social, cultural, political, environmental conditions and evolve innovative design solutions for humane and sustainable built forms in urban centres of India.

The Sardar Bag zone in the Lal Darwaza area is a stretch of land which offers us numerous possibilities in this direction. The pivotal location would also become an enclave, a city within a city wherein numerous overlays such as institutional, recreational, residential, and commercial would juxtapose. Alternative development models are evolved to demonstrate how city could benefit through holistic development vision as well as coordinated and integrated planning processes.

Twenty nine architecture students from Schools in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and India participated in the studio. The participating schools included Aarhus School of Architecture, Technical University of Berlin, Technical University of Munich, University of Stuttgart, Goa College of Architecture, School of Architecture -Nasik and Bern University of Applied Science.

Prof. Balkrishna Doshi, Prof.Yatin Pandya and Prof. Rajeev Kathpalia conducted the studio at Ahmedabad at Vastu Shilpa Foundation's premises. Prof. Haresh Pandya (Germany) was the coordinator in Europe. While, Prof. Juerg Grunder (Switzerland), Prof. Claus Steffan (Germany), Prof. Sukhdevsingh Kailya (Denmark), Prof. Jan Knippers (Germany) , Prof. Hannalore Deubzer helped coordinate the studio on behalf of their respective schools.