NESTLED

Studio: Making Living Places

Year: Monsoon 2019 (Sem 3)

Faculty: Puneet Mehrotra and Juzar

Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Studio Type: Visualization

There are places which make you feel more alive and freer. And there are places which deprive you of any feeling of life. The studio unit was focused on transforming lifedepriving places into life-enhancing ones, taking up the case of Gota Lake in Ahmedabad which is treated like a backyard dumping area by the locals. The lake appeared ‘lifeless’ and dead, due to the household waste and factory waste dumped by the locals. Places which are rich in detail and diversity coming about as a result of shared existence were thu identified. The existing latent centres on the site that had potential to be developed into strong centres were marked and developed to turn the edge of the lake into a life-enhancing for birds.

*The project was done in a group of 2 people

Model exploration

A mound was developed to attract the diversity of birds in the area. Different types of trees like Gulmohar, Mulberry, Palm etc were planted to attract the distinct variety of birds. The mound though facing towards the terraces on the lake edge, is inaccessible from it to create a sense of longing in the minds of the people sitting on the edge viewing the mound. The mound thus acts like a nest for birds, supported by the stone retaining wall hidden amidst the vegetation, suggestive of nature taking over the man-made structures.