Selected works 2022- Swaraj Dhuri

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portfolio architecture | design | research swaraj dhuri 2022
u rban commons urban commons and temporal markets arthshila architecture and design library obscure o bjects kala(i), train prosthetic home as an assemblage, kochi biennale memory heterotopia perfor ming landscapes modern ruin jawai of land or water, planning resilience content 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 01 - 04 05 - 06 07 - 08 09 - 10 11 - 12 13 14 15 - 18

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.

01

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

02
Ravivari market Bhadra Fort Plaza Juhapura

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.

03
various layers that form the edge of the city memory maps from site

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.

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view through the performance pavilion design diagram intersections within the carnival

02 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

TOWER HOUSE 2015 volumetric design TOWER HOUSE 2015 buffer zone plantations TOWER HOUSE 2015 box windows TOWER HOUSE 2015 semi open facade TOWER HOUSE 2015 private residence CONVERTED TO OFFICE SPACE staircase and fenestration changes CONVERTED TO OFFICE SPACE new opportunities, new library brief ARTHSHILA 2021 public library ARTHSHILA 2021 new staircase and five story library bookshelf 05
Transformation diagrams from the Tower House to Arthshila Library New on Old: Space and Insertions in Tower House/Arthshila
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Inserting new structures in an old wall: the Five-Story Shelf and it’s Glass Floor Through the Window Under the Stair: Opportunities to Look Public space: the amphitheatre and the stair The Five-Story Shelf and Stair: Two steel structures inserted to create the new program

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.

03 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.

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1. mumbaikars, a local of the city of Mumbai *kala, art in Hindi/Marathi.

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

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exploded object detail spectacle frame mirror coloured lenses
kala(i)-scape

04

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?”

ontological question “What is a Home?” It is through
It
is through
ontological question “What is a Home?” It is through
ontological question “What is a Home?” It is through

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

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The installation is a part of the Kochi Biennale Exhibition, 2016. memory box - kit of parts kochi axonometrics visual projection

05 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

01. bhadra fort 23.024119181061618, 72.58080460918328 03. jami masjid 23.024119181061618, 72.58080460918328 02. teen darwaza 23.024119181061618, 72.58080460918328 04. ravivari 23.024119181061618, 72.58080460918328 05. riverfront 23.024119181061618, 72.58080460918328 11
India
ahmedabad,

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.

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memory-scape on screen geo-tagged visual stories

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.

06 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

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concrete roof exploded system isometric metal corrugated sheet steel roof frame steel frame system wooden deck

07 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

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material conditions
fort wall and the nature

08 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

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The study was covered by two local newspaper, a series of exhibitions, presented at the Envirovision conference 2020 and selected in the IGC 2020. flooding and the city , mumbai, india 2051

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.

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flooding analysis for vulnerability study stakeholder poster

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.

Soft

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.

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infra to set out policy frameworks for the new urban form of the city. resilient urban form, mumbai 2051 form of the safe city form of incubator scheme new grounds
Mumbai 2051 one year after the
‘Of land or Water’ studio, I traced back the learnings by visualising the hyper realistic landscape of future.

the

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sea hive, parametric design feedback loop, art history tenth night, urban studies cyanotype print, electives illustration, electives photogrammetry, mithakhali quarantine home, digital art multiple screens, digital art pandemic body, digital art makeadifference, campaign makeadifference, kiosk visuals odes to happiness, exhibition goodkarma farm, branding goodkarma farm, graphics architectural prototyping

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