Maritime Heritage Museum (Pre-thesis)

MARITIME HERITAGE MUSEUM

LOTHAL, SARAGWALA, GUJRAT

- ARCHANA PRASAD 01FA16BAT013

SEMESTER 8

Abstract

The thesis outlines a design proposal far a new maritime heritage museum at Lothal, Saragwala, Gujrat.

The history of India’s maritime trade goes back to centuries ago. India has been one of the most important points of sea trade in the entire South Asian region since the beginning of maritime trade. The maritime tradition of ancient India begins with the Indus Valley civilization which saw longdistance maritime voyages by 2900 BCE. Long before the development of the Silk Road, the ships belonged to Indian traders travelled thousands of miles crossing the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea to find their markets in the West Asia, East Asia, South East Asia and East Africa. Similarly, merchants from these regions, especially Arabians and Chinese frequently visited the Indian Subcontinent, trading silk, spices, porcelain, ivory and even slaves. As the ocean trade flourished in the region, more maritime trade links were built connecting the sub-continent with the Roman Empire in the earlier times and other regions of Europe in the following period,

long before the Colonial period. As its peninsular location made it apt for trade though marine routes, it also led to the establishment of a number of ports across the region during very early times. With having a coastline covering thousands of kilometers, the continent, which is one of the biggest peninsulas in the world, featured busiest ports of that time. Lothal sea port was one of the sea ports in India that helped it to earn a respectable position in the global maritime industry even before the colonial rule.

The museum will also be an independent research center of underwater archaeology for reconstruction of maritime history, archaeology of boat building and materials traded. It will have on display salvaged material from shipwreck sites in the Indian Ocean waters.

The aim is further strengthened by the placement of the building on the site by working with relation to existing conditions and planning ways to implement it.

Project Background

As Lothal was a famous port of ancient times, a Maritime Heritage Museum could be established. This could display objects related to shipping, fishing, trade and travel. Small ships and fragments reminiscent of stories of this ancient port could be unique attractions at the museum.

RATIONALE The major attraction of Lothal city is rooted in the archaeological excavations of the area and its large dockyard. The first tidal dock of the world was built at Lothal during the Harrapan times giving this place its historical significance. The Maritime Heritage Museum would also be a good source to highlight the maritime strengths of Gujarat from the time of the Indus Valley Civilization.

COMPONENTS 1. Display of objects relating to ships and travel on ship models, cutlery and other found equipment. 2. A part of the museum could also house the items relating to the Indian Navy representing defence related material for public education.

3. Audio-visual presentations on the history of Lothal’s maritime trade tracking the economic prosperity of the region.

4. Display of Lothal culture, ancient artifacts, life-size statues and paintings on canvas highlighting Lothal’s trade links with Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia. 5. Souvenir shops to generate revenue for the museum.

LOTHAL – THE PORT CITY Located in Bhal region of Ahmedabad district of Gujarat, Lothal is one of the most prominent cities of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. It displays engineering standards used in creating an artificial dock that show high standards of scientific and engineering skills, far more advanced than anywhere else in the world in 3 rd millennium BC.

Lothal – Artist’s Impression

Lothal – The Archaelogical

Remains

Lothal – The oldest dock

1

Danish National Maritime Museum

Location : Helsingor, Denmark Architects: Bjarke Ingels Group Area: 17500.0 m² Year: 2013

The harbor bridge closes off the dock while serving as harbor promenade; the museum’s auditorium serves as a bridge connecting the adjacent Culture Yard with the Kronborg Castle; and the sloping zig-zag bridge navigates visitors to the main entrance. This bridge unites the old and new as the visitors descend into the museum space overlooking the majestic surroundings above and below ground.

Leaving the 60 year old dock walls untouched, the galleries are placed below ground and arranged in a continuous loop around the dry dock walls - making the dock the centerpiece of the exhibition - an open, outdoor area where visitors experience the scale of ship building.

Site Plan

• The long and noble history of the Danish Maritime unfolds in a continuous motion within and around the dock, 7 meters (23 ft.) below the ground.

• All floors - connecting exhibition spaces with the auditorium, classroom, offices, café and the dock floor within the museum .

• Bridge slope gently creates exciting and sculptural spaces.

• A series of three double-level bridges span the dry dock, serving both as an urban connection, as well as providing visitors with short-cuts to different sections of the museum.

Situated in an old drydock, this national maritime museum is a pragmatic answer to the design challenge. The museum is situated underground around the drydock rather than inside it.

Analysis

• The placement of building around the drydock; underground offers a greater possibility to get daylight horizontally into the spaces.

• The exhibition spaces are organized in a circular motion around the dock. By twisting the geometry slightly so the spaces expand in width when you follow the exhibition and sloping the floor as little as 1:72, a clear sense of direction is experienced by the visitor.

• The exhibition is split into 2 parts, with the café as a natural break, the café furthermore has its own entrance making it accessible to people who might not be visitors to the museum.

• As one can observe in the plan, 3 spaces span the dock. Two of them act as an entrance path and a space for small temporary exhibitions as well as shortcuts between the two main exhibition spaces. The 3 rd bridge supports the path to the Kronborg castle, while containing an auditorium.

By building underground, the museum solves the circulation with a downward spiraling movement without losing the relation to the entrance. Indeed, one can speak of entering a different world in this museum.

CIRCULATION AND MOVEMENT DIAGRAMS

Materials Used Because the building is located underground, it does not change the existing skyline of the place. Hence, there is freedom of using any material. The materials used are very modern, mainly glass, aluminium and steel. Generally references to maritime signaling colours and construction details are used in selected details and functions.

The museum is placed in the old dry dock within the 500m UNESCO preservation line from the castle.

2PORSGRUNN MARITIME MUSEUM

Location : Porsgrunn is a city and municipality in Telemark in the county of Vestfold og Telemark in Norway Architects: COBE Architects, Transform Architects ; Engineers: Sweco Area: 2000.0 m² Year: 2013

• Porsgrunn is an industrial town, which is reflected clearly in the museum’s surrounding context. It consists of small to medium sized industries in the shape of small characteristic wooden buildings.

• It was important to create a museum with a high level of sensitivity towards these surroundings, yet at the same time for the new Maritime Museum and Exploratorium to stand out as a spectacular contemporary building and become a landmark of Porsgrunn.

• The general vision was to turn a backside into a frontside. With the new museum the town will now orientate itself towards the beautiful river, which for much too long has been Porsgrunn’s industrial backside

A characteristic aluminum facade, locally produced in Porsgrunn, not only holds the dynamic building structure together, but at the same time it reflects light and colors from the surrounding Norwegian mountain landscape.

Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium is situated in the Norwegian town of Porsgrunn, 100 km south west of Oslo. The new museum will tell the story of the town’s dock yard industry and its maritime history, which has employed thousands of people from the whole region. In addition, the attractive location of the museum right on the riverside opens up an important process for the city concerning the future extensive urban renewal of the entire Porsgrunn Harbor area.

Analysis

• The new Maritime Museum and Exploratorium is composed of eleven smaller square volumes, together amounting to almost 2,000 m2. Each volume has a different roof slant that assembled make up a varied roof structure.

• In the plan the building is divided into two floors.

• The ground floor has a very open character towards the surroundings, and contains all the public facilities such as foyer, classrooms, auditorium, canteen and so on. It also has a large flexibility towards adapting for different sizes of functions.

• On the first floor the exhibition rooms are placed as one big open area which can then be programmed according to changing exhibitions. A significant feature in these rooms are the ceilings which follows the angles of the roof.

The material might at first seem strange, given the context, and it is indeed an element which brigs a contemporary look to the building. The aluminuim cladding is produced locally and brings fish scales to mind. The interior continues the raw materials in a contemporary industrial look in the ground floor while the first floor is more subtle as a backdrop for exhibitions.

CAFE

PANTRY

EXHIBITION SPACE

MAIN LOBBY

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

GALLERY

OFFICE

EXHIBITION SPACEWASHROOM

INFO DESK

MAIN LOBBY

INFO DESK

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

5

National Maritime Museum of China

Location : Belfast, Northern Ireland Architects: COX Architecture Area : 80,000 sqm Year: 2019

With a distinctive form, reaching out into the bay from a large waterfront parkland, China's first National Maritime Museum is a monumental intervention. Comprising four wings, focusing on the themes of "the ancient ocean," "ocean today," "journey of discovery" and "the age of the dragon", the project aims to highlight China’s maritime evolution. Covering 80,000 square meters, the three-story museum includes six display areas and 15 interconnected exhibition halls.

Fully operational now, the museum held its soft opening in May 2019. 150,000m2 of site, 80,000 m2 GFA and 39,000m2 of exhibition space, the museum is two and a half times larger, in terms of both length and site area, than the Sydney Opera House the NMMC. Granted the World Architecture Festival Future Project of the Year, Future Cultural Project of the Year and the Competition Project of the Year in 2013, the project is a cultural phenomenon on the global stage.

A series of interconnected pavilions cantilever out over the water from a central reception hall, a space for transition that provides access to the upper of the two exhibition levels. The interconnected halls “provide a constant connection between inside and out”. In fact, the landscape orients visitors and organizes their experience.

CONCEPTUAL SKETCH

ELEVATIONS

SITE PLAN

SECTIONS

“The process was innovative – especially for a project of this size, scale, complexity, and location – in its deployment of parametric computer modeling that allowed both scale and detail to be resolved concurrently. Physical models focused on human scale and interaction while complex geometric algorithms resolved the doubly curved building ‘shell’ and its related cladding system.”

– COX Architecture

PROPOSED SITE FOR MARITIME MUSEUM-

LOTHAL, SARAGWALA, GUJARAT

The proposed site for development of Maritime Museum is adjacent to the Saragwala village, around 4 km south of the Lothal Harappan Period Archaelogical Site. The proposed site with an area of 375 acres has been selected for the development of the complete National Maritime Heritage Complex of which the proposed Maritime Museum will be a part of.

ACCESSIBILITY :

• Airport proximity : Sardar Vallabhai Patel International Airport, Ahmedabad -94.8 kms

• Railway : Lothal – Bhukhi Railway Station – 6.0 km Ahmedabad Junction – 86.8 km

• Road : 81.9 kms from Ahmedabad, Gujarat via NH47

DEEP BLACK SOIL These images above show an evident variation in the condition of the site over the years. The soil in this region is deep black due to its high salinity, which makes it unfit for cultivation. It is the reason that agriculture is so subsistence in nature in this region.

Google Earth ImagesContour Analysis

Land Use

SWOT ANALYSIS

STRENGTH :

• The Lothal site has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site

• Historical Context of the place.

• The excavated Harrappan civilization site is the USP of the project.

• Regular influx of people (1 st maritime museum of India) as the museum will act as a display center and research center of the maritime history of India.

WEAKNESS:

• Remote location

• Rural setup; hence devoid of immediate facilities – medical, connectivity, etc.

• Humid- climate

• High water table because of close proximity to the sea

• High salinity in the land

OPPORTUNITIES:

• To design India’s first maritime museum

• To create a new typology

• To display the rich Indian maritime history

• Revival of the importance of Asia’s first port.

THREAT:

• To preserve the visual, physical and the psychological realm of the place.

• Preservation of the historical context of the place.

LOTHAL

Lothal was one of the southernmost cities of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, located in the Bhal region of the modern state of Gujarat and first inhabited c. 3700 BCE. Discovered in 1954, Lothal was excavated from 13 February 1955 to 19 May 1960 by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the official Indian government agency for the preservation of ancient monuments. According to the ASI, Lothal had the world's earliest known dock, which connected the city to an ancient course of the Sabarmati river on the trade route between Harappan cities in Sindh and the peninsula of Saurashtra when the surrounding Kutch desert of today was a part of the Arabian Sea.

Lothal was a vital and thriving trade center in ancient times, with its trade of beads, gems and valuable ornaments reaching the far corners of West Asia and Africa. The techniques and tools they pioneered for bead-making and in metallurgy have stood the test of time for over 4000 years.

Lothal is situated near the village of Saragwala in the Dholka Taluka of Ahmedabad district. It is six kilometres south-east of the Lothal-Bhurkhi railway station on the Ahmedabad-Bhavnagar railway line. It is also connected by all-weather roads to the cities of Ahmedabad (85 km/53 mi), Bhavnagar, Rajkot and Dholka. The nearest cities are Dholka and Bagodara.

Resuming excavation in 1961, archaeologists unearthed trenches sunk on the northern, eastern and western flanks of the mound, bringing to light the inlet channels and nullah ("ravine", or "gully") connecting the dock with the river. The findings consist of a mound, a township, a marketplace, and the dock. Adjacent to the excavated areas stands the Archaeological Museum, where some of the most prominent collections of Indus-era antiquities in India are displayed.