Urban Design Portfolio

Aman Shridharani

Bachelors of Urban Design, Faculty of Planning

Cept University

WORK SAMPLE.

URBAN DESIGN.

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I am particularly drawn towards sustainable and nature sensitive design practices and I strongly believe that as future urban design professionals we can bring about positive changes in our environment.

Bearing in mind that urban design is a broad and interdisciplinary profession involving a wide spectrum of subjects, I try to show in my portfolio the diversity of issues, concerns, approaches and solutions through the projects that I present. Hope you enjoy it. Thank you for your attention.

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CONTENTS.

Hello, I am an Urban design student, and this is a selection of my work over 4 years.

01.

Migrant Community Study

02.

My Terrace In Front Of Yours

03.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

04.

Humanizing Urban Space

05.

Landscape In-Transit

06.

The Shape Of Water

07.

Construction Technology

pg 6-7

Monsoon 2019

pg 8-9

Monsoon 2019

pg 10-11

Spring 2020

pg 12-13

Monsoon 2020

pg 14-15

Monsoon 2019

pg 16-17

Spring 2020

pg 18-19

Spring 2018

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01MIGRANT COMMUNITIES

Nehrunagar settlement, Surat, Gujarat

Documenting the usage of space and lifestyle

As part of the mapping exercise, the purpose of the study was to document, observe and analyse the migrant community settlement at Nehrunagar, Surat.

The site was a dense fabric of low rise high density housing, composed of semi-pucca houses contructed using an array of materials ranging from bricks, timber, re-used steel section to corrugated sheets. The site was situated between a wide main road on one end and a polluted creek on the other.

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The people residing within this housing were a migrant Muslim community of Maharashtrian origin - a highly patriarchal society, with most houses that were no larger than 12 x 15 ft. in area, and notably accomodated 5-10 people per home, making most living spaces extremely compact to dwell within. Interestingly, even amidst spatial contraints, healthy social harmony amongst residents was observed in subtle experiences such as proximate otla to otla interaction and exciting accidental encounter at few communal chowks and shops.

Section CC’

Section AA’

Typical interior of a house

Section BB’

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02MY TERRACE IN FRONT OF YOURS

Nehrunagar settlement, Surat, Gujarat

Design Intervention | Social Mass Housing

The project presents a design intervention in continuation with the previous mapping and analysis of the present conditions and living patterns of the community, to create spaces that are useful and benefit them and elevate their living standards.

Concepts of light and ventilation, minimum standard of space requirement, active public space, incrementality, equity, identity, income generation as well as open to sky spaces, were explored while developing the project.

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The idea focuses on creating a hierarchy of open spaces that can allow multiplicity of activities to happen. Residents are flexible to mould the space and use it in various manners. Each unit is also provided with terraces which are connected to each other to form a live-work environment on multiple levels. Thus the housing celebrates the idea of open spaces and its use, which can be different for each user and thus provide the flexibility to use it in his own unique way.

Visualization

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03BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER

Dharoi dam, Mehsana, Gujarat

Speculative intervention on regional scale

Set on the premise of the dam being defunct, Bridge Over Troubled Waters is a critique on the increasing dependency on dams as sources for water and energy and envisions the occupation and transformation of the Dharoi dam in a way to attune the dam to the needs of the hinterlands that surround it. Through a series of responsive manipulations, the project curates the dam to become a machine that alters and repurposes its structure to incorporate operational processes that privilege the environment it sits in

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and the people who occupy it. It will become a novel ecology that learns and adapts to the living natural and cultural landscape it sits in. It eschews the image of the dams as solitary hydrological infrastructures, giant machines, and titanic capitalist enterprises and moves towards a model which is indispensable yet additionally incorporated within the society. Together with the integration of ecology, society, and architecture, it is a physical model of ‘habitable infrastructure’.

The project focuses on utilizing the now defunct Dharoi dam for civic benefit. It acts as a station, which promotes social forestry and agriculture, which will cater to the nearby settlements along with becoming a platform of public gathering and ecological rectification. The speculation introduces the concept of detachable floating infrastructure, where the forepart of the dam is extended to create a step-like structure that acts as a native plant nursery, where as floating agro-forests are developed on the reservoir, that

are handled by the unemployed farmers for recovering the forest loss incurred due to the construction of the dam. In addition to this, the dam also serves as a dispatching station where crops from around the region are brought and stored in order to be supplied to the food deficit families around the dam through an extensive canal network. The inside of the dam is used for administration, healthcare and storage services. Thus, the area in and around the dam is completely utilized for public welfare and and benefit of nature and its surroundings without destroying it.

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04HUMANIZING URBAN SPACE

Dhanvantari garden, Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Social production of human-centered spaces

As cities get denser and the need for accomodating more and more people increases, the challenge of sensitive design, towards people and the environment arises through time. This project confronts these issues and directs towards making human-centric designs and producing quality spaces while understanding the phonomenology of place, that are derived from the social, spatial and cultural patterns observed from community life.

The everyday life events and patterns, as manifested in a

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neighbourhood level urban space in the new urban developments of Ahmedabad city, are decoded and analysed to define strategies to construct a speculative design intervention for integrating the built, its edge and the central open space.

The design is an attempt to create spaces that enhance the experience of people from various ages and gender and encourage sustainable practices that make everyday life in a community an enjoyable experience.

# Group seating

# Community farming (terrace)

Group seating for people to enjoy each others company in a green and vibrant surrounding

Community microfarming practices are promoted and located on the rooftops to utilize them for sustainable practices as well as greener, semi-private area for people to hang out

# Soft edge A low height mount of lawn sets a smooth transition from the street and the built edge to the central open space, with no hard physical barriers, blurring the line between inside and outside

# Community farming Farming workshops extend to the central space to occupy an area acting as a testing and experimenting lab for further large-scale farming

# Play The play area is spread in patches along the southwest side of the central open space, near the creche

# Urban wetland

# Outdoor Gym

# Outdoor library

An outdoor gym gives the experience of exercising in the open and utilize the central space

The library-cafe located in one of the buildings is extended to the central space to occupy an area consisting seating and bookshelves hanged around trees for people to easily access and experience it outside walls

Urban wetland for promoting sustainability and also acting as a refreshing water body to hang around

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05LANDSCAPE IN-TRANSIT

Sardar Sarovar Dam, Kevadia, Gujarat

Ecological resilience | Competition entry

‘Landscape in-transit’ is a visual tale of dark optimism focusing on how the lost landscapes provide us a portal to the past and juxtapose it on a taken-for-granted present, where we are yet to fathom the problems of food security, loss in biodiversity, and irreparable damages of the landscape.

It narrates a fictional tale that visualizes the repurposed Sardar Sarovar dam. It tries to show dream-like visions that offer a discourse

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on future habitats reminding us of our past actions. It is an attempt to bring to the forefront a discussion on the impact of large-scale development projects. By visualizing familiar landscapes as lost monuments, and situating them in unusual settings the project reinstates that if we continue to take our natural systems for granted, the only way we might experience them in the future would be through created sacred exhibits.

Once used for resource extraction and energy generation, the Sardar Sarovar Dam project is now a conservatory and regeneration station for the landscapes that we’ve lost. The dam and its backwaters are cultivation stations that house living archives of our landscape typologies. They contain carefully curated terrariums of preserved historical landscapes. These act as portals to connect us to our past and also imagine our future. These are exhibits to demonstrate new ways we see our harvesting seasons and celebrate our festival due to

climate uncertainty. Presently, harvest festivals are commemorated at the Sardar Sarovar dam backwaters, by celebrating our traditional practices linked to land and climate through assemblies of lost landscapes. Every year to commemorate our lost harvesting season, these vignettes are deployed through the canal network to numerous settlements across Gujarat. Backwaters situates the landscapes of the past that were lost due to the submergence of forest land around the state and repercussions caused by such mega infrastructure projects.

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06THE SHAPE OF WATER Tool for data collection and analysis

The Drawing Machine

The Circuit

The project is based in the belief that all water problems are local, but the consequences, the damage and the costs are anything but local. The project aims at taking a step towards comprehensive data collection at city scale as well as spreading awareness among citizens about their impact on the overall consumption of water by generating a unique water footprint for each individual that represents an abstraction of how much water you carry with yourself.

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‘The drawing machine’ is an interactive tool to generate an abstract form of water footprint that is unique to each individual. Each rotating disk is a parameter which represents the average amount of water one carries in a day.

The speed of the disks is regulated according to the ranges of consumption which determines the size of the pattern which is directly proportionate to the actual consumption of water footprint.

Intensity of one particular pattern represents greater consumption of water in that parameter than the average.

Inspired by Robert Balke’s ‘The Drawing Machine’

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07CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY

Cept University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Hands-on 1:1 construction

The structure is a hands on 1:1 construction done by 40 students over a period of 4 months. It primarily sits on masonry work (brick, concrete) with a bamboo mezennine floor and deck. The roof if made from manglore tiles. There are two windows on either walls, a wooden one and another made from glass. An iron ladder connects the ground to the upper deck.

Materials emplyoed were primarily - brick, bamboo, kotastone,

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concrete, wood, glass, manglore tiles and iron.

The purpose of constructing hands-on was to practically explore the properties of diverse building materials, work out different kinds of joineries and understand the varied process of constructing a structure.

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aman.shridharani.bud17@cept.ac.in +91 7874040707 18