PLAY METHODOLOGIES STUDIO

B U D - FA C U LT Y O F P L A N N I N G - STU D I O U N IT

S EM ESTER 2 018

+ KRUTI SHAH

SEBASTIAN TRUJILLO

PEDAGOGIC DOCUMENT

SPRING AND MONSOON

PL AY METHODOLOGIES STUDIO

L2

3

2

PL AY ME THOD OLO G IES S T UDIO

FO CUS OF THE UNIT:

PLAN N I N G AN D O R GAN IZI N G

FORM OF FINAL O U TPU T:

VI S UALIZATI O N D RAWI N G S , ANALYTI CAL D RAWI N G S , AN D PHYS I CAL M O D ELS .

*AGNIPATH : Testing the game at New Faisal Nagar Photograph by Viral Lalwani

5

4

C O NTENTS 6-13 PLAY AS RESEARCH 14-19 DESIGN AS PLAY 20-21 MODULE 1: GAME BOARDS OF PLACE [A DESIGN-RESEARCH ENQUIRY]

22-23 MODULE 2 : CO-OPERATIVE REPRESENTATIO [INTENTIONAL ASSEMBLAGES]

24-25 MODULE 3 :NEGOTIATED DESIGNS [SMALL PIECES, LARGER GAMES]

26-27 READING MODULE 30-175 SPRING SEMESTER 176-253 MONSOON SEMESTER

7

6

>Playing is an extraordinary pedagogical tool.

It is an activity that not only allows for the participation and contribution of very diverse agents (creating a strong integrative condition beyond the classroom) but -at the same time- allows students to eagerly envision objectives, construct tactics and strategies of design, absorb negotiations and address pre-existing conflicts. Playing is a way for agency and knowledge to proliferate since it entails a profound enquiry on the conditions of a place while rendering explicit the rules of its systems; it makes boundaries and divisions visible as lines that can be transgressed for larger benefits. In that manner, play is also a subversive activity because of its capacity to

envision radical contextual transformations, through seemingly harmless operations.

Playing is mocking the status-quo.

As part of the studio ‘Play Methodologies’ taken forward in the Faculty of Planning at CEPT University (Ahmedabad), students were presented with a set of challenges that made them experiment with such notions of play while taking the city as a laboratory.

Hence, they designed a series of game boards capable of reproducing the complex constituencies of a site in south-eastern Ahmedabad (more specifically, Bombay Hotel) which would eventually lead them to the proposition of small-scale, frugal -yet innovative- technologies: what we can term as mobile infrastructures.

This is its pedagogical manifesto.

9

8

PL AY AS RESE ARCH

To begin with, it is important to highlight that -as a methodological development- play emerged as an assemblage of incremental and subsequent negotiations.

The students initiated the studio by undergoing somewhat conventional stages of research in New Faisal Nagar : on-site observation and analysis, empirical data collection, stakeholder interviews, mapping and other forms of visualization. However, the aim of these exercises –aside from depicting relevant physical conditions- was to re-present existing formal and informal infrastructural networks , in a manner that could challenge its apparently innocuous features.

A playful lens that surfaced the power imbalances that makes the site a radically politicized geography.

Thereby, students construed Bombay Hotel as a series of spaces of contestation, conflict, collaboration, but –mostly- a place of opportunity.

The findings from such research eventually manifested through a series of game boards. Play became explicit.

These tools of representation, provided the students with an insight into the relevant dynamic components and stakeholders of the infrastructural networks they were investigating, while surfacing

*PLAYING WITH IMAGES: Collage on New Faisal Nagar

by Shourya Dubey and Meet Kakadiya

11

10

interdependencies and struggles.

Hence, as a way to enable students to structure their own procedural processes in different scales and conditions of action, the predisposition of these parameters for interaction -not only encouraged empathy but, simultaneously- worked as a strategy to identify opportunities of design.

The game boards, in that way, resulted as a form of performative

mapping : an experience-based representation, which urged the player to involve with specific choices that would lead to eventual transformative agendas.

A form of experimentation based on techniques of participatory design and community engagement yet, set in a different way. Multiple game sessions were held at Bombay hotel and CEPT University, wherein the act of playing recreated site-livelihoods and triggered significant discussion (especially amongst stakeholders as local leaders, women, children and so on) thereby accentuating the value of the discipline’s social dimension.

Now, over and above, another interesting factor of these Game boards is that they worked simultaneously as a tool of

research and design : contextual understandings and built form propositions were withdrawn directly

*Discussion of proposed interventions with the community.

by Prabhu Prabhanjan

13

12

from the act of playing. Interactions, exchanges and negotiations became the methodological vocabulary to analyse, interpret and rethink complex socio-political conditions, through engaging and transformative narratives.

An iterative process of exchange, trial, error and adaptation.

Decyphering while acting.

Additionally, we dopted a design paradigm framed within the spirit of

collaboration and co-design .

This was a fundamental part of the studio as a pedagogical statement, not only because of the political implications it contracts but because of the processes it involves: designing with someone else entails capitalizing on the other’s skills and knowledge, as well as the understanding of one’s capabilities and reaches. Since this is a structural precondition for urban designers, we xplored diverse techniques to facilitate peer interaction, workload distribution, time management and so on.

One of such technique was

Scrum ; an agile framework for group work management, which breaks tasks into approachable actions, by setting them in time boxed iterations and establishing regular (and short) meetings. An efficient way of organizing processes of co-design.

*Collaborative process of forming groups for the game boards.

Photograph by Kruti Shah

15

14

DESIGN AS PL AY

While the first phase of the studio was predominantly concentrated upon devising mechanisms of research -directly linked to possibilities of actionthe second gravitated around the potentiality of design. From play as a tool to gather information, interact with stakeholders and dabble with ideas, on to a tool of engaging with materials, textures, forms and urban elements. A way to re-instate previous questions.

While the games informed eventual design decisions, play became the language through which propositions emerged. Design as play.

To be playful means to understand (and act upon) Indian urbanity as a raw bundle of overlapping dynamics in constant exchange; an exercise of observing reality as it is -and not as it should be-in order to understand it, deconstruct it and re-assemble it by enhancing its purpose and accommodating it to a specific context. It was a way to reverse-

engineer its principles and re-

purpose them. The outcomes differ greatly from onsets, yet the inception of the creative process is purely pragmatic (we don’t count on talent or genius, just on discipline and determination).

Playing-design from this perspective, was consolidated within found values: Jugaad/Adhocism

*JUGAAD: curtain as a door.

Photograph by Vanishka Shah and Anubha tholia

17

16

as a form of frugal innovation, temporality as an opportunity for poly-functional infrastructure, density of space as index for optimization, flexibility as a guide for positive change, interdependency of the formal and informal (as well as private and public) as programmatic locus, negotiations as an everyday currency. Strategies of action legitimized by their re-appropriation.

The challenge for the students then consisted of formulating specific briefs that would address issues and opportunities while envisaging appropriate technologies.

In order to do this, they were given a set of ten bounding parameters through which they had to think of their urban design interventions: they had to be urban devices

(small-scaled) of decentralized character (not relying on institutions),

temporary or mobile (not a onetime solution), scalable (a system that could expand), systemic (located within pre-existing networks), polyfunctional (for multiple appropriations and uses),

feasible (working with what is available), frugal (acutely conscious of resources), politically aware (deliberately situated within power relations), and playful (risky, daring, engaging and accessible).

Mobile infrastructures with an

activist agenda.

In order to do this, we largely employ models as a means to

19

18

rapidly visualize propositions: the interrelation between material components, structural affinity, scale, movement, and so on. For us, this is a fundamental locus of experimentation. Additionally,

model-making functions as an efficient tool of communication with external agents that can relate to the designs as everyday instruments.

What was fascinating about this process, was not only the ad-hoc composition of the responses to the challenge but, mostly, the sui-generis character they displayed. While Prabhanjan Prabhu developed a ‘lari’ (street cart) meant to filter water as a doorstep service that could also be a public space of gathering (See pages 116-139), Hetvee Panchal proposed an expandable co-working space for women to learn crafts in abandoned neighbourhood plots (See pages 116-111). Madhav Joshi on the other side, projected an energyproducing ‘chabutra’ (bird feeder) that could double as a community meeting place , while Sparsh Patlan designed a play-device for children to concentrate in controllable areas (See pages 102-105). Additionally, Meet Kakadiya and Shourya Dubey worked on a water-filtering space that would turn a derelict lake into a public garden (See pages 140-161), while Atal Chadha proposed a mobile playground that could consolidate safer spaces of interaction for the neighbourhood children (See pages 106-109).

*SANGARSH : Testing the game at New Faisal Nagar Photograph by Viral Lalwani

21

20

MOD ULE 0 01_ G AME BOARD S OF PL ACE [A D ES I G N-R ES EAR C H EN Q U I RY]

O U TC OME REFERENCE S_ In the first module, students will design a GAME BOARD capable of reproducing the complex constituencies of a specific site in Southern Ahmedabad. More specifically, Hotel Bombay.

In order to construct this board games, students will need to undergo different exercises of mapping, drawing, interviews, on-site research and so on, so as to justify the elaboration of that contested geography.

The objective, is not only demonstrating the relevant physicalterritorial conditions of the site, but specifically representing the different sets of networks that make it a politicized space. These networks are the ecologies that define it as a public space of contestation, conflict and collaboration. Is up to the students to define and select one of these networks, in an outlook of an architectural/urban intervention.

However, the game is not rendered exclusively as a performative depiction: its parallel intent is to withdraw intervention ideas. The game then, works simoultaneously as a tool of research and design where propositions and questions are withdrawn from the act of playing. This iterative process of design will constantly redirect the route of enquiry, while concurrently informing the specificities of the project.

SITE_ ARR ANG EMENT_ D UR ATI ON/END_

Bombay Hotel, Ahmedabad.

Individual.

4 weeks/Concluded with exhibition and peer review.

Davey, Hrushita and Singh, Toshi. “Mapping Clothing in Primary streets”. Mapping Strategies: Reading and Recording the City.

Cept University, Wordpress.2015.

₹ubbish! Fields of View.

“Recently Bangalore adopted a decentralized approach to address its waste crisis with Dry Waste Collection Centers (DWCCs) being setup in every ward. How can we address some of the challenges faced by DWCCs and help strengthen the infrastructure for waste management in the city? It is this question we explored in ₹ubbish!, a cross-cultural design collaboration between Bangalore and Amsterdam.

Some of the challenges faced by the DWCCs include apathy of citizens toward dealing with waste and a lack of knowledge about the new decentralized system for waste management. Our objective was to address knowledge gaps and behaviour to promote understanding of the waste management system at both the micro and macro levels.

A combination of the methodology followed at Fields of View and mediaLab Amsterdam, involving framing the problem in consultation with stakeholders, field visits, discussions and interviews with experts, game design, and user tests.” *Taken from: http://fieldsofview.in/projects/ rubbish/

23

22

MOD ULE 0 0 2 _ CO - OPER ATIVE REPRESENTATIONS [I NTENTI O NAL AS S EM B LAG ES]

SITE_ ARR ANG EMENT_

D UR ATI ON/END_

Given that the development of each board game will focus on specific circumstances (that being, a stakeholder, community, etc.) the next step will be assembling all conditions into a unique game that takes into account a wider range of parameters. In order to take this forward, the groups are expected to negotiate amongst each other towards an overall structure that conciliates the previous disparity of ideas, into a general protocol of operations that resembles the actual complexities of the site.

O U TC OME REFERENCE S_

Elgoog, “Games and Methodologies”. Platoniq Lab, 2009.

Elgoog (The Tracker) is a versatile simulation game designed to be adaptable to different contexts. In a simplified and didactic way, it reproduces several scenarios that emulate both real and imaginary experiences, so players can think of ficticious situations that can shed light on an organization’s problems and obstacles. It also can represent new situations, so participants can learn to solve them in a cooperative way by contributing with new ideas, connections and collaborators still to be had into account.

In this particular instance, collaboration will be essential. That will assure both the inclusion of all agents, as well as the feasibility of future propositions: this game will be consolidated as an elaborate tool of design, capable of acknowledging larger and more intricate social settings from which to withdraw subsequent iterations.

Participants must play roles that involve different degrees of cooperation or rivalry, and solve challenges by means of making decisions that will affect the situation being discussed. The game stage may discover several factors that interfere (natural, social, cultural...), as well as many of participants’ values, interests, attitudes and behaviours.

Elgoog creates scenarios for a interdisciplinary cooperation.

However, this is also a tool of communication. A medium to interact with the community in order to exchange information of site, as well as including them into the actual process of design. Hence, the accessibility and engagement strategies of the game have to be modulated accordingly; it will be addressing a significantly wide and diverse public.

*Taken from: http://platoniq.net/en/games/p/16/ elgoog/

Bombay Hotel, Ahmedabad.

For this exercise, the studio will be organized as a collection of groups, which will have to cooperate towards the construction of a dynamic geography.

4 weeks/Concluded with on-site trial and MIDSEM Event.

25

24

MOD ULE 0 0 3_ NEG OTIATED DESIGNS [S MALL PI EC ES , LAR G ER GAM ES]

In the last (and most intense) part of the studio, students will develop the interventions from their prior iterations, by negotiating with urban conditions, available resources and community needs.

The position of “the designer” is rendered here as one of many contributors. A role were compromises, alliances and strategies become essential in the development of the spatial interventions. Throughout the course, students will be in a constant state of double role-play: a stakeholder (empathizing with someone else) and a designer (occupying a position that involves transformation based on expertise). Therefore, students will be accountable for both constructively criticizing the works of others as well as justifying their own propositions.

As peers then, students will have the responsibility and the obligation of participating in the review and grading processes.

The expected outcome of the course (aside from the urban interventions) is the completion of the board game, incorporating and articulating the designs into the current condition of the site while advocating for its effects.

Consequently, design interventions will act as pieces of the game, addressing specific circumstances in a outlook of incremental improvement.

SITE_ D UR ATI ON/END_

ARR ANG EMENT_

Bombay Hotel, Ahmedabad.

For this module students will reconstitute their “circles”, developing the design briefs that were previously constructed.

4 weeks/Final expositions and testing of the proposals.

O U TC OME REFERENCE_

Cosmo, installation at MoMa PS1.

Office for Political Innovation, 2015.

“Jaque and his firm Office for Political Innovation were the winners of the 2015 Young Architects Program (YAP), which invites emerging architects to create a temporary structure for the courtyard at PS1, a contemporary art institution affiliated with New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Jaque’s installation, called Cosmo, is designed to serve as a portable waterfiltration plant.

The installation, which opened yesterday, consists of a towering network of circular pipes set within a web of plastic tubes. At the base of the structure, cylinders filled with plants and water sit on wheeled platforms. Dangling from lower portions of the web are additional plants in clear, bulbous containers.” *Taken from: https://www.dezeen.com/2015/06/24/ andres-jaque-giant-water-purifiermoma-ps1-courtyard-new-york-yap/

27

26

RE ADING MOD ULE_ TH E WEEKLY EXC HAN G E

Besides the long-term exercises, students will be required to read a book weekly. However, in order to do this, students can subdivide the content amongst them (depending on the specific reading) in order to discuss it with the faculty and studio guests in the pre given time slot. In that manner, each student is responsible both for his/her own understanding of the assigned content, as well as for making others understand it: the studio sessions will develop in a format of interdependence.

The objective of this is to inculcate reading as a habit, familiarize students with complex ideas, important authors and academic vocabularies, while supporting intellectually their design processes (providing ideas, connections, thought mechanisms, and so on). The sequence of the readings will be coordinated with the challenges of the long-term exercises, while engaging in theoretical deliberations as instrumental means of generating fresh ideas.

SELEC TED BIBLI O G R APH Y

• Jugaad Innovation by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu and Dr. Simone Ahuja.

• Adhocism, Expanded And Updated Edition, The Case for Improvisation by Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver.

• Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered by E F Schumacher.

• The SAHMAT Collective – Art and Activism in India Since 1989 by Jessica Moss and Ram Rahman.

• Theater of the Oppressed

by Augusto Boal • Radical Cities by Justin McGuirk • Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture

by Jeremy Till, Nishat Awan and Tatjana Schneider.

• Insurgent Public Spaces by Jeffrey Hou

• Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein.

• LOOSE SPACE Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life

by Franck, K., & Stevens, Q. • Play Matters by Miguel Sicart.

• Design Like You Give a Deam

by Architecture for Humanity

28

>This studio was conducted over two consecutive semestersSpring and Monsoon.

Henceforward, the document is divided into two sections which collates the works of students as part of specific briefs given in each semester.

29

30

31

32

33

34

*Mapping of informal water system by Prabhanjan Prabhu, Shourya Dubey and Praswed Patel

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

*INDIVIDUAL GAME BOARD : Fill the container

by Prabhu Prabhanjan

50

*Individual Board game by Prabhanjan Prabhu

51

*INDIVIDUAL GAME BOARD : Fill the container Photograph by Prabhu Prabhanjan

52

53

*INDIVIDUAL GAME BOARD

by Khevana Makhanwahla

54

55

56

57

*Lakshya

by Shourya Dubey, Meet Kakadiya, Praswed Patel, Drahti Thakkar and Khevana Makhanwahla

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

*Lakshya Photograph by Meet Kakadiya

70

71

*Safar

by Sparsh paltan, Atal Chada and Aditi Mishra

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

*Safar Photograph by Vrushti Kothi

82

83

*Baav Tol

by Hetvee Panchal, Vanshika Shah, Madhav Joshi, Anubha Tholia and Prabhu Prabhanjan

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

*Lakshya Photograph by Sebastian Trujillo

96

97

98

99

*Drafting a Playbook

by Khevana Makhanwahla

100

101

*Palying with Images

by Khevana Makhanwahla

102

103

*Drafting a Playbook

by Madhav Joshi

104

105

*Playing with Images

by Madhav Joshi

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

*Chadaai

by Sparsh Paltan

118

119

120

121

*Ghanakshetr

by Atal Chadha

122

123

124

125

*Design Brief

by Prabhu Prabhanjan

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

*Transformer

by Prabhu Prabhanjan

150

151

*Design Brief

by Shorya Dubey and Meet Kakadiya

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

*Of By For the People

by Shorya Dubey and Meet Kakadiya

170

171

*Of By For the People

by Shorya Dubey and Meet Kakadiya

172

173

*Spring semester Exhibition.

Photograph by Kruti Shah

174

175

*Spring semester Exhibition.

Photograph by Sebastian Trujillo

176

177

B. URBAN DESIGN FA C U LT Y O F P L A N N I N G C E 178 P2 T UNIVERSITY P L AY M E TH O D O LO G I E S STU D I O

3 179

MOD ULE 1 - BRIEF 1

MAPPING INFORMAL NE T WORKS_

As initial preojection of the site and its constituencies, we explore it through its informal infrastructural dimensions. Hence, as a way to enquire into the relation between the construction of the city and the political dimensions that determine it (that being the relationship between, formality and informality, services and structural violence, agencies and territory, etc.) we re-present the different organizational systems that have arisen from the absence of the state.

INS TRU C TI ONS_

We focus on the notion of networks as a study of relationships and interactions between agents, and in specific spatial circumstances.

Networks are self-organized, emergent and complex structures (either physical or social) that allow for the flow of matter, energy and information.

Davey, Hrushita and Singh, Toshi.

“Mapping Clothing in Primary streets”. Mapping Strategies: Reading and Recording the City.

Cept University, Wordpress.2015.

If we then think of informal networks from this point of view, we could define them as supporting dynamic structures of exchange that are not necesarily framed within what is considered as ‘legal’. This means, spatial arrangements that are independent of the institutional establishments that are supposed to provide them. Networks as independent water supply, drainage, electricity tapping, mobile medical camps, aanganwadis/gyaan shaalas, informal industries, street vendors, religious institutes and so on. Decentralized forms of organization that have arisen from initial circumstances of need and dispersion.

It is important to highlight that we are focusing on aspects that are directly related to spatial arrangements -the physical construction of the city- and, hence, imply a certain margin for an eventual design intervention.

DELIVER ABLE S_

Each Student will hence select and map an informal network of her/ his choice, through the following conditions.

•

DESIGN A WALK: explain graphically a path through which your network could be understood, taking into account a narrative sequence as basic structure.

•

HIGHLIGHT CONDITIONS: select relevant people, spaces or objects that you consider as representative of your network conditions, and that would allow us to relate to the overall system in a particularized manner.

•

POSITION YOURSELF: Based on the evidence you have collected on site -as well as your particular aspirations as a designer- argue for an eventual intervention on your selected network.

*1 A1 MAP No use of photographs allowed (unless modified intentionally)

SPECIFI C ATI ONS_

SITE: New Faisalnagar (Bombay Hotel, Ahmedabad) SUBMISSION: 6.08.2018 - 10:0 0 AM

rol Na

Where do you181 want to go ?

10 RS

180

Delhi Darwaza

Jamalpur

uKal pur

This is Rafiq Bhai. He is a reesident of Shah-E-Alam area and he earns his livelihood through vending at faisal nagar.

The whole street is filled with a vegeatable market thriving from day to night. Here the network of informal markets has been depicted through th emedium of conversation. The main character is Rafiq Bhai, whereras other characters also include- Salim Bhai (vegetable vendor), Babu Bhai (plastic vendor), Jumma Bhai (a friend of Rafiq Bhai) and Haiyaj Bhai (a vendor selling eatery items).

Laa

l da rwa

za

20 RS

First of all in the morning he arrives at the rickshaw stand of Faisal Nagar where many rickshaws are available and the other vendors like him are

How much till Jamalpur ?

preparing to go,as it is cheaper for them if they share the fare.

The site is located near the Chandola lake and Pirana the dump site. Hence due to its proximity to such filthy places the site also faces serious problems of hygiene.

o Skil

15 R

*Mapping of open spaces by Meet Kakadia

This is the spot where Rafiq Bhai sells his potatoes and onions.

LO

S KI

20 R

Key map showing the concentration of vendors in the street

Vending under Jamalpur Bridge

182

o it t ke a t a lam aiy Bh h-E-A Sha

BYE. I am leaving

He then loads his goods in a private rickshaw

HOME He then leaves for work.

Loading his laari to go to the market.

He is a potato and onion vendor so he doesn’t have to worry about storing.

Storing remaining goods in his house .

As soon as the sitr starts appearing the first landmark that comes is a mosque, followed by a governmetn sewerage pump of the area and vast empty plots of land on two sides of the road.

183

185

184

He then leaves for work.

BEHRAMSEWERAGE PURA PUMP WARD

Every vendor here has a fixed spot of their own. As they stand in front of the shops they have to pay a fixed rent to the shopkeeper everyday.

While entering we can see people setting up their laaris and cleaning their surroundings.

h Fres toes Pota

ato Pot

As soon as we enter the site the first landmaerk that appears is a mosque, followed by a government sewerage pump of the area and vast empty grounds on both the sides of the road.

Onion 15 RS KILO

S

20 R

They put pieces of bricks under thei wheel in order to secure the position.

WELCOME to the site

As we enter we can see the colorful umbrellas that the vedors keep to get relief from the heat.

He then starts selling to the women of FaisaL Nagar.

They face a constant problem of getting change for the customers.So they ask their fellow vendors if they have change or not.

WELCOME ot the site

187

186

Are Babu Bhai, how come you are late today? How are you

Vendors keep an umbrella to get relief from the heat.

While entering one can see vendors cleaning their surroundings.

I also had a question..

Where do you go to buy all these items ?

OH. I see

Every vendor on the site has a fixed. He then goes to his spot.

15 rs 10 rs

pot

And how is your business running?

ato

on

i on

Salim Bhai Babu Bhai

Rafiq Bhai

Locations of the characters.

There are not many customers in the morning who want to buy plastic items in the morning.. So I usually come late in the morning...

I am fine thank you .. And I go to the kalupur market once in a week to get these items..

Well then I should get going.. We will catch up someday over tea ok... BYE BYE.

188

OH! The water is about to finish. Let me ask the shop keeper whether he will allow me to fill up my bottle.

Are Haiyaj Bhai ! How are you? Haven’t seen you since long. How is your eatery shop running?

Did you go to the market today?

There he meets Hiayaj Bhai who owns a laari and has rented a shop to run his business. His wife also helps him.

He goes to the kalupur market to get his provisions at alternate days.

189

He then fills his water bottle through the can form the shop.

Today is a very gloomy day

Today the customers gave me less fare

It’s my son’s borthday today

Give me 2 cups

3c

1 masala chai

The business is running fine. What about you? You are lucky that you have to go to the store only once in five days.

The income is also steady now, so we can afford the 3000 RS for rent. You should also come over sometime, the samosas are especially delicious!! All right i must leave now.

Begum must be waiting at the store.

2 cutting

hai c f so

up

He then goes to the tea stall to get some tea for him and the shopkeeper. He does this thrice of four times a day so that he does not have to pay the rent of 50 RS

I am doing fine as well.

OK, then see you later.

BYE

Sorry I got late. I met Rafiq Bhai, so I had a talk with him.

The chai waala is a busy person as he receives customers throughout the day. Mostly the rickshaw wala come over here during their break.

The tea stall is located near the bid dustbin exactly in front of the police chowky.

His wife Anisha also helps him. She prepares the food while hr runs the counter.

Do you know recently I had a meeting with the AMC officers and they had asked me to bring a sample of the water I supply..

190

My water sample passed the test and I now have the authority to supply water.

Well i should leave now. I am HHUUNNGGRRYYY....

191

OH! Great.. So what happened

GREAT!!!!!

He then returns to the shopkeeper, gives him his tea and goes back to vending.

After arriving home he eats his lunch and goes off to sleep....

Nothing I am just sprinkling water on these veggies to keep them fresh.

All the vendors close their laaris and proceed to the mosque for offering namaz.

The men go to the mosque, while the women go to their home during namaz.

Hello ! Jumma bhai, how are you doing ? How’s your cutlery shop going?

Good evening Salim Bhai what are you doing?

Now it’s time to go home...

There he meets his friend Jumma Bhai who is a private water supplire in the area and also owns a cutlery shop.

Evening time: Time to go again.....

Now it’s time for namaz.....

I am doing great!

How about you and I am sure that your vending must be running smoothly...

B. URBAN DESIGN FA C U LT Y O F P L A N N I N G C E 192 PT UNIVERSITY P L AY M E TH O D O LO G I E S STU D I O

193

MOD ULE 1 - BRIEF 2

PROP O SING G AME S CENARIO S_

3. Yet, these should be located in SPACE: which are the different sites players move through?

Where do mechanics take place?

Up to this point, we have gathered and analyzed the sufficient amount of information about the site that can lead to the possibility of synthesing invisible informal networks, along with insights of their political condition.

We have identified what are the components of these networks, what are the temporal conditions that define them, where are these located, the agents/stakeholders interlocked in their processes, and the causes and purposes behind them.

4. Who are the PLAYERS involved?

What is their participation?

What are their particular powers/abilities/weaknesses?

Now, the next step consists on conceptualizing such complex ecologies into a set of mechanisms that can reproduce the overall logics of such networks. In other words, design a game with the theme of each findings.

INS TRU C TIONS_

1. For that, students foremost need to lay out a NARRATIVE: what is the set of events, consequences or happenings that you want to represent?

5. Now, in order to communicate this elements, what would be the best MEDIUM? Why is a map important? Wht do we care about scale?

*William Kentridge

2. These stories need to develop through certain MECHANICS: How are events connected? How do they develop? How is this narrative taken forward in time?

*CITY GAME, Fields of View. A game designed to explore urban form and elicit a group/ individual’s preferences about their city.

DELIVER ABLE S_

SPECIFI CATI ONS_

•

1 Game Board per group (dimensions/medium/conditions to be defined) + Instructions (descriptive pamphlet) + process sheets/boards.

Week 1: Process oriented sessions, how do you translate data into playfull readings?

Week 2: Product oriented sessions, how do you make it?

194

195

196

*Individual Board game by Prabhanjan Prabhu

197

B. URBAN DESIGN FA C U LT Y O F P L A N N I N G C E 198 PT UNIVERSITY P L AY M E TH O D O LO G I E S STU D I O

199

MOD ULE 2 - BRIEF 1

C O - OPER ATIVE REPRESENTATIONS [INTENTIONAL AS SEMBL AGES]

opportunities that emerge from the overlapping of such networks.

These diagrams are envisioned as mind maps that can help you structure and justify your collaboration, while demonstrating to others the pertinence of this grouping.

Given that the development of each board game will focus on specific circumstances (that being, a stakeholder, community, etc.) the next step will be assembling all conditions into a unique game that takes into account a wider range of parameters. In order to take this forward, the groups are expected to negotiate amongst each other towards an overall structure that conciliates the previous disparity of ideas, into a general protocol of operations that resembles the actual complexities of the site.

2. Group Game boards: This should incorporate the networks of all the members in a comprehensive and coherent manner.

Additionally, the groups games should not only represent present scenarios (dynamics, stakeholders,spaces and so on) but incorporate mechanisms of design that capitalize upon opportunities and address issues from an urban design perspective.

In this particular instance, collaboration will be essential. That will assure both the inclusion of all agents, as well as the feasibility of future propositions: this game will be consolidated as an elaborate tool of design, capable of acknowledging larger and more intricate social settings from which to withdraw subsequent iterations.

*Helsinki city employees play the “Participation Game” to learn about citizen engagement.

(Maarit Hohteri / City of Helsinki)

However, this is also a tool of communication. A medium to interact with the community in order to exchange information of site, as well as including them into the actual process of design. Hence, the accessibility and engagement strategies of the game have to be modulated accordingly; it will be addressing a significantly wide and diverse public.

INS TRU C TIONS_

In order to do this, the following exercises will be taken forward: 1. Grouping Diagrams: These need to justify the assemblage of individual games based on relevant inter-relations and a wider understanding of the networks.

The diagrams need to visualize in a clear manner the connections, conflicts and

3. Design Ideas: For the scale, purpose and position from which these have to be set please refer to the studio syllabus.

DELIVER ABLE S

• One grouping diagram per group in A1 format and free technique.

• One Game Board per group (dimensions/medium/conditions to be defined) + Instructions (descriptive pamphlet) + process sheets/boards.

• 20 iterations of design ideas in A4 format and free technique.

200

201

*Samadhan

by Anushka Priyedarshi, Vishesh Mahnot, Riya Sigh, Vidisha Sahay and Abhishek Mummithi

202

203

204

205

206

207

208

209

210

211

*Samadhan Photograph by Vidisha Sahay

212

213

*Samadhan Photograph by Vidisha Sahay

214

215

*Agnipath

by Pachi Shah, Vidhi Parmar, Shaurya Anand, Isha Jain and Ritesh

216

217

218

219

*Agnipath Photgraph by Sebastian Trujillo

220

221

222

223

*Agnipath Photgraph by Kruti Shah

B. URBAN DESIGN FA C U LT Y O F P L A N N I N G C E 224 PT UNIVERSITY P L AY M E TH O D O LO G I E S STU D I O

225

MOD ULE 3 - BRIEF 1

EMERG ING P O S SIBILITIES_

THE INTERVENTION_

The game boards developed so far have been set as a comprehensive articulation of the different components of Bombay Hotel (both social and infrastructural) and hence serve as databanks of urban dynamics. In that manner, these have helped to articulate appropriate questions that can lead onto emerging posibilities of design interventions. Henceforth, such possibilities need to be worked from the following conditions:

in the urban realm, in such a way that it can foster social plurality and infrastructural flexibility.

+ IS GROUNDED AND FEASIBLE:

not an ideal proposal: work from what is available to you (in terms of time, capital, materials, labour, normativity and so on) and harness it cleverly. Work with what you know possible, not from expectations and assumptions.

+ IS INTRINSICALLY FRUGAL:

not accounting for unattainable resources, technologies or expertise to address the chosen challenges. Rather, utilize pre-existing elements available and capitalize on them as assets by giving them unexpected new values.

+ IS AN URBAN DEVICE: not a building or an infrastructural masterplan, but rather a (small-sized) series of objects that can be adapted to the street conditions of New Faisailnagar. If YOU cannot construct it, SCALE IT DOWN!

+ IS POLITICALLY AWARE:

not a formal or discursive delight. The aim is to responsibly address pressing ENVIRONMENTAL, INFRASTRUCTURAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES in a sensible manner, while contributing to the livelihood of people as well as the established body of knowledge of the

+ IS DESCENTRALIZED: not dependant on the AMC or larger institutional conditions of support and maintenance, but rather driven by the community and by their own abilities for self-organization and management.

profession.

+ IS PLAYFUL: not a strict bureaucratic concession. Both in the process and the outcome,it should be risky and daring, while highly engaging and accessible.

Playfulness is an index of innovation: doing something unanticipated, outside conventions and defying expectations. That is good design.

+ IS A TEMPORARY OR MOBILE STRUCTURE: not a one-time solution but

*Santiago Cirugeda. Kuva S.C. Urban Prescriptions.

a response that can be transformed, reaccommodated, transported and eventually disassembled and reused if necessary.

Although it is meant to address long-term issues, its material conditions cannot be perennial.

*Wolf Erlbruch. Gutenberg Galaxie Buchgestaltung Collagen.

S TAG E S_

+ IS A SCALABLE RESPONSE:

not a unique object. That being, a flexible system of objects that can subsequently address specific issues in different scales: New Faisalnagar, Bombay Hotel, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India...

2. INTERMEDIATE COLLAGES Given similarity in ideas, students will be grouped in pairs. Hence, ideas need to be brought together. *Outcome: A4 drawings (number and technique to be defined)

+ IS SYSTEMIC: not a localized and immediate response to one specific problem, but rather an insertion within larger dynamics, addressing multiple needs simultaneously. It taps into pre-existing social behaviours and executes positive changes as a domino-effect.

THIS IS AN URBAN INTERVENTION! *Almudena Cano Piñeiro. Urban strategies to regenerate Indian public space -a case study of pols in Ahmedabad.

+ IS POLY-FUNCTIONAL: does not serve only one purpose or provide one unique service. On the other hand, it has to be open to multiple appropriations, uses and interests

1. INSTRODUCTORY ITERATIONS Design ideas directly withdrawn from the game board interactions *Outcome: 20 A4 drawings in gateway sheets (free technique)

*Gordon Matta-Clark. Collage.

3. PRIMARY PROPOSAL First conformed projection of intervention. *Outcome: 3 A3 drawings (in given format) + MODEL

226

227

*Introductory Iterations of design

by Prachi Shah

228

229

*Introductory Iterations of design

by Anjali Rathod

230

231

*Introductory Iterations of design

by Isha Jain

232

233

234

235

236

237

*Amrutam Photograph by Prachi Shah and Anushka Priyedarshi

238

239

240

241

242

243

244

245

246

247

248

249

250

251

*Monsoon semester Exhibition.

Photograph by Sebastian Trujillo

252

253

*Monsoon semester Exhibition.

Photograph by Sebastian Trujillo

254 S PRIN G S EMES TE R

Prabhu prabhanjan Meet Kakadiya Shourya Dubey Atal Chadha Sparsh Paltan Vanshika Shah Anubha Tholia Drashti Thakkar Madhav Joshi Hetvee Panchal Aditi Mishra Praswed Patel Khevana Makhanwahla

M ONS O ON S EMES TER

Anushka Priyedarshi Prachi Shah Vishesh Mahnot Anjali Rathod Shaurya Anand Vidisha Sahay Harshita Hemnani Isha Jain Siddhraj Desai Vidhi Parmar Ritesh Jasveer Singh Riya singh Abhishek Mummithi

256