S.E.E
stop ~ experience ~ enjoy
peenya
akshaya elizabeth zachariah
ART IN TRANSIT Akshaya elizabeth zachariah PDP 402 Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology Facilitators: Agnishikha Choudhury Arzu Mistry Amitabh Kumar Samir Parker Ruchika Nambiar
CONTENTS Introduction 9 Semester 1
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Conclusion
Initial Exercises Eat Street Mapping Food-Stalls
Peenya Exhibit Ksana: Exhibit The Map
Semester 2
Reflections
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Influences
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Platinum City
Orijit Sen TONA JR
Sound, Movement Houses and colour Texture, Residue Zoom-in, Zoom-out
Charette In Mumbai
Phase 4 Layered Balcony spaces Prototype and Testing on MDF
Materiality On-Site Interactivity of the piece Element of Playfulness
The Station as a Map
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The Concept Why the Concourse?
Industry
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Phase 1 On-Site Tests
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HMT Road
Phase 3 Visualisations
S10 Community
Phase 2 Visualisations and On-Site tests
I would like to thank my parents for constantly supporting me throughout the execution of this project, sleepless nights and what not. I would also like to thank my Art In Transit batch-mates for the encouragement, the laughter and dealing with so much pressure at times. Last but not the least I’d like to thank my faculty for guiding us right through, helping us when we got stuck and pushing us to go that extra mile. I am extremely glad to be a part of this amazing project.
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As part of my Diploma Project, I have chosen ‘Art in Transit’, (AIT) a public art project at the Peenya Metro Station, aided by a wonderful set of facilitators. My project aims to brand Peenya as a space that one needs to explore or experience in order to understand the space and enjoy it at the same time. I have been a part of ‘Art in Transit’ for 2 whole semesters and it has definitely molded my practice as a public artist or image maker. This book will take you through a journey of experiences, memories, as well as constantly evolving ideas towards the space as a whole.
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introduction
My name is Akshaya Elizabeth Zachariah and I am a final year student at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. I particularly love bringing out the brighter things in life, and it does reflect in many of my illustrations and projects. Having done courses not pertaining to a specific field in design, I have gained experience in photography, illustration as well as image-making particularly.
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Initial Exercises
For me, I particularly was interested in way-finding as a tool for people to get from point A to B, being guided by a map, or for those travelling to new places, or as a usual routine, those going to school and to work places. Since we were mapping the unconventional, I decided to collaborate with a friend and map something that interested me, when I travelled to Peenya for the first time.
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semester1
Being completely new to Public Art, we were asked to get familiar with the metro station and the space, through sketches, choosing different vantage points and understanding the architecture of the station. After exploring the Purple Line, we were given many mapping exercises of spaces in Yelahanka, within the radius of 2km, and layering unconventional elements into the map through sound, smell, texture, air currents, abandoned spaces, crowded areas, noisy main roads, medical stores and the like.
Eat Street
“Food is a subject of conversation more spiritually refreshing even than the weather, for the number of possible remarks about the weather is limited, whereas of food you can talk on and on and on.” A.A. Milne, ‘Lunch’ (1934)
When I visited Peenya for the first time, yes, it did look monotonous and dusty, and all I was looking for to quench my thirst and fill my stomach was some scrumptious food. Being a fan of street food, I decided to avoid the usual Mc Donald’s and KFC there and went to one of the local food carts that were serving some yummy kachoris and samosas and a small cup of coffee. This instantly got me thinking. These shop keepers put their stalls out here faithfully everyday, wait for their customers to come, with no branding or advertising to promote their food. They solely rely on information passed through word of mouth. I thought of locating all these food stalls on a layered map bringing the food carts,seating space, the types of food sold and the crowd at different times of the day.
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In one of the streets opposite the metro station, I noticed some hand painted-typography that really intrigued me, and led me to document every shop that had kannada and english typography that was painted, even if they were on old cracked walls or abandoned carts. Further to this, I spotted a couple of abandoned carts as well, and the elements lying around the cart began to tell a different story. Egg shells strewn near some carts, along with used styrofoam cups suggested a space that had been occupied, and activity that had previously taken place and elements left behind.
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Mapping Food Stalls Understanding and observing these food carts around Peenya, gave us( Aroushka and me) a sense of navigation as to where to go for what meal, or what time of the day do each of the shopkeepers close their shops, whether these carts were permanent or temporary shelters and where these shopkeepers were from. We were particularly interested in the food items, their storage and the popular items at each time of the day: Breakfast, lunch and dinner. This made us look at a variety of dishes, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian as well as beverages. The other layer in our map was to include crowd density during different times of the day in each of these stalls.
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Ksana: Peenya Exhibit My first exhibit was a mural, juxtaposing people I had clicked in different areas in Peenya and through the use of bright colours that I spotted on buildings, highlight a sense of life and activity of the space. Although this mural could not be completed due to permission issues and miscommunication with the owners of the wall, there were many things I learnt from the experience as an artist. More importantly, being a public artist means having to look into seeking permission before jumping straight to it. This mural also did not have a finished visualisation, which I didn’t want infact. I chose to play with it as I painted,allowing me to play with colour, scale and juxtapositioning of these human elements. Despite all these drawbacks I still managed to move into my next intervention, after a lot of contemplation about my final proposed concept.
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peenya exhibit
I decided to explore public spaces as a space where people interacted with each other, as well as the space and began to listen to conversations that these people have with each other. I even explored people’s movement as well as postures in public places like bus stops, next to food carts, outside their houses etc. I also looked into typographykannada and English. I traced over photographs of people, food carts and workers at construction sites, looking at a variety of people, right from college students to working professionals and even security guards in Peenya.
The map I revisited the community spaces with many questions as to how this mural can tie up to something larger than just people looking at it, appreciating it (or not) and just walking away. There needs to be a system that serves for engagement of the people in Peenya, the metro station as well as the people entering Peenya. My next step was to look at terms like ‘Peenya Aspiring’ to build stronger belief of the residents there to invite more people to come to Peenya and see the space differently, using the Metro. I wanted to be able to bridge this gap between the mentality of people in general towards Peenya as an industrial space, to a more vibrant, exploratory territory Hence I went back to my previous food-map that I had done with my friend, and thought, why not give people a ‘taste’ of their food culture by providing a map for them to go to these places, having the map in the station, for easy access and giving them information about each of these stalls and the types of food served at different times of the day. So I first illustrated a few common dishes that I found in Peenya and then went on to make a huge map of the area around Peenya covering a 2km radius and located these shops on the map.
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s.e.e peenya
Since my initial visualised space was right outside the metro station to facilitate easy access as well as covering a large surface area to depict the map of Peenya and locations of the stalls with the types of food, along with a provison for take-away cards of illustrated food items and a small write-up behind the card about the cart selling the item.
This project was to serve a way for the people entering Peenya to be informed about a different culture and for them to be directed to these food stalls. Understanding how this map ties up to the metro station and the people coming to Peenya or exiting it, gave me a clearer understanding as to what my map was doing for not only the people, but for those shopkeepers as well. The system was to ensure that they get their business and that people immediately associate the carts or food items illustrated to that of a particular vendor.
S.E.E stood for ‘sit eat enjoy’ in relation to this map being a food map, thus becoming the title for the entire project I did, for the first semester.
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Sound, Movement
Researching Public spaces and using certain filters to explore spaces more clearly made me layer my experiences and allow myself to categorise specific key experiences that I took out from the space, since I cannot map everything. These filters are intangible elements that evoke or trigger a level of curiosity of the navigator/viewer inside the metro station and to creat an element of surprise.
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Looking at houses and the elements around each house that I saw common made me look at how spaces along the walls of houses are treated. Storing water in huge drums, clothes drying outside as well as cattle tied outside the house was what interested me the most. Through these walks, colour began to speak immensely in the community area, with the houses brightly painted, or the clothes that people wore were bright and cheerful. Initially, the children in the community space drew me to document this space extensively. But through the many revisits to site, new elements started to speak louder. The daily activities that took place, the noise of children from the government schools nearby, as well as how each family interacted with the other, their small festival celebrations.
semester 2
The next semester saw me revisiting Peenya again to obtain some new insights into looking at spaces and how I can map experiences that cannot be depicted on a 2D map.
Houses and Colour
Texture Throughout my documentation of experiences in Peenya, after going back home and viewing my pictures over and over again, the little cracks in walls, or ash remains on small makeshift stoves that I clicked in the community space made me look at how texture can evoke a feeling. Also there were many traces that I had observed in certain spaces behind houses where one could only see through the crack of the compound wall. Wet stone slabs indicated that these people would have just finished washing their clothes, polished white school shoes lined outside to dry and many other such cluefinders of previous activity in that space got me thinking of how curiosity plays a huge role in what the viewer would want to see and go closer to. If I were to bring these experiences with texture into the station for viewers to experience as well, how would I do that? Will the navigator actually walk by a space in the metro station where the space and the elements in the space shout out texture and thus evoke a feeling in him? I initially contemplated making the journey from the platform to the exit of the station like a game, where the navigator experiences nuances of Peenya with these different keywords or experiences . Would I look at my piece as one that uses just a flat 2D visual to evoke a textural feeling, making it almost as an absence of stimuli, yet the visual adds that layer of it looking like a particular texture?
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Residue
Zoom Out, Zoom In
The filters I had so far were signs of life, and texture obtained from the community side. The next walk through the industrial side evoked almost similar curiosity of previously occupied spaces, or activity that had taken place and elements that had been left behind. I narrowed down to searching for certain clues/ residue that was left behind. Based on my curiosity I began to look at series of applications of notices on walls, trees, political posters of different parties, notices of obituaries, repetitive movie posters. There was a particular shift in the kinds of notices and advertisements in the industrial area, in comparison to the community space. The types of advertisements in the industrial space were more towards urgency of job posts and housing complexes coming up in the area.
It was quite an interesting journey so far, and through the act of categorising while on site, I was thinking of ways to explore and map more elements with an already existing tool I used wherever I travelled. My camera. When I want to view things close, I simply go close to the object, or zoom in with my camera itself. So I tried a new technique to see if this would aid me in my experiential documentation of S10 Community. This exercise was mainly to see what elements capture my eye from far, and how the space becomes much more defined when zoomed in. When viewed as the entire space ( panoramic view) we see diversity in the types of houses, the different colours of the houses, the shapes of the windows as well as the different heights of these houses. The zooming in opened up a clear understanding of just a narrow street or gully of the community space and the elements that caught my attention, through sound, smell, or sight. These sensorial cues gave me room to explore more sensorial ways of recreating spaces within the station.
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AIT in Mumbai
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charette in mumbai
Mumbai based ‘Urban Vision’ invited us on a fullyfunded trip to Mumbai for us to use public art in Kandivali, an area that is developing its infrastructure, allowed us to explore place-making and how that feeds into contextual public art as a practice. Through each of the interventions I had done, my response to site changed and I was more interested as to what would happen if these sites travel, and how my interventions would speak differently. Through my sketches of the space, I was looking for something would catch a passer-by’s attention, and elements and the changes that took place at different times of the day.
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Exploring Materiality On-Site My first piece was to pull out elements of the space I was in through shape, repetitiveness, and size. The tiles on the floor in the alcove space were tiny square shapes and it reminded me of pixels, and I began thinking of video games we used to play that were highly pixelated and colourful. Tetris was the first game that came to my mind, and it made me look at how the form of the square tiles when put together and if some were highlighted, could form the game, if it trickled from the wall to the tiles on the floor. I decided to use bright colours so that it would stand out from the dull, cracked old walls even from a distance.
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Interactivity of the piece On-Site My second intervention was to study light and shadow and how elements in the space are morphed over time by just the form of the shadow. I chose a satellite dish in my space as the elongated shadows and the shapes it formed, really intrigued me. I wanted to leave behind something that not many people notice as a day goes by. Also after my piece is completed the tones of grey would play with the actual shadows in a very interesting way to make the viewer understand the intent behind the piece.
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In my third intervention, I explored human forms that occupy the alcove. Since this alcove was a quiet space, and away from the main road and all the noise, I chose to use silhouettes of kids playing hide-n-seek, peeking over walls, crouching/hiding in corners of buildings, using the space around the houses to aid my piece.
The Concept The selection of the four phases were based on the 4 different directions that the metro station was facing, since I wanted to stay true to its geographic location, so that people would know that behind a particular wall is where the actual space is, thus becoming a spatial map within the station. I also began to move away from the station being a compass ( in the 2D food culture map, where people are directed to particular places after viewing the map) to it being the map itself, where the traveller becomes the navigator and physically enters the map and experiencing Peenya before he/she exits the station. This map also looks more at evoking a sensorial experience than it informing the public about places around Peenya. The navigator, based on his curiosity, can walk up to the piece or Hence my diploma project is researching spaces around the Peenya Metro Station, and evoking visual, sensorial, and textural experiences of the same within the metro station, allowing the walls to act as a porous structure that pulls in these key elements and experiences from around Peenya. Each plain of the wall in the metro station points to the 4 different directions/ phases of my project and such that it would inform the viewer that behind each wall replicated, would be where the actual space is.
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the station as a map
Element of playfulness through human figures inhabiting the space
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Phase 1
I found this space to be an ideal place to grab the commuters’ attention, since the space is vast and empty, with absolutely no life, thus making the journey from the ticket counter to the platform just another boring 2 minute walk to get into the metro. I wanted to bring the walls in the concourse of the station to life. By doing so, I not only get the viewers by surprise, but the walls begin to act as a permeable structure that bring the elements from outside the station and evoke even a sensorial experience.
The industrial space of Peenya unearthed texture and repetitiveness through brick walls of the industries, iron gates, glass windows and many other elements in that space as seen in the pictures. Evidences and traces of trucks and lorries through the tyre marks left behind was also an interesting observation.
The concourse of the station has many entry points in different parts of the station. There are 7 stairways that lead to the concourse, allowing for multiple views of the concourse. Hence this gave me immense opportunity to play with elements in different parts of the station. This is why I decided to look at all four directions of the metro station and the spaces outside, and see how I could recreate subtly, the experiences of these spaces, within the 4 walls of the metro station.
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I also noticed light and shadow, a tool I had used in Mumbai, to observe how spaces are treated at different times of the day due to light and shade in that area where bikes are parked under trees at noon, food carts find shelter right next to a tree to make it comfortable for the customers to enjoy shade while they eat. After exploring materiality in the industrial space, seeing how I recreate or evoke the same within the station was extremely important. In my series of visualisations, the aim being to evoke a sensorial experience rather than to inform about the space. Having said that, I allowed myself to play around with textures of cement bricks using stencils,
industry
Why the concourse?
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Stencil samples of bricks and textures that I created to mimic in the concourse of the station.These are 3 layer stencils-shadows, mid-tones and highlights. 40
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On-Site tests
Looking at the walls of the station in the direction of the Industrial side, I chose to replicate/recreate the texture on those walls only, On each of the walls of the pillars at regular levels these cememnted brick textures will inform the viewers of the nature of Peenya’s industrial side. With construction of new industries and upcoming infrastructure I chose to give this textural feel to this phase, allowing the walls itself to mimic a half constructed/ yet painted over, finished look as well. Overall, when one stands in the concourse of the station and face the industrial side, they can see each of the walls texturally enhanced to create/evoke a sensorial feeling.
The tests that I explored on-Site were mainly to look at how I could render the bricks as realistic as possible, looking at shadows, mid-tones and highlights. Painting a series of bricks also made me look at how much of the wall would I want to paint. It could possibly fade at the edges or half way up the wall, revealing the neatly coated metro station walls. I also tested out the type of material I wanted to render. If these are cement bricks, what if I played around with the material texture-cement, and render it like a cotton brick-fluffy and light in texture, and paint an entire pillar that way to complicate and twist texture a little more. All these questions and ideas slowly started moving aside, while I decided to jump in and paint on the walls and see how each of the tests looked.
A few visualised spaces exploring texture mainly in different parts of the station as well as on the wall and on granite cladding using vinyl stickers to create the texture.
Some worked, some didn’t but that made me look at other types of applications, painting over printed clear vinyl, or stencilling them out, or just simply rendering them from scratch. The aim was to evoke a sort of structural, constructional feel of the industrial side.
This cement block strip was printed on clear vinyl only to get the texture of the bricks, yet retain the clear part of the vinyl, so when stuck on a wall, and painted over it, would give a differen feel to the piece as a whole. 42
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The S10 community is the community that actually got divided after the Tumkur highway was built separating the area into two. This small community has been very welcoming and gave me the chance to catalogue my experiences of that space visually and sensorially. The children there were a constant attraction for me to document them playing in the streets, learning new games like ‘tikki’ and ‘gatta’ and trying to see how I can incorporate or recreate those same experiences within the station. Hide ‘n seek, the game that I looked at in Mumbai, using sillhouette figures to explore spaces, made me go one step further in using realistic images of kids playing, inside the station, to add that element of playfulness and illusion.
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s10 community
Phase 2
The human figure cut-outs are to be printed on Aluminium Composite Panels (ACP) and cutout in the shape of the figures. After trials on sun-board and testing out durability of different materials to print on, I decided to use ACP, with L-angles to support the figures that would hold and could be drilled into the ground, it gave me immense opportunity to place these figures at angles, as well as away from the wall to add more depth and even cast a shadow on the wall behind making it look realistic!
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Visualisations and On-Site tests
By taking permission from the community and explaining to them, the larger motive of my project as a lens to celebrate Peenya and break notions of it being a dull place, would then allow me to install cut-outs of printed human figures. The illusion of a 2D piece when viewed from far was something that really helped me understand how the human mind is tricked, due to light/shadow creating depth for the image.
In this visualisation and on-site test, the aim was to create the ambience of the small shops in the community space, evoking hunger, and also to add colour to the black granite walls, with the small cabinets for the biscuit packets, and the shopkeer leaning over the counter giving the child change for what he was buying. This provided quite a strong narrative for me to work with.
I chose to make the space more playful using cut-outs of children playing cricket, to few elements of the community space-door frames, women playing games and the clothes hanging out to dry. Each of the kids postures interact with the walls of the station itself. Eg. The boy peeking from the corner of one wall, trying to avoid the boy counting from seeing him.
Freezing an activity in time also allowed the viewer to be imaginative and come to his own consensus as to what the narrative portrayed. Every piece of the community space reflected some activity or the other.
Print: Vinyl, stuck on sun-board and cut into the shape of the boy
Print on vinyl, stuck on granite cladding 48
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Through each of my visualisations for the community phase I learned that the more I play with human figures and life-size cut-outs and them interacting (or made to look so) with the space, the viewers will definitely get curious and walk up to the pieces and realise the flatness of the piece. It was amazing to watch people react to my sunboard cut-out of the little boy as well as the vinyl print of the shop. Mostof the people smiled, not only at how silly they felt, falling for a simply 2D print of a boy walking, but also how illusion played in such a dead, vast concourse of the metro station.
In my visualisations(above left) and painted renderings (below) I sought to explore signs of life, colour, and movement, that well describes the vibrant S10 Community. One of the most common sights were bright clothes hanging out in the afternoon, the best time to dry clothes allowing me to freeze time in a day at the community, coding afternoon as a time when clothes were, hung, and evening as a noisy time when kids came out to play.
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Phase 3
hmt road
From the crispy dosas along with the mouth-watering chutneys, pakodas, sponge-cakesto the refreshing tea/ coffee and kachoris, small food carts are a common site in India. After coming to Peenya I noticed HMT road to be a very unique space unlike all the other roads. This road was flocked with numerous food carts and tiffin shops, be it permanent sheds or temporary shelters. After having done my initial layered maps and visualised map of food carts all around Peenya, I thought about evoking hunger from within the station itself. Then people will find the need to immediately go out and have that juice they were craving for, or that samosa that is drool worthy.
Understanding how to evoke these senses and guide the viewer to the actual food cart becomes key. In my evocation of this space, I will again have to create visuals of illusion and element of surprise, and colours to make the viewer feel hungry. Further to this, I specifically wanted to look into the setting of a cart and the elements that it consists of. From the plastic containers with the sweets, to the wooden shelves and the tin cans, to the paan sachet strips and Lays packets that are hanging outside the shop, this phase will look at evoking hunger through visuals and subtle 3D elements.
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Visualisations Since I wanted to explore the seating spaces in chai kadais, the bright plastic chairs allowed me to think of painting the chairs, on this space of the concourse, with a few utensils of the shop lying around. I decided not to simply replicate an entire food stall, but to show them in parts and give the passers-by subtle elements of the these stalls. Even if there is a person seated on one of the chairs (as shown in the image on top), not drawn entirely, always serves for some interaction with the piece. I chose window spaces as well, where I would use perforated stickering-print the stall cabinet and stick it up on the window. I chose perforated stickering, since I wouldn’t want to block out the light completely from these windows. Some of the other initial thoughts about this visualisation I did, was also to play with the cement block seating with a small wooden plank for people to sit on. I wanted to print someone sitting on this simple seating arrangement (2D) as well as use actual cement blocks to make the seating, for people to come and sit. This provides a very interesting relation between flat as well as real. This led me to look at the ‘paan-packets’ hanging in these stalls, numerous colourful ones. If the stall cabinet was going to be something flat, I wanted to create subtle elements that would be real. So if I attached a strip of real paan sachets, it would give great dimension to the simple printed shop. The wooden frame of these shops also could be made to create a 3D feel to the flat piece, which is currently in progress. 54
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After seeking permission to enter this gated-community, I was really excited to see how this apartment complex thrives. The facilities here ranged from a supermarket,to swimming pools, to a chaat corner as well as indoor stadiums, cafetria and Health facilities. Little did I know that such a huge vibrant community existed in an industrial, mechanical Peenya, where it is all about the machinery, mass production of CNC heavy goods, motors and generators. Tucked away behind the Peenya metro Station is Platinum city, spread across 34 acres, strategically located next to Yeshwantpur as well. Housing 2,500 homes, this community has something completely different to say, when one enters. All of a sudden, the dusty, noisy main road of Peenya is erased, only to be replaced with plush gardens and marble floor entrances to each of the 7 blocks in Platinum City. The echo of kids playing in the parks, and splashing water in the pool, centrally located, gives us glimpses of the vastness of this complex.
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platinum city
Phase 4
My walks in Platinum City saw me squinting as I looked up at the windows and balconies, with the morning sun, peeping over the corner of one of the blocks. It was nice to see that each apartment block was different from the other, architecturally. The walkway around these apartments had benches at regular intervals to sit, as well as gardens and fountains, that make one feel so relaxed in the space. Morning joggers, walkers and kids going to school were the activities that livened these walkways early morning. By afternoon, the scorching heat kept everyone indoors, making the ground floor and outdoors very quiet with birds chirping ocassionally. By evening the space would again thrive of human activity, cars going down the driveway, kids shouting and playing, and a gathering of mothers catching up with each other on their kids’ schools, life and gossip.
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After a few rounds around Platinum City, the elements that started speaking to me, about the space, were the tall structures itself. From having to break one’s neck when looking up at these towers, I then started noticing the architecture of the builidings. There was so much repetition of windows, air shafts, balconies and the architecture of each house, that I began to wonder how I would want these to play inside the Metro station.
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Layered Balcony Spaces I started playing around with forms of windows and types of windows on OHP sheets and playing around with perspective to see different ways that I could recreate these window spaces, or spaces to look out from.
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Looking at each of the balcony spaces I wanted to recreate these spaces within the station by layering the different elements that constitute the balcony and give the space a narrative.
Visualisations
I chose a space in the metro station right next to a flight of stairs with a 6m in height cavity in the wall that could make me fit 4 balconies upward. The layering would mean breaking down elements into 4 layers with atleast a 4cm gap between each layer, in order to creat depth. The different elements in the balcony space depict how each balcony becomes unique in the way it is treated. Despite being so similar in architectural form, the elements make the balcony different from its neighbour.
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Layer 1- Giving perspective and architectural depth
Layer 2- Window frames and door frames
Layer 3-The elements that make each balcony unique from each other
Layer 4- The grills, railings and shutters as the outermost layer 63
Prototype I tested out a simple prototype on sun-board before I chose MDF Board, just to see in small scale, how the balcony space would look as a whole. This prototype allowed me to think of the width of the frames, such that when I move to MDF, it should be thick enough and not break easily. I painted each layer according to its realistic rendition, the grills, railings, door and window frames as well as the walls of the balcony.
Aluminium window channels to be used to create the framework to hold all the layers together. Found these channels in the N5 basement that fit the bill! With the use of aluminium channels to even separate one layer from the other also helped in getting depth using the framework of the channels itself. The first floor balconies (4 in total) will be half of what the other balconies heights are, since this is at ground level with a wall for one to lean over, like one is in an actual balcony. 64
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Testing on MDF I got these boards cut within a day, and the boards were exterior coated MDF boards. The beauty of working with MDF as opposed to Plywood is that, the finish is extremely smooth, and when I paint over it, it will look stunning. I saw this as an opportunity to look at actual scale and see how best one can even interact with the floor level balconies in my piece, where they can actually step into the balcony. This phase is currently on hold, while the other phases are underway. Since this phase requires a lot of structural and extremely precise measurements, I wanted to save the best for the last.
One of my first influences of looking at spaces and mapping, keeping in mind the realism of the elements in the space was Orijit’s ‘From Punjab, with love’. After seeing his work in ‘The Pao Collective’, a bunch of comic artists, self-funded and driven to give a whole new dimension to comics as more than just reading for children. Amitabh, our faculty is part of this collective and he gave me some brilliant insight into the working of Mr. Sen’s mural. It is a beautifully illustrated and realistically rendered depiction of sights and insights of Punjab life, today, in comparison to what it was back then. It took him 3 years to finish the piece and after seeing the mural in its entirety, the amount of detailing and heavy narrative in each section of the mural, roads, vehicles and different small communities and pretty looking houses, kids flying kites it gives Punjab such a rich, colourful and very crisp ‘overview’ of the state. I was particularly interested in this mural because of how he chose to do an aerial view of the state, showing urban and rural settlements together, and this made me relate to the settlements I found in Peenya and how I could create rich narratives by just observing everyday life.
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influences
After getting proper measurements of one to-scale balcony, I decided to get one balcony CNC cut. It was brilliant that my dad, who is in the Ply business currently, was able to get me contacts for CNC routering.
Orijit Sen
TONA
JR
After my sillhouette children I painted in Bombay, I was introduced to an artist who similarly worked with stencilling kids on walls, very carefully site-specific. TONA is a Hamburg based street artist that has been all over the world doing these intricately cut 3 layer stencil-work. He has been a part of the St+Art initiative and has always been surprising people with his art.
JR’s ‘Wrinkles of the City’ portrays older people who have lived through the changes and upheavals of their city. Their individual life stories and what they have gone through show up in their facial features just as the City’s history does on the buildings where JR posts up the portraits.
The 3 images shown are 3 of his street artworks I spotted while walking around near MG Road, Bangalore.
And JR’s photographs are always about more than the individual. They point to the importance of each and every person. The artist successfully portrays the dignity of each person and does this without any prettification. People who seem to have lost significance socially, the oldest generation, become visible once more and feel noticed and valued again. This saw me looking at blowing up high-resolution images and looking at paste-ups and how JR goes about his work, seeking permission first, of the people being photographed and the process of getting large prints done. He has done ‘Wrinkles of the City’ in Berlin, Shanghai and even Los Angeles.
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I also enjoyed the fact that I didn’t focus on enhancing or evoking one site, but many. This gave me time to look at so many places in Peenya that one may not know of. To start with, the community that exists in Peenya, with such bright coloured houses and rich culture, gave me opportunity to interact with them and get a glimpse of their lifestyle. Walking through the Industrial side of Peenya made me highlight texture, more than the machinery or the factories, because to me, these huge cement walls of the industry were the first elements that greeted me as I walked by. The HMT Road, that really influenced me to do my food project in the beginning, saw how I could evoke hunger and thirst within the station, as the navigator (commuter) passes by and this definitely would aid the small shops outside to get more customers in the long run, because not only do they see the printed stall inside the station, but the owner of the stall will have a cut-out of himself eventually, next to his shop. Platinum City evoked a sense of ownership of spaces (balconies in this case) and how one’s balcony is unique from the other even though all the balconies have the same architectural style. The elements in the space and how one enters a recreated balcony space in the station allowed me to look at interactivity with the piece itself.
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reflections
By looking at the concourse of the station that directs people to the 4 phases in my project, I gained a strong anchoring of site. I was able to place myself firmly at the epicentre and geographically recreate spaces and bring them inside the metro station.
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I did not see myself wanting to do a project divided into phases and looking at spaces outside the station, but through my journey, I felt the need to re-see Peenya, and recreate spaces around and see how well the walls can sift through the elements and play out inside the station. I am looking forward to completing this project soon! And I do hope that with all the excitement this project has to offer, the commuters will get to ‘S.E.E’ Peenya eventually, in the long run. Thank you!
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conclusion
My project, being the only person working in the concourse of the station, I need to cleverly play with the different elements I choose to bring into the space. I do have the space and this is an added bonus to the space I have chosen. It isn’t one final piece, it’s many experiences that tie up together making the station ‘the map’.
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