The Transfiguring Pavilion

Fig 2 Taking from the Neighborhood

Faculty of Architecture AR3025 Monsoon 2020

The Pol of the Passer by

Banker Aahana Alay

Through Words Soumitro Ghosh, Nisha Ghosh

Jury Citation

The project explores the potential of a modular system of street furniture that allows for the adaptation of public space and creation of diverse street life functions and community facilities. The ambition is to create self-generated spontaneously ordered urbanity. The intriguing idea is clearly and vividly illustrated both at the level of the system design and in its application in a number of alternative configurations.

Design Description

The word Chaos, has evolved from its literal meaning shifting from an immeasurable space to utter confusion, which led me to question the very notion of how people have perceived the word. Having associated the word often with a variety of choices, a multiplicity of emotions and an array of possibilities, an attempt was then made to draw comparison between these two contrasting approaches towards the same word.

The program aims at creating a Spontaneous Order, which would be the result of human actions, and not of designs. It would rather use these designs as catalysts to create such an environment. With a lot of its structures being over 500 years old, Mandvi ni Pol calls for ways to remodel these spaces, while still being mindful of its cultural history and significance. The design aims at providing a very tactile, functional yet immersive solution in bridging the gap between the old and the new, while allowing for flexibility and a possibility of manipulating itself in order to fit the changing times and needs of the community. Taking up the inherent quality of temporariness that is deeply embedded in both, the residential activities as well as the spatial forms, the program weaves the concepts of the pol and that of the word chaos, translating into a scaffolding, a world of shifting, changing activities, posing as a tool for both: civic engagement, as well as the infusion of the old into the new.

Fig 1 Chaos | The Play shop: A reinterpretation of the characteristics of Chaos translating into a cognitive learning and developmental environment for children

Fig 2 Initial translations: Crowding the site with structures in places less explored while leaving spaces untouched, with minimum intervention at areas brimming with movement, thus establishing a controlled chaos