/ IDENTITY - CRISIS

Episode One : The Thar Desert is occupied by the displaced Thari population who chose to stay in ancestral territory. They are oppressed, nationally un-recognized, and lack necessary resources to sustain healthy livelihoods. The border landscape is occupied by military agents, methods of territorial claim, camel agents, and the tourist attracted towards the picturesque desert landscape. This episode facilitates exchanges ranging from homegoods, to services in order to establish a self-sufficient economy.

Episode Two : Punjab is the gateway for illegal substances and the occurrence of displaced farmers due to the roughly 400 feet buffer set by India. The inconsistent border thickness, as well as location of highly regulated land is the site for illegal exchanges disguised by advanced farming techniques. This scenario imagines a site where siplaces farmers have adapted to their restricted access and have established advanced farming techniques that not only provide for nearby communities, but also becomes the main facilitator for illegal exchanges.

The artificiality of national borders have generated cycles of displacement, violent encounters, and diplomatic conflict. National borders are physical, political, contested, heavily guarded, and have unnaturally divided people in past and present histories. This investigation focuses on the spectrum of social injustices occurring within border landscapes and the generational identity crisis it has caused.

Borders are products of conflicts, agreements, and embody painful histories. They are hybrid conditions existing between lightly occupied and completely abandoned. Its a site of juxtaposing and similar identities. “Identity-Crisis’ questions the spatial language of national borders and considers potential opportunities for physical, idealogical, and economical changes creating an economy generated by those displaced.

This investigation speculates the IndiaPakistan border as a case study questioning the role of the displaced individual in reclaiming control of their land and identity and history. The absurd origin and ongoing debate of land ownership has implemented an unnatural duality to a once united region. The 2000 mile border is physically inconsistent, and has yielded moments of ecological, and generational trauma. Three episodes have been choreographed as a response to the speculation, imagining the border swellings as programmatic sites of exchange establishing civilian control and generating a new identity.

Episode Three : A question of identity, nationality and territory. Kashmir is the episode of the Kashmir stage. A space existing at the site of conflict. A stage under global speculation houses safe exchanges of ideas, thoughts, arts and cultures. The watchtower grows and occupies the thickness of the border , maintaining division but allowing methods of visual and verbal exchanges. Existing among a gridded field of adaptive bomb shelters, the tower is the meeting place, addressing separation and union.

Episode One

This episode addresses different forms of trading, building on potential local capital. The site occupies No Mans Land with a marketplace operated by its immediate occupants, existing in flux. Controlled by the Thari people, inhabitants unable to co-exist with their respected nationality. Their current reality exists in exclusion and prosecution resulting in generational trauma and life in scarcity..

Watch Tower Scale : A possible future exists with programs arranged by types of trade and the nature of its occupancy. Temporary markets with a daily clock lack organization and are spatially allowed to regroup on a daily basis. Permanent services and practices are able to exist within a structured space.

Thari Identities

transportation across borders bringing supplies to military personnel. The Watchtower is a threshold for entry into the market. Traders arrive by train building off of the already existing train crossing.

Level One : The common marketplace with tents, stalls and vendors with mobile goods to sell or trade. This program builds off of the already existing culture of bartering.

Level Two : A semi-permanent structure open for claim by locals. The tower can be an accelerator for other types of economies.

The program becomes a growing process that reflects immediate needs. Form is unpredictable and structure acts as the only evidence of permanence. It is the foundation that welcomes vendors, healers, priests, shoppers to establish their market, build something permanent or dissemble any evidence of habitation.

All of the program floats above the natural desert landscape to allow existing pathways of wildlife to flow through. One character, the camel, exists as the main agent of

Level Three : Here starts a system and architectural form that has a radial organization allowing for future growth supporting more permanent forms of exchanges.

This is not any end result, it is a moment in time that reflects the current state of the market.

A possible future exists with programs arranged by types of trade and the nature of its occupancy. Temporary markets with a daily clock lack organization and is spatially allowed to regroup on a daily basis. Permanent services and practices are able to exist within a structured space.

All of the program floats above the natural desert landscape to allow existing pathways of wildlife to flow through. One character, the camel exist as main agents of transportation across borders bringing supplies to military personnel.

LANDSCAPE

SCALE :

/ LANDSCAPE SCALE

The program becomes a growing process that reflects immediate needs. Form is unpredictable and structure acts as the only evidence of permanence.

The program becomes a growing process that reflects immediate needs. Form is unpredictable and structure acts as the only evidence permanence. It is the foundation that welcomes vendors, healers, priests, shoppers to their market, build something permanent dissemble any evidence of habitation.

This is not any end result, it is a moment time that reflects the current state of market.

EPISODE TWO Adaptive Misreadings

Punjab is the gateway for illegal substances and the occurrence of displaced farmlands due to the roughly 400 feet buffer set by India. The inconsistent border thickness, as well as locations of highly regulated farm lands is the site for this episode.

This episode imagines the border thickness condition as an adaptive farming region facilitated by illegal exchanges. An economy generated by overlooked networks, illegal systems, and landscape misreadings. The role and influence of authority is overlooked as the farmer adapts to political obstructions resulting in a region of “adaptive farming.”

The result is an alternate economy operated under post- displaced farmers retaliating against the systems imposed against them. The farmer, whose farmlands exist within the border, has established methods of secret trade, using the watchtower, which was once a tool for power is transformed into anchors of resistance.

A program initiated to adapt to restrictions grows into the controller of border transactions. Farming machines, and other low maintenance practices occupy the border and are read as a normal condition benefiting landowners, however underground networks, usually overlooked, are the main actors and facilitators of multiple underground exchanges.

Below : New Watchtower Operations

Methods of Distraction / Center pivot irrigation systems, reflection methods, and underground channel networks are all main agents facilitating and surveying illegal movements and trade.

Watchtower Skeleton / Existing watchtowers become foundations for re-appropriating to function towards the needs of the displaced farmer.

As the watchtower transitions into opportunity for inhabitation, programs are introduced replicating traces of normality within an absurd landscape is implemented through single plots for inhabitants of the towers.