Architecture Portfolio

Architecture Portfolio Dhruv Shah Aka Lodaya B.Arch Navrachana University, Vadodara, India.

M.A. Architectural History, UCL Bartlett,London, UK. Strelka researcher, Terraforming, Strelka Institute, Moscow, Russia.

Email: dhruvshah317@gmail.com / ucbqdsh@ucl.ac.uk

Contents, The Portfolio is an assimilation of written and design work which collectively contribute and reflect upon the way I construct and situate my research within multi-scalar glocal domains. Links to detailed projects and essays are mentioned on the culminating page of the portfolio.

Research Interests Planetarity Populations Governance Power Urbanism City Planning

Unsacred Varanasi Kashi: Creating politicized identities. (MA architectural history dissertation, outstanding thesis award). (2020) Transcendental Phantasmagorias A psychogeographic redaing of Dhobi Ghat. (2020) Auroworth A reading of Auroville through the lens of the Garden City Concept. (2020) Fragility of thresholds Exploring conditions of becoming: An academic Review. (2019) Positions: Sharing spaces with our companion species. (2019) Guggenheim Repository: Guggenheim rethinking competition. (competition winning entry) (2017)

Stacking

Tall Museum Building Typology: Guggenheim rethinking competition. (top 10 finalist, team leader) (2017)

Layering

St(Art) Canvas: Bohemian Art Hostel international competition. (top 25 shortlist, team leader) (2018)

Archetypologies

Breaking New Ground: 24 hours Speculative vertical city competition (website publish team leader) (2018) The Phoenix Rises: Notredame Roof reconstruction international competition. (top 15 shortlist) (2019) Raw: Haptic Museum international competition in Barcelona (top 30, team leader) (2021) Weaving the commons Appropriating structures of economy to the currency of ecology. ( Strelka 2021) Liquid Boundaries Ecology as an agent of Decolonisation. (Strelka 2021)

Abstract The course of history . . . can really claim the thinker’s attention no more than the kaleidoscope in the hand of a child, where all the patterns of order collapse into a new order with each turn . . . The ideas of those in power have always been the mirrors, thanks to which the picture of an ‘order’ came about . . .

- Walter Benjamin,1972.

This research diverges away from the sacred narratives which have rendered Varanasi as an ahistorical spiritual construct, and delves into the operative realm of embodied identity politics. With the aim to broaden scholarship which frames the intersectionality of political-power, ideological representation and the built environment, this investigation focuses on the politicized appropriation of Kashi by the in-power right-wing government under the leadership of India’s prime minister, Sri Narendra Modi. Through the articulation of this politicization, the dissertation reveals the masked ideological agendas of the bodies in power which simulate an image of Hindutva.

Employing the events revolving around the Kashi Vishwanath-corridor Temple precinct complex as the nexus of analysis, the research contextualizes the bodies in power, in activated sacred space. The research unravels the underlying socio-political and economic structures which lay dormant, but feed the projected timeless narratives of Varanasi. Through the lens of the Kashi-corridor project, the analysis also sheds light on the re-activation of the hegemonic structures of caste and religion which appendage post-democratic and post-secularist narratives, subverting the voices of bodies positioned in alterity.

The illustration reflects upon the before and after condition of the construction of the Kashi-corridor temple precinct project. The built fabric of Varanasi before was like a maze where bodies could lose orientation and reappear at the river banks. With the erasure of the built environment along with such an important sacred politic insert, the site produces politicized bodies (saffron is the colour of BJP) being oriented into the site using various forms of power, concretizing a selective Image of Kashi.

UnSacred Varanasi:Kashi: constructing politicized identities.

Final Dissertation MA Architectural History: May-September 2020.

Word Count: 10000 words.

How do bodies in power mobilize place-making, iconography and iconopraxis for the construction of identities and to assert power? How does the current ruling body in India practice bio-politics by employing the Hindu narrative attached to Varanasi to strengthen the claims to a Nation state? How does this rhetoric subvert the voices of peoples who find themselves at the bottom of its hierarchical structures?

By deconstructing the iconography and iconopraxis revolving around the Kashi-corridor precinct, I explore larger existential conditions at global, national, local and bodily scales through the activation of Identity-politics, Body-politics, Theo-politics, and Noo-politics, along with the representation of power through the projected built. The archival objects of study originate from varied material sources like images, newspaper-articles, political-speeches, public-presentations, the constructed and even the deconstructed environments. By articulating and unpacking these evidential artifacts, this dissertation surfaces the apparently peripheral threads which are critical to the sacred project.

This study of the polyvalent forms of power aids in the construction of total assemblages of several processes operating in various registers converging at this very moment in time. The built environment provides physical evidence to how the governmental power is translated into embodied experience, where competing identities assert themselves in the visual order of a global neo-liberal consensus. These image cultures speak to a politics of recognition, exclusion and assertion, in an avowedly plural and religiously inflected post-colonial polity. The semblance of such pluralistic epistemologies and pervasive heterogeneity of power construct a more holistic image of the polarity of these theologically charged architectures. This plurality transgresses intelligible and embodied boundaries of self through mental, symbolic, physical and notional systems of image practices. Inimical to the ideas of nationalism, these forces appendage identitarian ideas of people that are mapped onto territories at various scales. Peeling the layers of religion, caste, place and representation, one can surface the existential hybridity that is masked under the unilateral narratives of the site as Hindu sacrilege which supplements the ideological aspirations of the bodies in power towards the construction of selective identities.

Key Words: Narendra Modi, sacred, identity politics, body-politics, theo-politics, noo-politics, gestures, ideological representation, post-secularism.

Abstract “The city […] is something more than a congeries of individual men and of social conveniences- streets, buildings […] and telephones, etc.; something more, also, than a mere constellation of institutions and administrative devices- courts, hospitals, schools, police and civil functionaries of various sorts. The city is, rather, a state of mind, a body of customs and traditions, and of the organized attitudes and sentiments that inhere in these customs and are transmitted with this tradition. The city is not, in other words, merely a physical mechanism and an artificial construction. It is involved in the vital processes of the people who compose it; it is a product of nature, and particularly of human nature.” 1 -Robert E. Park, The City, 1925.

A city, like a living breathing organism, is ceaselessly in a state of flux, ever evolving and morphing physically, spatially and temporally. The cinematic medium, due to its heterogeneous capacities, is a very potent art form to experience and represent the city, and surfacing its distinctive state of mind and personality. Films offer the freedom to delve into extended timescales and condense dense data of years into hours. Films generate narratives where characters embody facets that are beyond the subjectivities of individuals. In their representation, cities continually have been activated as backgrounds, objects hazed in the background to foreground the characters and the narratives on the big screen. Seldom it happens, that the city is located centrally, where it appropriates a significant position in navigating the narratives. This essay is an attempt to analyze the representation of cities through the characters manifested in the cinematic dimension, through the lens of the movie, Dhobi Ghat.

Transcendental Phantasmagorias “To Bombay, My muse, my whore, my beloved.”

The movie revolves around the lives of four people, over varied place-time scales, and how through chance, and the fabric of the city of Mumbai and the way it is inhabited intertwines their lives. One of the Main Characters Arun, an artist, accidently falls upon a series of video recordings of Yasmin Noor addressed as letters to her younger brother Imran. These video recordings transform into portal objects for Arun to differently navigate through the city as well as the life of Yasmin which evolves throughout the movie, over space-time. The movie touches upon various key ideas of social-class difference, country town versus the big city( georg simmel’s text), visibility and the voyeuristic gaze, positionality, anonymity, issues of privatization, informality etc. Though the movie has various flaws, with over-arching coincidences, it offers much to explore. The focus of this essay has been majorly on 3 journeys that take place in the movie and the city. Using the Guy Debord’s Theory of Derive, I have explored a sort of internal derive (drifts internally with Yasmin’s video diaries), where Arun is stationary, but engages with the city and his own interiority in bursts of video recordings shot by Yasmin, where he does not have control over how she operates. The second journey is that of Shai, the elite rich who wanders the streets of Mumbai like a flaneur with her “guide” Munna, observing people and the spaces they occupy. The third journey is the journeys that I have taken in the past. The street where the house in which the video tapes are recorded is located, happens to be the same street where my mom used to live. She still owns the house and I myself have occupied those very streets many times. The text explores the way representation of cities operates and morphs over time. And how movies, videodiaries and even art can be methodologies of mapping city and city life.

Representation of Cities: MA Architectural History, April, 2020

How does the city reveal itself through the journeys which the characters of the movie Dhobi Ghat undertake? How can different mediums of experiencing the city over space time break free from the conventional cartographies in unpacking the various complexities of the cityscape?

Key Terms, Authors and References : Dhobi Ghat, Pschychogeography, Flaneuse, Derive, Guy De Bord, Michel Du Certeau, George Simmel, Charles Baudelaire, Pattrick Keiller.

1 E Park Robert, W Burgess Ernest, and D McKenzie Roderick, ‘The City’ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925)p.107.

Abstract The utopic search for the “Ideal” city is in no realm a novel thought. The notion, that town/city planning can morph the way individuals come together to shape efficient and peaceful societies harmoniously with nature has been lingering in architectural circles since a long time. Be it Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) by Le Corbusier, the ideals of Jane Jacobs, William Whyte, Robert E. Park or the more contemporary Jan Gehl, urban planners, architects have attempted to theorize and realise their vision of how societies function, responding to their spatialities and ordering principles. Cities have been positioned as a center for production and consumption of goods and services, fueled by the hierarchical structures of capitalism .1 These ideals have strongly been detested and contested in various scholarly circles, in the hope of a better form of societal orientation. Architects, urban planners, philosophers and theorists alike have postulated the vision of a bottom-up anti-capitalist system where the collective is celebrated. The search for utopia has propelled several architects and planners to propose urban and spatial reconfigurations, along with generating unhackneyed economic and land use policies, to transform the way people inhabit cities. Even though many such ideas have been theorized, seldom has it happened that these ideas transform into reality. When in the west there were multiple experiments ongoing like the Babylon project by Constant Nieuwenhuys, Arco Santi, or the spatial city by Yona Freidman, there was one such experiment which did descend to physical consciousness in the east, as the city of Dawn, Auroville; which is the object of analysis for this essay.

Auro-worth

A reading of Auroville through the lens of the Garden City Concept.

Urban Planning as a legitimate scholarly discourse concretized its position in the early 1900’s. With the formation of large cities, larger problems seemed to surface which needed to be catered to. One of the most canonical figures who emerged at the dawn of the town-planning movement, and the author of Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902), was Sir Ebenezer Howard. Initially published as ‘To-morrow: A peaceful path to real reform’, Howard was one of the pioneers in proposing an alternate mode of societal formation through modifying the socio-economic structures which constructed the city. Focusing on the collective rather than the subjective, the garden city concept has been a pivotal point of departure for various developments in the discourse of urban planning. He remains a spectral figure in the expeditions of the present town planning theories/realities which have tried to break free from the shackles of capitalist driven urbanization. He combined many innovative ideas of Urban De-centralization, city-nature co-habitation, zoning, self-contained new country-towns and green belts which remain the backbone of modern-day city planning. But if analyzed closely, Howard’s garden city became a model, not for the transformation of society which was his earlier intention, but for ‘the transformation of the physical arrangement of society’ , which can be seen as a universal mold adopted by several cities worldwide that followed. In this essay, the ideals of the garden city concept would be a critical object of comparison.

Materialist Ecological Architectures: MA Architectural History, April, 2020

What are the common aspirations that surface in the visions of Sir Ebenezer Howard and Mirra Alfassa ‘the mother’ which originate from such distant centers of thought?

How did such seemingly disparate centers produce relational urban ecologies?

Why has Auroville, with all its promise, turned into a dystopic figure of utopian thought?

Key Terms, Authors and References : Garden city movement, Auroville, Ebenezer Howard, Mira Alfassa, City Planning, Transcendentalism, Stephen Ward, city policy, Dystopia.

1 Philip Allmendinger, Planning Theory (Macmillan International Higher Education, 2017).

Abstract We borrow from nature the space upon which we build.

-Tadao Ando Small. Scale. Architecture. The words find their relevance in reference to their positionality in discourse. Tracing the origins of the term “small-scale” to mid-19th century buttresses our historical positionality with its connotations to architecture. The fact that it coincides with the peak of industrial revolution which completely changed the course of the human condition, seems no coincidence at all. The expedition of the production of architecture with man as the central figure of measure has been an ostentatious ill-conception. For the primitive man the notion of scale, originated out of survival. For the Vitruvian man, it was monumental. For the modular man, the scale was industrial, and for the man who lives in this post-Anthropocene world, the scale, has inevitably turned digital.

The discourse of design is striving constantly to eradicate the presence of the organic, of artefacts that transcend control. In today’s bio-cybernetic world where the machine has become the extension of the Human to dominate his immediate environment, one has forgotten that human, is a mere extension of this very environment. The struggle of man through all his time on this planet has been to mobilize a shift from the margins to the central figure and extend his time on this planet by overcoming nature, which has led to an inadvertent crisis of existence. The irony of the human condition is that it is self-inflicted. The need for the notion of small scale architecture originates from this very crisis. Under the umbrella of capitalism and the urge for more, the human has mobilized a condition of lack.

Lack of space, lack of resources, lack of stable economy, lack of breathable air, lack of humanity.

It is high time we reposition ourselves from this apparent crown position and stop trying to stabilize a misconceived anthropocentric world. Small scale architecture is a step towards this very repositioning. To solve the crisis of the human world, there first, needs to be a world. A nest, a burrow, a den, all fine examples to learn from nature, you take only what you need to spatialize a dwelling. The size of our current carbon footprint in the process of restructuring our environment is so large, we might never be able to erase our mark on this world. Let us at least attempt that we tread lightly. Maybe, Less is More.

Positions

Sharing spaces with our companion species.

Key Terms, Authors and References : Smale-scale architecture, bio-cybernetics, companion species,capitalism, post-humanism.

Abstract The notion of thresholds has always been critical to the architectural discourse. The foundations of architecture can be traced back to ‘the archetypal act of building’1 which elucidates the manifestation of boundaries, demarcating place within space. The epistemological discussions around the binary oppositions of inside vs outside have continually haunted the architecture discipline. But this binary is employed beyond the scope of the concretized architectural object. The objects of study of this essay further the discussions around the various dimensions in which the concept of the threshold operates. The Boundary as a notion becomes central in the formation of the subject. To understand the generation of the self, the awareness to the notion of becoming is of vital importance. The corporeal body also employs these markers to position itself in the immediate environment. This essay intends to unravel the subjectivities which develop in The House Behind by Karen Bermann and, Between the womb and the world: building matrixial relations in the INCU by Katie Lloyd Thomas . The texts also shed light on objects which generate and transgress boundaries, which occupy space, and act as thresholds of relational mediation.

Although The house behind and Between the womb and the world: building matrixial relations in the INCU are bracketed under the discursive umbrellas of feminist and queer methods and subjectivities, and architecture and technology respectively; these essays transgress the domains established and explore a multifarious range of complex issues touching upon theories of material culture, time-space relations and psychoanalysis. My study sheds light upon how the authors of these texts, which are embedded strongly in real events, have mobilized this notion of duality, explored the objects of liminality and the border spaces which are generated by these objects at varying scales, and how they mediate or attempt to normalize fractured relations.

Reflecting upon the content and research methodologies appropriated by the authors, I intend to surface their positions on the Issues of narration, evidence based writing, appropriation of images and diagrams, documentation methodologies, rituals, mechanical and psychic safety, various scales at which thresholds operate and the issues of becoming, in a condition of inflicted disfiguration. I also hope to reveal the evident overlaps and disjunctions in the authors’ standings, cross referenced to specific parameters of space, time, body and mind which explore the discourse around phenomenology, psychology and biological and medical architectural ecologies. Though the texts take their point of departure events which are embedded in reality during starkly varying time periods, the texts explore narratives around the physical and psychological processes that propel the becoming of subjectivities in a condition of disruptive mediation.

Fragility of Thresholds

Exploring conditions of becoming: An academic Review.

Critical Methodologies of Architectural History: December, 2019

How does the study of Thresholds inform the knowledge of the architectural historian in the analysis of the architectural object? What are the dimensions in which these thresholds operate and affect physical and psychic spatialities?

Key Terms, Authors and References : Becoming, Thresholds, Karen Bermann, Katie Lloyd Thomas, portal objects, psuchoanalysis, temporality.

1 Kate Nesbitt, ‘Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture’:, An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965 - 1995, 2013, p. 412.

Breaking New Ground Breaking New Ground We built cities over ruins and we build towns thatover are ruins a result ofwe mans desire We built cities and build towns that are a result of mans desire to accomplish and own the world.toWe build forgetting these accomplish and own thetowns world.are Webuilt build forgetting these towns are built out of greed have rapidly brought their own decay.

Although these towns out of greed have rapidly brought their own decay. Although these towns are now replaced by new cities, new cities built on the basis of technological are now replaced by new cities, new cities built on the basis of technological advancement. New cities built from the core andNew above, advancement. citiesunapologetic built from theforcore and above, unapologetic for their avant-garde nature. Mega-cities, where the wholeMega-cities, system actstowns as a where the whole system acts as a theirtowns avant-garde nature. self sufficient organic entity - resistivity the modules to create Utopianofcity self of sufficient organic entity - a resistivity the modules to create a Utopian city hovering above the ruins of the past.hovering The newabove systemthe andruins underpinning these of the past.of The new system and underpinning of these new constructs optimize soil coverage, ground connect by embedding newminimal constructs optimize soil coverage, minimal ground connect by embedding mammoth like spires amidst the old structures that grounding tostructures the new that provide grounding to the new mammoth likeprovide spires amidst the old modular system. There is the existingmodular roof carcass that becomes the newroof forestsystem.

There is the existing carcass that becomes the new forestthe new ground. New species of animals and wildlife have evolved now.

A new the new ground. New species of animals and wildlife have evolved now. A new ecosystem, more alive than ever accommodates the increasing population ecosystem, more alive than ever accommodates the increasing population with more efficient and less polluting communication and transportation with more efficient and less polluting communication and transportation means. Cities that seem to be cohesive areseem like the mitochondria means.buildings Cities that to be cohesive buildings are like the mitochondria of the new and regenerating biosphere on our planet, our homes now can of the new and regenerating biosphere on our planet, our homes now can move and transport themselves, docking within the neo-urban landscape. move and transport themselves, docking within the neo-urban landscape.

Connections in this landscape are now through horizontal, vertical and diagonal Connections in this landscape are now through horizontal, vertical and diagonal elevators for technology has now elevators started tofor surpass the concept of started gravity. to surpass the concept of gravity. technology has now Welcome to the not so far Future. Welcome to the not so far Future.

Existing built/ City

The New Ground/ Forest

Existing built/ City

The New Ground/ Forest

Residential units – Permutations of units of a fixed dimension Residential units – Perm

Stadium subsidiary functions for the community.

Solar Panels to increase energy efficiency.

Stadium subsidiary func

Solar Panels to increase

Houses as Pods are portable and dock in the urban landscape Houses as Pods are por

Structural Spires

Structural Spires

Wind mills installed for clean energy generation.

Wind mills installed for c

Community Spaces- Mixed use space for various urban activities.

Community Spaces- M

Connections- Horizontal, Vertical and Diagonal elevators.

Connections- Horizonta

Central core lifted by the three structural spires lifted by the princiCentral core lifted by th ples of Tensigrity. The core consists of services, vertical circulation, ples of Tensigrity. The c and provides stack ventilation systems. and provides stack ven Green houses that live on the existing skyline of the city.

Green houses that live

Dwelling Units + Public Spaces

Ancillary Functions

Dwelling Units + Public Spaces

Ancillary Functions

The Phoenix The Phoenix arises. arises.

#44229

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Rethinking Rethinking Notredame Notredame

“The wound“The is where wound theislight where enters the light you.”enters Rumi. you.” Rumi.

Our proposal Our attempts proposaltoattempts resurrectto the resurrect Spire like the a Spire phoenix like arising a phoenix fromarising the ashes from the ashes of its destruction. of its destruction.

Image of the Image blazing of the spire blazing will continue spire willtocontinue remain etched to remain in the etched in the memories of memories people for of people generations. for generations.

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The new extended aisle with structure, the absence of the absence of the Thespire new and extended spire and aislemarking with structure, marking original spire leftoriginal by the fire. spire left by the fire.

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The spire is enveloped byisscaffolds of three thicknesses and thicknesses pixellated interior The spire enveloped by scaffolds of three and pixellated interior spaces in the aisles. spaces in the aisles.

The vines envelope spire and over will time, take over thewill spire. leaves and flowers of the creepers The the vines envelope thetime, spirenature and over nature takeThe over the spire.

The leaves and flowers of the creepers allow only scattered enter which spectacular radiant patternsradiant reminiscent of the iconic rose allowlight onlyto scattered lightcreate to enter which create spectacular patterns reminiscent ofwindow. the iconic rose window.

The scaffolds pixellate, generating a hazy silhouette of the original of the original The scaffolds pixellate, generating a reminiscent hazy silhouette reminiscent burning spire. burning spire.

The interior layout The reflects interioraslayout fragmented reflects seating as fragmented spaces which seating are spaces held by which extensions are held ofby theextensions pixellatedof grid theofpixellated the grid of the new spire. The material new spire. is chosen The material with respect is chosen to the withold respect aisle and to the allows old aisle for exhibitions and allows and for gatherings. exhibitions and gatherings.

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Replicating the hazed image ofhazed the oldimage spire, of thethe proposal marks as a marks taller and icon in the Aerial view showing how newexisting spire sits in the existing context.

Replicating the old spire, the itself proposal itselfstronger as a taller and stronger ico cular cutout in the center which marks thewhich absence of the absence old spire and allows patrons look within. rose window and rose symbolizing window and resurgence. symbolizing resurgence.

The pixellating grid Thehouses pixellating vinesgrid and houses creepers vines which and creepers generatewhich a rosegenerate window like a rose lightwindow quality within. like light quality within. cular cutout in the center marks of the old spire andtoallows patrons to look within. context of Paris.context The aisleofacts asThe a public exhibition spaceexhibition and a space which its patrons in nostalgia, melancholy andmelancholy memory. and memory.

Paris. aisle acts as a public space and engages a space which engages its patrons in nostalgia,

Raw.

“Even a brick wants to be something. A brick wants to be something. It aspires. Even a common, ordinary brick... wants to be something more than it is. It wants to be something better than it is.” ― Louis Kahn

Negotiating finished/unfinished spaces

The design celebrates the notion of unity in diversity, producing a hybridity scaling up to the sky. Instead of producing a unifying figure, the proposal pastiches a hybridity of forms and materials, with isolated and combined experiences of individual materials.

The building employs lighter materials as we go up vertically, showing its connection with earth using materials like stone at the bottom, wood and metal in the middle and manmade materials like crfp and thermoplastics as we ascend. The heavier materials appropriated are borrowed from the local context, to reduce the carbon footprint of the material.

The proposal employs an innovated variant of the catenary arch responds to the city where the museum is located, paying homage to the master architect Antonio Gaudi. Certain functions like the seminar hall and café are accessible without entering the museum, keeping

Two quarried rocks are introduced on the site which produced contoured steps withing the site, responding to their mass producing a sittable public realm. The latter rock acts as a cafe within the public realm.

A multitude of hybrid forms are introduced on site, celebrating various materials that produce them. The volumes remain floating to produce an open public realm. The various cross sections produce many different types of spaces, responding to light and scale, ideal for diverse modes of display. A series of cylindrical elevators rest on the ground.

The volumes are supported by an innovative type of catenary arch which rest on the ground gently. The Arches are a celebration of the materials as well, along with responding to Gaudi’s use of the arch, making it contextual to barcelona. The elevators also double as structural columns to move away from the conventional structural systems.

a public realm alive at all times.the material artefacts are explored at various scales, from its raw form, to its in process to final products. The stark contrast between the raw and the finished product allows for a tactile experience of both.. The material artefacts are explored at various scales. Here, the conventional idea of artefacts displayed in a hall is innovated by the hall itself being an artefact that displays the material expression at a monumental scale.. Scale is a very important aspect of exploring material, textures at various scales have been employed, which at times displace to anthropocentric experience of the museum.

The design explores multiple levels within individual archetypes to form an assimilation of varied heighted spaces, producing various permutations of spatialities. The interior circulation in different volumes explores ideas of ramps, escalators, spiral staircases, breaking away from the geometry following circulation typology. Light itself plays a very important role in shaping the experience of the display halls. Because the cross section of every from explored varies dramatically, so does the light quality and the experience of moving through myriad spatialities.

The design is experience through a multitude of circulation patterns, which produce myriad of journies. The use of elevators, escalators, spiral staircases and ramps, paly with the modes of perception, and the time spent within various spatialities.

The design also proposes a public realm on various levels, which engage the visitors with various materials. The presence of a water body, intersection with an exposed rock, A green house on the top and a towering observation deck all enhance user experience, both visual and tactile.

Liquid Boundaries

Ecology as an agent of decolonisation.

How can watershed mapping be appropriated as a mode of territorial zoning to blur the superimposed nation-state boundaries in Africa taking references from the Russian context? How can ecological and topographical data be re-appropriated to dismantle hegemonic economic and colonial structures?

Both Russia and Africa are recurrently denoted as large unilateral landmasses diminishing the internal complexities. The methodologies employed to implement these divisions is the subject of our zoning.

In 1885 European leaders met at the infamous Berlin Conference to divide Africa and arbitrarily draw up borders that exist to this day. Representatives of 13 European states, the United States of America and the Ottoman Empire converged on Berlin at the invitation of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to divide up Africa among themselves "in accordance with international law," reducing the lands of Africa as a two-dimensional planar construct. Africans were not invited to the meeting. New borders were drawn through the territories of every tenth ethnic group. Trade routes were cut, because commerce with people outside one's colony was forbidden. Studies have shown that societies through which new frontiers were driven would later be far more likely to suffer from civil war or poverty.

Topography has played an integral role in the topological parceling of land-masses within the Russian subcontinent forming ethno-topographical clusters. Critical natural markers like the Ural Mountains, Central Siberian plateau amongst others have been focal agents of internal zoning.

Watersheds are an area or ridge of land that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins, or seas. Watersheds are important because the surface water features and storm water runoff within a watershed ultimately drain to other bodies of water. It is essential to consider these downstream impacts when developing and implementing water quality protection and restoration actions. Everything upstream ends up downstream. We need to remember that we all live downstream and that our everyday activities can affect downstream waters. The proposal investigates the framing of zoning through an ecological lens, mobilising water shed ridges as naturalized lines of zoning, blurring nation state boundaries.

Weaving the commons

Appropriating structures of economy to the currency of ecology.

Project Video: Silk Commons

Collective stakeholdership in the preservation of critical ecosystems around he world. Theewaterskloof Dam

Orange circles mark the key sil commons sites

Planetary governance and ecosystem management structures are re-constructed by means of global trading networks. The trade networks currently in place already transgress nation state boundaries. This quality can be re-appropriated to blur and eventually decompose these lines altogether. The new Silk Road envisioned by China feeds into the hyper-capitalist market relations. The new crucial trading spots and routes which accelerate economic growth in the involved nation states need to be accounted for. At the same, critical biospheric sites – identified as the Silk Commons – need to be recognized. identify as silk commons. These sites become objects of shared responsibility. In the case of South Africa, it is for instance the key sites for usable water that we identify as the Silk Commons. Taking the Theewaterskloof Dam as an example, several stakeholders would share responsibility for the preservation of water resources. The condition of the sites would affect their ability to participate in the Silk Road trade interactions. Tapping into the Global Sensing and modeling infrastructures, the involved countries can keep track of the Silk Commons’ condition and ensure their preservation. Information about the ecosystem’s condition can be accessed by the citizens through interfaces providing simplified data on water levels, air pollution, soil degradation etc. The repurposing of the Silk Road infrastructure as an ecosystem governance tool should eventually lead not only to the final decomposition of nation states but also to the elimination of capitalist extractive practices and a revised notion of prosperity under the concept of Planetary Commons.

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Dhruv Shah Lodaya DhruvAka Shah DOB DOB- -31.07.1993 31.07.1993 Address Address- -C-503 C-503shangrila shangrilaApartments,Vadodara,Gujarat, Apartments,Vadodara,Gujarat,India.

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