In August of 2018, the flood of a century swept the South Indian state of Kerala. Very little was natural about this natural disaster; its cause was heavy rainfall due to local and global anthropogenic effects and the opening of 35 big dams. What powers these gigantic infrastructures are not only chimeric notions of technological progress and domination over the landscape, but also mythic storylines embedded in local culture.
Mythic Stories and Dams across the Periyar River
This project studies the dam as an architectural object at the confluence of mythology and technology as mythic stories have been a tool to legitimize their construction, despite the ecological impact, displacement of millions and intensification of flooding. To tease out critical tensions surrounding the dams and to retrieve possibilities of agency, I have written a speculative near-future narrative where through hyperreal evidence, the projection of Kerala’s present condition and current exploitation of resources will stage the critical issues of its landscapes to present their longterm consequences.
Because a rich corpus of myths writes and reinterprets the history of Kerala, Indic myths are used as a mirror to understand the present and explores the relationship between architecture’s role in the preservation of disappearing lands in the anthropogenic era and the stories that underpin it. In this exposition of the dam, arrows of mythic time forever loop back in an endlessly recurring cycle where myths are reinterpreted as history.
The dams as culturally relevant architectural objects have over time been given agency with their linkage to mythological stories. The ecotheology loses ground to the influx of the market economy into India with the commodification of nature. The underlying narrative of all ancient myths was that human has a karmic duty to sustain the cosmic order, and when disturbed the gods intervene as incarnations. Now in the age of the Anthropocene, who sustains the moral and cosmic order? Will there only be chaos?
February 2018 NASA
2018 Monsoon July - August
August 2018 NASA
Flooded zones
June 01 At the beginning of the monsoon season, reservoirs on the Periyar are less than a quarter full, in line with expectations.
June 09 After over a week of rain, reservoirs begin to fill. Kalarkutty reservoir is the first to release a small amount of water.
Weeks of heavy rain continue.
July 31 After weeks of heavy rain, reservoirs are becoming dangerously full. The state declares an orange alert.
August 09 Idamalayar and Idukki reservoirs are full and begin to release water. It’s the first time in 26 years that Idukki has opened its gates.
August 14 All 5 overflow gates of Idukki dam opened. Onam is cancelled.
483 people dead 140 people missing 1,247,496 people in relief camps 40,000,000 people evacuated 56 billion USD in damages 6200 miles roads destroyed
Kerala is dammed and damned
Area of Study
Rivers: 44 Resevoirs: 42 Dams: 81 Large Dams: 39 1 MW produces electricity supplies 500 homes/year Periyar River Basin
Idukki Dam - 1972 Opened: August 9, 2018 Height: 170 m Curved Parabolic 780 MW
Cheruthoni Dam - 1975 Opened: August 11, 2018 Height: 138m Gravity
Ponmudi Dam - 1964 Opened: August 7, 2018 Height: 60m Gravity 32 MW
Mullaperiyar Dam - 1895 Opened: Aug 15, 2018 Height: 53m Gravity 161 MW
Poringalkathu Dam - 1949 Opened: August 9, 2018 Height: 23m Gravity 16 MW
Lower Periyar Dam - 1999 Opened: August 7, 2018 Height: 39 Gravity: 180 MW
Neyyar Dam - 1958 Opened: August 7, 2018 Height: 56m Gravity 6.5 MW
Banasura Sagar Dam - 1979 Opened: August 12, 2018 Height: 38.5m Earthfill 231 MW
Myth and History: the Dam as a mythological object
Myth and history are stories that differ in their claims to reality. Myths are a mirror for seeing the present and understanding its structure as well as predicting the future. Indic time marks the cosmic lifespan as repeating eras; a paradigm that is endless, boundless and all that occurs in it is a reaction to the past. For a culture still nurtured in mythology the landscape, as well as every phase of human existence, is made alive with symbolical suggestion. The hills and groves have their supernatural protectors and are associated with popularly known episodes in the local history of the creation of the world. By virtue of their ability to control nature and situate themselves within the landscape full of relics of ancient stories, dams now exist within the cyclical nature of mythic time as sites of cultural memory.
Mythic Reactions to Nature: the Foundations of an Ecotheology
This is the foundation of an idealistic ecotheology which presents two fundamental concepts: 1. all in nature has the potential to function as a manifestation of the divine 2. there is no separation between nature and humans if all emerge from the same cosmic body
1. Origin of the World Myth
2. Flood Myth
1. The creation of the cosmos describes the sacrifice of a giant person Purasha, and from his different body parts emerged the earth, sky, wind, sun, moon, and humans. 2. When an aging world died to make way for a new one, a deluge destroyed the world. A fish rescued Manu and deposited him at the top of a mountain. When the flood receded at the dawn of the new era, Woman emerged from a river and the two repopulated the earth. 3. Parasuraman stood on the Western Ghats and threw his battle axe across the Arabian sea. It receded as far as the axe reached forming a place neither water nor land, perpetuating the Indic notion that landscape is the medium to manifest divinity.
3. Kerala’s Origin Myth
Chapter One: The Dam as Temple After 2018, the government needs to return the dam to positive light in the public eye and references Nehru’s famous endorsement that “dams are the modern temples of India...where I worship” referencing a time when gigantic infrastructural works were symbols of progress and modernity beloved by all. If new dams capitalized on the temple identity and were made holy and therefore unremovable, it would protect the investment from the anti-dam movement and divinely protect the dam from ever breaching.
Chapter Two: The Dam as Bulwark As climate mania heightened to overwhelming public insecurity, the Kerala government and landowning stakeholders made protective measures to safeguard their habitats. They sought to protect the myth of God’s Own Country such that paradise must be walled, so important localities like government assemblies, airports, wealthy temples, major banks were the selected buildings to be sheltered by bulwarks that function as a dam where it intersected the river by moving water in a system of engineered siphons.
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater The once in 500-year flood event occurred just before 2100 CE and sea levels had risen by 6 feet. Because of the smaller flood events that had been occurring every monsoon for the previous eighty years, civilians had time to prepare and perfect their responses when the mythic deluge arrived. They draw from mythic stories of pralaya and either fight to control nature for a better material life, flee to a better realm as beyond waits a higher reality, freeze and accept the will of the divine by adapting to nature’s vagaries.
PAST
The British Era
Independence + Nation-Building
1890 - 1947
1947 - 1965
The British Era
Independence + Nation-Building
1890 - 1947
1947 - 1965
1895
1954
1960
John Pennycuik builds first dam Mullaperiyar; now belongs to the local pantheon of gods.
Newly independent India builds infrastructure and public work during nation building. Nehru endorses dams.
In Kerala’s search for identity, dams become a marketing tool in capitalizing off its own culture and symbols
C s
Document: Timeline
International Hydel Regime
Energy State Identity
1966 - 1985
1986 - 2021
International Hydel Regime
Energy Identity State
1966 - 1985
1986 - 2018
1965
Climate concerns begin and clean hydel energy and other largescale technocratic approaches become the norm internationally
1996
2018
Constitutional amendment to give locals the rights to decide about use of natural resources in their areas but incidentally water and dams are for “public good” which takes precendence
The dam is put in the spotlight as its effects to the environment worsened the floods; KSEB operating on energy surplus allows the construction of private dams with no environmental clearance
chapter one in the mountains
The Dam as Temple 2021 - 2030 CE
2018
Document: Welcome Sign
Kerala markets itself as “Gods Own Country” officially by its tourist department and locally and informally by its inhabitants for its physiography that is bounded by the Western Ghats mountain range and the Arabian Sea.
logo of Kerala Tourism
Document: Purananuru Anthologies
Chapter One: The Dam as Temple
Kanyakumari
Gokurna
It is also “God’s Own Country” for its mythological origin story in which Lord Parasuraman threw his battle axe across the Arabian sea and the water receded as far as the axe reached creating the low-lying coastal plain that constitutes the sliver of Kerala.
2018
The monsoons in Kerala are a predictable phenomenon of life but the 2018 deluge was neither a natural disaster nor destruction by the hand of God. It was the unprecedented release of water from large hydroelectric dams across the state that opened one by one without warning that are to blame.
Document: Headline
Document: Judicial Probe
Chapter One: The Dam as Temple
A judicial probe into the dams’ openings reveal that operators are incentivized to maximize reservoir levels for hydroelectric energy production, but the state government repeatedly turns a blind eye to these facts. The dams opened when their capacity was breached, and water gushed downhill to submerge the state en route to the sea.
change in land use affected river erosion, soil absorbancy
2022
Document: Social Media Post
After 2018 this image of the dams bringing forth destruction is written into the memories of those who live among them, and civilians took to social media to push for government action for fear that the older dams that have outlived their architectural lifespans will break and drown the state again.
section of Mullaperiyar Dam long outlived its lifespan with all its structural failure points
Document: Energy Policy Amendment
Chapter One: The Dam as Temple
After major protests, the Kerala State Board of Electricity decreed that the hydroelectric power of older structures would be removed, and they would make up for the loss by increasing the capacity of new dams.
headline from Environment Committee from 2017
2022
Document: Photograph of Chief Ministers Assembly
To meet this demand, the government must disabuse the notion of “water bombs” and return the dam to a positive light in the public eye that still painfully remembers the role the dam played in the 2018 floods. The KSEB minister recalled India’s first prime minister Nehru in his endorsement that “dams are the modern temple of India” referencing a time when gigantic infrastructural works were symbols of progress and modernity and beloved by all.
Nehru, leader of post-colonial development, states this at opening of Bhakra Dam in 1965
Document: Public Works Department Scheme
Chapter One: The Dam as Temple
If Kerala’s new dams capitalized on the temple identity and were sanctified with a shrine then they would be holy and therefore unremovable, protecting the investment from the anti-dam movement and divinely protecting the dam from ever breaching.
2025
Document: Architecture Blueprints of Dam Cutaway Axonometric and Temple Plan
Transmission to Grid
Intake Tower
Detail of Gopuram Gate Hea
dwa
For e
Re
sev
s Ero
ion
Co
nt
rol
oir
Conduit Outlet Pipe
Spillway Gates
ter
Aux
ilia
ry S
pill
way
bay Vimana Gate Phase Conductor
Intake Control Gate Pen s
tock
Pow e
rhou
se
Transformer Generator Turbine Draft Tube Outlet Discharge
Engineers and temple architects collaborated to design this new typology in the hills. They reoriented the dams according to ancient temple principles of 2 core elements: the sanctum sanctorum and the pyramidal vimana roof structure. They reconfigured the architectural and programmatic parts of a hydroelectric dam to resemble a temple.
Vimana Entry
Detail of Kalasa as Transformer Wire Bank
Document: Architecture Blueprints of VImana
Chapter One: The Dam as Temple
Vimana Elevation
Vimana Section as Mythic Flying Vehicle
Kalasa
Vimana
Santum Sanctorum
2028
Document: State of Kerala Emblem
The local temple deity now owned the dam property, though an official guardian (the KSEB) represented it legally and the head priest honored it. This blurred the zoning regulations between industry and religious building and strengthened the relationship between the parliament and the priesthood. As is tradition for temples to house all treasure and gold within the sanctum sanctorum, the most valuable currency in Kerala is energy, and so below the sanctum sanctorum lay the dam powerhouse. The architects build with iconography of Dravidian temples with paths for circumambulation, dominating vimanas that represent entry into the divine place, and stages for temple performances and gatherings. The dam’s reconfiguration played off the Tirtha phenomenon, such that holy places are sanctified by mythic story and association. Landscape features like caves, hills and tributaries are relics in mythological stories and dams paradoxically became objects of mythology by existing within the cyclical nature of mythic time. The dam became a religious place of pilgrimage as a site of encounter with the divine.
Garlanded Lion Capital
Imperial Conch of State Temple
Saluting Guard Elephants
Saluting Guard Elephants
Drawing: Section Through Sanctum Sanctorum and Powerhouse
Chapter One: The Dam as Temple
2030
The Dam is a Temple
Document: Judicial Probe
Chapter One: The Dam as Temple
chapter two in the urban plateau
The Dam as Bulwark 2031 - 2060 CE
2035
Document: IPCC Summit Photographs
The following decade saw rapid change in climate concerns. The 2035 Climate change conference took stock of global performances and enforced a mandate to completely ban all fossil fuels.
Mauric the U Enviro for C
Document: CNN Coverage
ce Strong and Indira Gandhi at UN Conference on the Human onment in 1972. He would push anada to fund the Idukki Dam
Chapter Two: The Dam as Bulwark
India, being the world’s third largest carbon emitter is especially pressured by this mandate. Environmentalists and anti-growth lobbyists push the government to take the committment seriously.
2035
Document: India’s NDC
India puts out its 2035 NDC comitting to a change and the goal of being fossil-fuel free. Neighboring countries and other states forced to meet their NDCs began to purchase from Kerala’s so-called clean hydel energy.
2035
Document: Business Insider Headline
Chapter Two: The Dam as Bulwark
To meet the demands of new NDCs of neighboring states and countries, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China, Kerala allows foreignowned corporations to build private dams for clean energy on rivers with no environmental clearance but profits immensely off high tariffs. Agreements are made such that the dams are on 50-year leases and have no production cap. Foreign companies begin outsourcing production to “clean industry” along Kerala rivers.
KSEB sells check dams and state land allocate for future dam construction to TATA steel, 2019 UN takes frequent stock of global performance and makes mandates for countries with large carbon emissions to propose NDCs
2040
Document: Travel Magazine
With the tariff profits and basking in the international spotlight, the KDT Kerala Department of Tourism pushed the focus on the “picturesque” and developed landscape and architectural schemes to represent the dam as a resort and pleasure grounds. This became an international tourist destination capitalizing on the essential Kerala experience.
the Kerala Dept. of Tourism starts building resorts and landscaped gardens along dams to attract visitors; capitalizing on its own identity for economic profit
Document: Postcards
Chapter Two: The Dam as Bulwark
For construction material for the dams, the hills were mined extensively and the quarries created shallow lakes which over time became diverse environments for elephants and tigers who were driven away from their habitats by the dam construction.
sand mining is banned in most parts but done illegally because of the big demand of sand in the booming construction of the state
2045
Document: Horror Movie Posters
From climate projections and the predictions of notable shamans, global rainfall was predicted to reach an all-time high, and people feared the next big flood. Horror films and reminders of 2018 drenched popular media.
dams on India stamp as part of national identity
Kerala State Emblem symbolically representing the union of hegemonic religion and government
Document: KSEB New Logo
Chapter Two: The Dam as Bulwark
Kerala, the king of clean power, divested itself of foreign ownership. The state recentralized its energy domain and bought back its dams and rivers to re-align the state with its production of power.
2050
As climate mania heightened to overwhelming public insecurity, the Kerala government and land-owning stakeholders made protective measures to safeguard their habitats. They sought to protect the myth of God’s Own Country such that paradise must be walled, so important localities like government assemblies, airports, wealthy temples, major banks were the selected buildings to be sheltered by bulwarks.
Document: Photograph of Ministers Meeting
Document: Constitution
Chapter Two: The Dam as Bulwark
As the bulwark construction fell under the realm of public good, the constitution allowed for the exercise of the law of eminent domain so all living within the perimeter of the wall had to relocate.
Entry 17 of the State List allows states to make laws on water supply, irrigation and canals, drainage and embankments, water storage and water power, for public good, subject to Entry 56 of the Union List. Entry 56 of the Union List allows Parliament to make laws on the regulation of inter-state rivers and river valleys if it declares such regulation to be expedient in public interest. The Bill declares it expedient in public interest for the Union to regulate on a uniform dam safety procedure for all specified dams. However, all of Kerala’s rivers lie entire within its state outlines and thus exercises indisputable control.
capitalist and nation-building aims align over liquid power: in the name of public good, millions displaced, and rivers rerouted starving those downstream
Indian Constitution, 1949
2055
Document: Blueprint of Water Siphon System
Concrete + Laterite Walls
Siphon Tube Powerhouse
Intake Filter
Outlet
Medieval Bekal Fort in Kasaragode
The wall appears as a continuous bulwark enclosing the chosen building but functioned as a dam where it intersected the river by moving water through the walls in a system of engineered siphons. The respective dam of each enclosure powered the city artifacts within, and the electricity produced was distributed to the rest of the city grid through power transmission lines on vimana towers. The relationship between those who live in the city and those living within the bulwark strengthened the divisive caste system.
As in the past, the builder of the dam was revered for saving the inhabitants within and the builder now belongs to the local pantheon of gods. The architectural quality of the walls drew from local infrastructures from the medieval era of laterite forts and stepped wells. Thus far the anthropogenic effects of the dam construction included sand mining, deforestation, soil- instability, water desalination, destruction of habitats but the dam had yet to ever directly impact the cities or urban fabrics before.
Drawing: Section Through the Bulwark Wall
Chapter Two: The Dam as Bulwark
2060
The Dam is a Bulwark
chapter three in the coastal plain
The Dam Underwater 2061 - 2100 CE
2100
The once in 500-year flood event occurred just before 2100 CE and sea levels had risen by 6 feet. Because of the smaller flood events that had been occurring every monsoon for the previous eighty years, civilians had time to prepare and perfect their responses when the mythic deluge arrived.
Document: News Article of 2100 Kerala Flood
Document: Three Mythic Responses to Nature
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
1. Fight
2. Flee
3. Freeze
Through mythology, natural events bring about the ends of eras and the environment acquires divine personality. The boiling of the oceans is a demon bringing fire. A cosmic flood is a river goddess punishing human sins. This visualization of nature is mythmaking and Indic stories are dominated by three reactions to nature. To fight, to freeze or to flee.
2100
Document: Blueprint of Land Generation Plan
Unnaturalness was then Kerala’s conceivable future as the state prepared to terraform itself in search of habitable land. The wealthy and powerful abandoned Kerala for higher ground and it was the local architect to whom fell the mantle. Architects designed artificial islands to manifest the Parasuraman origin myth of a generated landform.
1. Fight to control and manipulate nature for a better material life
Document: Parasuraman Land Origin Myth
Mini Kerala outline
Steel cylinder cofferdam
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
Injected with sand
Seawater drained
Island filled with Cutter Suction Dredger
Steel Cylinder Cofferdam
Waste concrete and other materials from abandoned cities Dredged sand
Cutter Suction Dredger from seabed to fil island
Section through island during filling process Pos-flood Sea Level
Island populated
2100
A cutter dredger and a large platoon with the waste concrete of the sunken city floated out to Arabian sea and deposited a 12m thick layer of the material within a fortified cofferdam seawall in the miniature outline of Kerala. Over the span of a decade, the islands were populated, and it was acknowledged that the provision of “new land” required conscious ecological management of it, despite the irony of it being artificial. Coconut saplings were planted as a natural barrier against tsunamis for fear of the sea more than rivers.
Drawing: Cofferdam Seawalls
Drawing: Artificial Islands
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
2100
Document: Blueprint of Fishboat
After the flood, an exodus of climate refugees left the coastal plain in constructed fish boats, borrowed from the ancient practice of houseboats but scaled up to hold entire villages and powered entirely by solar panels. The boats drew from the myth in which god incarnated as a fish to rescue Manu from a deluge. When the flood receded at the dawn of the new era, Manu repopulated the earth.
2. Flee nature to a better realm, as beyond nature’s tribulations waits a higher reality
Document: Myth of Manu and the Fish
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
Skylights Scales: Solar Panels to support motor and electricity needs
Body: Bamboo beams covered in woven bamboo splits and palm leaves
15 metres
Hull: long cut Jackwood planks held by coir and coconut fibre and coated in caustic cashew resin
50 metres
original Kettuvallum
2100
Some say the fish boats carrying the hopefuls continue to circle Kerala waiting in vain for the floodwaters to recede. Because the boat sails the seas for many decades, repair work for its organic materials teak/ wild jack/ coconut fibre – required a “floating forest” among the fleet.
Drawing: Floating Forests
Drawing: Fish Boats
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
2100
Document: Blueprint of Nalukettu Houses
The wealthy landowning caste have long since abandoned the state leaving the poorest locals to adapt to the flooded regions. They built parasitic housing of an architecture borrowed from the vernacular of upperclass courtyard houses built to manage rainwater and shelter many intergenerational families within.
3. Freeze and accept the grace of the divine will by adapting to nature’s vagaries
Document: Purasha Myth
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
Roof Gable Detail
Laterite + Wood Column Detail
Mud Wall Units
House Plan on Bulwark Roof
Thatched Roof
Teak and Jackwood Structure
Laterite Columns Overhangs Raised Plinth
Courtyard Mud + Resin Floor
2100
The frames were made of coconut and jackfruit wood and thatched rooves. The long wooden verandah typology was constructed first under which families-built mud box homes. The parasitic housing perches itself above the Damas-bulwark walls that now form islands in the Arabian Sea.
Drawing: Translation of Vernacular Housing
Drawing: Construction of Parasitic Housing
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
2100
Curious about the technological inventions in Kerala that bridge myth and survival, large tech companies developed autonomous flying modules modelled after the vimana gateway described in ancient stories to be a flying daidala built by a celestial architect. This was used to deliver building materials sourced from the abandoned cities.
Document: Design Magazine Spotlight on Vimana Drone
Drawing: Vimana Drone
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
2100
As years passed, it seemed less likely that the floodwaters would recede so dredged earth material was packed against the sides of the walls to strengthen it and create agricultural lands for banana, coconut and rubber trees using the terrace faming techniques of tea hill plantations. The cultural tie to the water’s edge was regenerated and bathing ghats were formed with steps down to the water.
Document: View of Robotic Farming
Drawing: Terraced Farms
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
2100
The underwater marvel that is the rest of Kerala became an international tourist destination again to see sunken temples and cities, cashing in on the sobriquet of being the Atlantis of India. Tourists resided in houseboats and large floating docks were created to make resort communities. From the portals of their luxurious teak vessels, the mountain peaks are but a shallow range of hills amid the outline of temple roofs in the offing.
Document: Tourist Advertisement
Drawing: Section of Houseboat Dock
Chapter Three: The Dam Underwater
2100
The Dam Underwater The truth about this tale of the Anthropocene is the inevitability of it all, to live within this altered climate will require deep pockets, architectural agency, and a return to myths as archaic, archetypical patterns of life. Mythic time is cyclical and recurring which allows myths to be reinterpreted as history to explain and legitimize past events but also predict the future as mythology is truly just archetypical stories. Myth constructs paradigms so the chaotic world and its wicked problems has structure, and we can try to understand it. Collected together over a century, this vision of Kerala – on the ground and under it, in the air and beneath the sea, a region and island faced with an impossible future – feels fantastical. Then again, Kerala as I know it – born a barely known sliver of Asia with no global relevance, raised independently from the rest of India separated by mountains and transformed into a place with more energy than they know what to do with – even this Kerala tugs at the bounds of credulity.
BEHIND THE SCENES This diagram overlays geologist Patrick Nunn’s diagram of geological, mythic and historical timelines and their narrative intersections with futurologist Steward Candy’s notions of probable, plausible and possible future timelines. Historical events and mythic stories that contributed to the situation of Kerala and its dams converge at a signle point in tthe present. These social, cultural, political and economic trends are projected into the future creating a web of potential adjacent futures.
The End.