Diffusing Edges : Social And Economic Restructuring

Faculty of Architecture AR3011 Monsoon 2021

Krishna Patel

Narratives in Architecture Meghal Arya

Jury Citation A vividly portrayed proposal that demands that society has better understanding of the needs of urban workers who operate in the informal sectors of Indian cities. It proposes an economical, quiet architecture that skilfully creates spaces and provides facilities that will support the community it seeks to serve.

Design Description In an emerging and developing economy like India, the majority of urban workers come from informal sectors. This broad and heterogeneous workforce which includes construction site workers, venders on streets, women workers who work from home, etc. makes up for 80% of our economy yet they’re not considered while designing our cities and are often pushed to the peripheries that make it even more difficult for them to survive and serve the need.

Hence a narrative-based decentralized and distributed infrastructural approach has been employed which makes the cities more inclusive in terms of their accessibility for the informal sector workers and its viability for them to survive without having to constantly move.

This project is one such example of how an urban village like Makarba gaam can be included in city planning without entirely changing and redeveloping the site from scratch but instead recontextualizing it with smaller interventions.

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Insightful discussions were held with the community every other day. Program as well as sites of interventions were decided by the people with the help of professionals hired by Rehman chacha. Three main programs that were identified were the Nai Bharti naaka, under which one was Rozgaar Kendra and other was prashikshan shala; Jan sanyojan kendra, which is the collaboration centre; and a human library called Zariya.

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