urban commons
In Contemporary cities, public spaces are rapidly getting privatised which leads to exclusion of the vulnerable demographic. Urban Commons represent spaces that are shared by smaller communities and afford themselves for collective appropriation, these spaces become first spaces of interaction that allow people to perform and practise the act of space making in the city.
Post 90s, Indian cities have started growing extensively through instances of urban change. These changes constantly reshape the built form and consequently form a gap between the built form and the life of the people. The disjunct between the memories of people and their new rehabilitated space creates a conflict within the
01 urban commons and temporal markets, architecture and memory research & design dissertation, ahmedabad built environment. The design of the temporal market becomes a provocation rather than a solution within the conflict of disruption of spaces for commons. Instead of recreating, it provokes people to constantly engage, remember, and hopefully trace new memories within the urban trenches of the city.
research
The precedent research dissertation, “Architecture and Memory: Practice and Selfing of City spaces” was an exploration of how people remember cities.
The thesis proposed “selfing”, as an extension of ‘to self’ and practice. Selfing became the act of reconciliation between memories and the new space within urban commons.
The study was done by collecting intensive interviews from displacement sites.
Interviews were transcribed as monologues, and further mental map collages were made to visually investigate the space-memory relation. These collages of past and present traced recurring spaces and practises that were actively remembered by people.
project type academic work type individual thesis work level semester 9, 10 date october 2019october 2020
Vatva
Ravivari , near the Ahmedabad riverfront is a temporal sunday market that sells second-hand antique objects.
After the development of the Sabarmati river front in 2012, the market’s connection to the river edge was disrupted. Currently, its space is bounded by the raised land of the Riverfront on one side and the city wall on the other making it a linear urban trench.
Due to the rigidity of the layout, the architecture of the trench is currently unable to hold memories, practices and movements making the experience of the place detached and constantly reminding one of harsh displacement and disruption from the river and the city.
carnival
Rethinking the existing temporal market as a market along with spaces for additional communitarian activities such as performance, event, discussion, exhibition and spaces for resting, watching, cooking, eating, reading, and storytelling. The design is envisioned as a soft networked architectural landscape with long corridors for transactions (and movements) connecting a series of hard-object-like pavilions for gathering and performances. This network is designed as blurry and soft to enhance overlaps and generate different intensities of occupation, practices and experience. The design creates various scales of ‘commons’ throughout the site. The Transaction corridor is a decked pathway that becomes the movement rhythm through the fabric of the site.
02 what is a home?
culture study, bharatnagar, India
Eastern suburbs are displacement hubs in the city of Mumbai. We studied this phenomenon of diasporas to understand the involuntary movement of people and housing in the city. In this extreme case of displacement, all our set categories of thinking of space as private property, as private space, as a commodity that can be bought and sold, as a bounded space that shuts the outdoors away, a space of security, a safe place to dream as Gaston Bachelard puts it, are all destabilized. Yet people create homes. We therefore go back to asking the ontological question “What is a Home?”.
It is through this question that we study the neighbourhood histories of sites in Mumbai that have seen intense migrations/displacements and then acts of settling and consolidation to (re)make homes. The eastern suburbs of Mumbai have historically been such sites Through the narratives of its people, material and geographies we ask the question ‘What is a Home? How is a home constituted? How is it built, made, sustained, lived, loved, dreamt in?.
The study was a part of the Kochi Biennale Exhibition, 2016.
project type academic work type individual work work level semester 3
date april 2017
site plan, bharatnagar
design
As opposed to breaking the existing dilapidated houses, the project focused on thoroughly understanding the nuances and routines of the people and their immediate community life. The people used the outside transition spaces more than their houses. The design intent was to bring life into these transitions spaces to carve out a niche urban common in the existing fabric of disruption. The larger strategy was to retrofit the existing surfaces of the MHADA1 housing with ribbons of corridors that creeped onto the walls and connected at various levels. Along with the corridors, certain surfaces of the houses were carved and designed as interactive interfaces, e.g, seating spaces, openable furniture pieces and gardens. The design aimed to break the monotonous nature of the existing built and celebrate life.
03 the riparian loo
revitalizing the community and the river, global top50 entry, volumezero competition
Most of the informal settlements within Mumbai are formed within the vulnerable areas. The Hanuman Nagar settlement places itself around the low lying areas of the Poisar river since the 1960s. Over the years, the density has increased and the river edges have been secured by concrete walls which contribute to the annual monsoon flooding.
Owing to the density of the settlement, the public washrooms become spaces where people meet each other. The edge of the river is designed as stepped plantations and constructed wetlands, which treat the sewage water before letting it into the river.
design
The bridge becomes a part of this scheme as it ‘bridges’ the space between the nodes while still lending itself to become a market. The washrooms are crafted with an understanding of different gestures that a gendered body performs while their skins lend themselves for appropriation. These in between spaces act as important relief and transition spaces for tightly packed settlements. The project imagines the public washroom as a valued urban common much in cohesion with the landscape, environment, and community. It tries to lend good sanitation and through the excuse of sanitation, it tries to revive the river and bring back the community life.
project type professional work type group work, role research, design, graphics date august 2020
obscure objects
At the peak of consumer culture, objects become products that can be mass manufactured and are rendered expandable in the existing system. Obscure objects curate a narrative beyond consumerism to create interactive entities that afford activities, reactions, visual narratives, networks, and transactions that perform as an extension of the human body and at the urban scale.
04 kala*(i)
train prosthetic, mumbai, India
Commute is a huge part of our everyday lives, most of the mumbaikars1 use trains to travel within the city. Railways are central to the mass movement of people in the city. We began the studio by assessing our own body during the train commute, the objective was to carefully record our experiences and reactions to specific triggers and stimuli to understand what our body, mind
and soul struggles with during the journey. The crowd and general compactness of the narrow train compartment brought about a reaction of discomfort and suffocation within my body, In the cacophony of the train, my eyes would constantly drift around to look for open space.
designing the prosthetic
I chose to work with these claustrophobic reactions. The design brief was to craft something simple and handy that could distract one’s visions and fabricate the visual of a never-ending space.
A whimsical extension was designed to attach onto spectacle frames. The extension was detailed internally with cut mirror pieces that could multiply the tunnel vision and create the illusion of a labyrinth.
To playful piece of the device was the colourful lens that could be snapped onto the end of the extension, this created an animated overlay to the rather mundane visuals of travelling in a train. These kaleidoscopic glasses relaxed the mind and the body to curate calm motions while interacting with stressful and chaotic commute moments.
project type academic work type individual work work level semester 1
date october 2015
05
home
as an assemblage
kochi biennale 2016, bharatnagar, India
The Biennale platform brings together art pedagogy and art practice, via the curators, is imagined as a rhizomatic structure coming into place which is about forming networks, solidarities, and about forging a deep understanding of the ‘contemporary’ in different places.
Histories of cities are at the same time stories of migrations, displacements and settling. These
are as much about movements as about setting up of homes. This process of settling and the making of homes are complex processes with deep phenomenological resonances in the spaces that people create, hence, asking the ontological question “What is a Home?”
Histories of cities are at the same time stories of migrations, displacements and settling. These are as much about movements as about setting up of homes. This process of settling and the making of homes are complex processes with deep phenomenological resonances in the spaces that people create. In this extreme case of displacement, all our set categories of thinking of space as private property, as private space, as a commodity that can be bought and sold, as a bounded space that shuts the outdoors away, a space of security, a safe place to dream as Gaston Bachelard puts it, are all destabilized. Yet people create homes. We therefore go back to asking the
Histories of cities are at the same time stories of migrations, displacements and settling. These are as much about movements as about setting up of homes. This process of settling and the making of homes are complex processes with deep phenomenological resonances in the spaces that people create.
Histories of cities are at the same time stories of migrations, displacements and settling. These are as much about movements as about setting up of homes. This process of settling and the making of homes are complex processes with deep phenomenological resonances in the spaces that people create.
In this extreme case of displacement, all our set categories of thinking of space as private property, as private space, as a commodity that can be bought and sold, as a bounded space that shuts the outdoors away, a space of security, a safe place to dream as Gaston Bachelard puts it, are all destabilized. Yet people create homes. We therefore go back to asking the
In this extreme case of displacement, all our set categories of thinking of space as private property, as private space, as a commodity that can be bought and sold, as a bounded space that shuts the outdoors away, a space of security, a safe place to dream as Gaston Bachelard puts it, are all destabilized. Yet people create homes. We therefore go back to asking the
Histories of cities are at the same time stories of migrations, displacements and settling. These are as much about movements as about setting up of homes. This process of settling and the making of homes are complex processes with deep phenomenological resonances in the spaces that people create. In this extreme case of displacement, all our set categories of thinking of space as private property, as private space, as a commodity that can be bought and sold, as a bounded space that shuts the outdoors away, a space of security, a safe place to dream as Gaston Bachelard puts it, are all destabilized. Yet people create homes. We therefore go back to asking the
ontological question “What is a Home?”
memory box
Bharat Nagar in Bandra (East) was a settlement made by communities, who lost their households, jobs and identities in the 1970s developmental shift.
Shaheena (40) narrates how she built her own house and her affinity to certain temporary objects that have consolidated her house into a ‘Home’. Every house in the community is made of a kit of parts available at very low costs in the neighbourhood shops.
The memory box is a playful installation tracing the process of making a ‘Home’, by using vibrant objects and coincidental configurations.
project type academic work type group work role research, graphics, installation work level semester 4 date october 2016
06 memory heterotopia
Heterotopia, a world within world, is a discursive space that has the quality of ‘other’. The independent research started by investigating the process of settling in a city and the mechanics of familiarity between people and city spaces.
In ‘Architecture of the city’, Aldo Rossi (1966) looks at the city as an autonomous structure, i.e, a self-growing, self-unravelling process and a convergence of urban artefacts that is constructed over a passage of time.
In recent times, the image of the city is a static photo found over the internet. The research intent was to study and design an interactive platform that could hold the dynamic and elusive visuals of the self growing city.
project type professional work type independent research date may 2022 - ongoing
memory-scape
The design algorithm pulls in and archives images and photo memories from the digital cloud along with their geo coordinates. This interactive screened space can hold images, visual stories, history and publicly accessed data, the user interface scans the surrounding environment and overlays relevant data onto the screen.
The generated memoryscape is as tangible as any other physical space, creating a heterotopia that can open up a different dimension for interactions and experiences. This research refined my understanding of performance spaces by opening up the mechanics of how users interact with space and that the process of creation of space can be a performance itself.
building stories
An architecture centered on repair acknowledges the design intervention as a moment in a longer process, one of the many forces that intersect to produce space.
Building stories is multilayered visual story recorded as a drawing repository that overlays the different knowledges, repair tactics, details, and materials together with the simple intent of experiencing built space.
07 arthshila architecture & design library gujarat, India
Arthshila celebrates the unintended outcomes that arise when a building lives beyond its program.
In 2014, Tower House was an experiment in vertical living. In 2021, we redesigned it as a public library and design centre. To shift from private to public, the ground floor was opened to a create a continuous public amphitheatre for outdoor events. The public nature of the space is reinforced by a 5 story steel framed bookshelf. This project not only takes seriously the existing building, but delights in its imperfections and idiosyncrasies.
The project is a part of an ongoing research ‘Archietcture is Repair’, 2021, BandukSmith Studio project type professional role research, publication graphics date january 2022
08 regenerate haveli
modern heritage, gujarat, India
Regenerate Haveli was recreated from the pieces of a 300 year old haveli. Here the logic of new and old coming together was reflected in their making process. Old elements needed conversations, placements, and hand drawings. Their unique form and dissimilarities rendered digital drawings unnecessary, while the new elements were designed, drawn and executed in a traditional construction method. A merger of new and old systems was curated by visually projecting locations. The haveli is a negotiation between old and new, carefully crafted though detail and material in time.
The project is a part of an ongoing research ‘Archietcture is Repair’, 2021, BandukSmith Studio
project type professional role research, publication graphics date january 2022
documentation process of old and new
09 row office
architecture is repair, gujarat, India
The Row Office is located in a typical neighbourhood of traditional row houses. Practices of expansion are common in this typology, and are aided by grey areas in the local building code. This ambiguity allowed for an opportunity to negotiate for bolder expansions. The design adapts an aging, dingy house type to create a narrow new work space full of light. Lines between furniture, interior and architecture are blurred to generate a seamless habitable space, structured by the insertion of a steel frame. A bi-centric spiral staircase of steel becomes the anchor for movement and allows light to fall through all the floors.
The project is a part of an ongoing research ‘Archietcture is Repair’, 2021, BandukSmith Studio
project type professional role research, publication graphics date january 2022
performing landscapes
Contemporary landscapes are a collage of art, architecture, and personas that form visual stories.
As opposed to landscapes being static backgrounds, Performing Landscapes are hybrid fabrics that transgress through space and time to curate interactive spaces that push all limits of spatiality, identity, and urbanity.
10 modern ruin gujarat, India
The pavilion sits in the outskirts of the city, an envisioned future landscape of typical “weekend home” scheme.
Modern Ruin becomes an opportunity to speculate on the life and longevity of the building, its nature as a shelter, and the possibility for life after loss of function, growing as a ruin back into the land it was built to demarcate. The pavilion anchored by a Banyan tree puts on a play of built, nature and decay. The performance sets it’s Act I by provoking the idea of an alternative approach to the life of a building and curates Act II as a dance of decay in a context of permanence.
The project was published in Unbuilt 2.0, architecture of future collectives, 2021
project type professional role research, publication graphics date january 2022
after 20 years after 1 year after 50 years
11 jawai retreat rajasthan, India
Jawai was curated as an incidental juxtaposition of natural materials like, rock, grass, wood, and moss. Material research was at the centre of the design process. The designed overlay attempts to root oneself in the memory landscape of the Rajasthan.
The earthen public pathway is the spine of the entire design. The fort wall becomes the point of transgression between the thorny wild forest, dry river bed, and the rhythmic farming. The walkways taper as they traverse through the landscape, curating the experience of the visitor to transition from a public excursion to private meanders.
project type professional role research, design, graphics
date december 2021
12 of land or water?
planning resilience, R ward mumbai, India
As a landscape that has now become conjectural and a commodity of enormously-increasing real estate demand, it is often difficult to remind oneself that the city of Mumbai rests on a ground shaped by the actions of the water and land over millennia. Flooding in each monsoon coupled with tidal action leads to increasing socio-economic aggravation that deems water as the enemy.
of land or water, puts together the performance of resilience as opposed to resistance between land and water, all set in the anthropocene. The study focuses on reading through the terrain using Geographical Information System (GIS).
The studio further worked with this new idea of topography - of macro and micro watersheds to seek whether Environmental Information Systems (EIS) could be used to understand the complexity of terrain, and become a crucial tool in rescripting urban form of our cities.
project type academic work type group work, role research, graphics, curation work level urban study semester 9 date september 2019 - october 2019
the age of anthropocene
An overlay study of historic maps, city building policies & socio-economic events led to identify exact intersections of human made changes that have led to flooding and waterlogged areas in the city.
Here the phenomenon of flooding was ethnographically documented in relation to human-centric quantities of ‘ankle, calf, knee, waist and shoulder’.
Through a collection of narratives of stakeholder experiences, the larger actors were factioned as:
a)the locals inhabiting the area
b) the elected representatives
c) the administrative wings of the city.
A landscape of the most vulnerable areas within the city was stitched through a weaved mesh of narratives of the land, development and flooding.
building resilience
The studio then with the projections and interactions based on the initial intensive research outlined four main objectives of adaptability, awareness, recovery & relief and redevelopment.
Three milestone time periods were adapted as a framework.
1) short term 2021
The immediate electoral term, where the strategies to provide vulnerability relief.
2) mid term 2034
A series of reconciliation strategies through the cities next development plan.
3) long term 2051 redevelopment strategies where a sea level of 0.5 meters which was predicted by the IPCC due to climate crisis.
Open space systems
that could percolate, hold and create a route for the water.
Infrastructure strategies a network that would allow right of way for water.
Built form strategies
The strategies of densification by rehabilitation and relocation.
ecosystems
2051 zoning, 5 major zones based on their topography and levels, where ‘Zone 0’ is the most vulnerable contour hence, no build zone to ‘Zone 4’ has the most prime contour that becomes the emergency zone for rehabilitation.
the
photogrammetry
