PORTFOLIO SELECTED WORK 2015-2018
CONTENT
01
AN ALTERNATIVE TO LAND RECLAIMATION
02
LALLUBHAI COMPOUND, MANKHURD What Is A Home? : Installation What Is A Home? : Design
03
HIGH RISE
04
PUBLIC LIBRARY, PEDDER ROAD
05
THE URBAN WATER EDGE, POISAR RIVER
06
COMPETITION : WOOD IS GOOD
01 AN ALTERNATIVE TO LAND RECLAIMATION Kolkata has seen a high amount of development in the recent years, and one such site was the area of our study, the Mudyalli nature park and its surrounding area. Today the city is dotted with smaller water bodies and remenants of wetlands and esturaies which once formed a very strong ecological system, that had innumerable benefits to the city . Conservation of a part of one such system is the Mudyalli Nature park, which till date by its functioning demonstrates the merits of the natural wetland systems, for various purposes of water purification, aquaculture, and recreation as well. The intent hence was to then imagine if this park which was currently surviving at the mercy of the industries around, would have to expand and hence develop, then what form of architecture could it take. An architecture that could just like the park, demonstrate on a smaller scale the potentials of it as a sustainable way of development over wetlands, if at all needed.
1800
2018
Mudyalli Park, Kolkata
Mudyalli Nature park is an oasis in the harsh urban landscape of the city. While it is a cluster of fishing ponds early in the morning, its a recreational park by the day, this dual life of the park makes it an extremely important asset for the city, If not for the fish production, not for the recreational space, but for what it stores within is even more important, its a living archive of the systems of
the wetlands,
those wetlands which once naturally prevailed in this part of kolkata, which had innumerable benefits for the city
and its various systems.
Projection
Through the help of schematic conjectured sections based on the oral interviews of locals in and around the site, I tried to understand how the topographically the network that existed between each water body and hence there was a larger system that it belonged to. but now all that is left are theses isolated small ponds at few places. the only exception being the mudyalli park, which atleast in itself as a cluster, still maintains a network of water flow and hence
a
larger
ecological
system.
But what is very evident is the extreme pressure onto the park from the neighbouring industries and port land., for whom the land’s estate value is of utmost importance. So if nothing gets done to the park or outside the city’s only living oasis will also disappear amidst the , container yards and industries of the port. ,
Alternative
Housing needs, infrastructural develoment,
industrial
expansion, all of these are needs of every place, that is in the process of development, be it even the ecologically sensitive
areas-
like
the
wetlands in this case. Its for places like these that its highly important that we think a little different then as we think of, while constructing on an acquired piece of land.. Land reclaimation here is the least viable and productive option. Hence, what could rather work, would be the idea of building over and above them, but very strategically, keeping in consideration 1. the oxygen demand and 2. the sunlight requirement of the water in wetlands. Thisv
is
through
hence,
achievable
thinking
of
the
structure almost as a lattice of varying densities, touching the ground at very few strategic points, and then build surfaces over this stable web.
Using Grasshopper, the columns and latticd was designed in conjunction with ladybug, to keep in check the light conditions below
Branched Columns, supporting the lattice above
The lattice was then programmatically designed for efficient circulation and to accomodate the activities inside and outside.
The design then hence is a steel lattice, beginning at a level of +9m GL supported by tree-likebranching columns, and then growing upwards from there, with surfaces designed based on programme needs and the porosity requirement of the structure as a whole. The building is also imagined as a machine that produces rather then just being a shelter, produces its own food , energy and stores its own water.
02
Lallubhai Compound, Mankhurd.
Lallubhai compund is a resettlement colony for project affected people from different parts of mumbai, located in the eastern suburbs of mumbai, designed as isolated developments within a context completely alien to the resettled people and the people completely alien to the context. This disconnect leads to various kinds of issues in the process of settling and creating of a home. Several of the inadequacies right from the planning of it to the builtform creates many different kind of adjustments, adjustments done by the people themselves, and its within these engagements and negotiation that i think we can find a very different meaning of home
The process of settling and making of homes are complex processes with deep phenomenological resonances in the spaces that people create. We therefore went back to asking the ontological question.
WHAT IS A HOME? With this question we began thinking of these sites of displacement (Lallubhai Compund) through the idea of a memory box. To be able to understand what is it that acts as a catalyst to this settling of a new home in a place as alien as this. what is it that they carry with them to these new sites of rehabilitation, to be able to negotiaite and create their home
Hence the memory box became the patterns of activities, the many habits and daily rituals, that they brought with them, it’s these patterns of activities rooted in their older place of stay, that they are able to find several of these sites of release, similar to the ones they had in their self built organically grown older settlements, atleast in terms of the nature of it.
kochi Biennale : Memory box by Devesh, Chinmay, Saniya
OF ENGAGEMENT AND PERMEABILITIES Taking the memory box as an entry point to the site, we started a much deeper and micro study of the life within these buildings. One very soon realizes that even within these harsh and highly insensitive builtform, there has begun a life of its own. These habits, and daily rituals of their previous home have come with them and, its the clash between these and the insufficient new builtform that leads to some really interesting people initiated programmatic alteration to the building from within and outside that starts injecting these dead blocks with new life. The study then was, to look analytically into these new activities and their nature, what do they do to the space and how much or if at all the current space is helping them in any way
MACRO SURGERIES micro insertions Large
upgradation
startegies
are
pro-
posed to first of all get the basics of light & ventilation and open spaces, availabe to everyone, equally.
Micro
insertions
are
made in the formed common spaces, to increase the transactional capacities of these spaces so that they could create the opportunities for the people to engage into activities, that they want to
HIGH RISE
FILMS ASSOCIATON To understand the designing of a tall structure , and the various aspects involved in the designing of the same. Intent was to achieve maximum efficiency in handling and distributing structural, circulation and energy load, all throughout the building, while achieving the grand volumes that the film theatres and workshops required.
Using Grasshopper along with Kangaroo the idea of minimal surfaces was used to model Catenoids as our basic unit which alowed us to achieve a shell that can provide the kind of clear volumes that we need without compromising on its structural stability
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2
3
4
5
03
PUBLIC LIBRARY
To design a public library, with a clear brief of requirements and programme - the intent being to understand the complete process from the conceptualisation of an idea to its final details and to GFC Drawings.
structure as a series of stacked plate overlapping on one edge which becomes the central structural & circulationspine
The ground space of the public institution was thought of as an open to all space that steps down from the road to the site, to the rocks, to the sea. and also act as an extension to the neighbouring bandra fort park..
To then design the builtform above through the mapping of the
this understanding of the flow
movement of its various actors and goods involved in its functioning.
of
goods
thought
and
people
through
is
then
various
lev-
els and the first level of programme
distribution
is
done.
04 THE URBAN WATER EDGE POISAR RIVER
“Nalla� is all that its known as today, but what it was, was something much more, it made an important part of people’s life, settled all across its stretch. Today the disregard for this urban water body, has made it a stinking spot on the proposed clean city image. The river edge has historically seen many social changes where most of the people the government didnt think about, made them their homes.. These river banks usually loose and swampy land, highly vulnerable to flooding, become the only place left for them in the city that thrived on them but didnt want to acknowledge their presence. But the city is an ever growing organism, that has no fixed walls. So the river soon became a profitable site to develop for various investor, with various vision, none of which had the river as a part of it, the approach was always to shut it off, like a drain, try to keep it under control, or simply make it the backyard for garbage.
Poisar River, Hanuman Nagar.
The intent was hence to rethink the relation of the urban dweller and the river that cuts right through the city. Is it really inevitable for a develoing city to loose its natural resources? Is a river really irrelevant in an urban context? can there be no public relatations thought and established for the maintaineance of a river in the very planning and development of the city?
Poisar river study.
Group: Devesh, Ankita, Swaraj, Eshan, Nirmohi To study the entire stretch of the river right from the mountains of Sanjay Gandhi National Park above kranti nagar to the Malad creek, we split the river into smaller swatches that accomodated intensities of various kind. One of such swatch was the Hanuman Nagar stretch, that started with the Sunni Masjid to Mahindra at the downstream end. Very close to either side of the river bank extends the Hanuman nagar settlement. Dense in its fabric, its a settlement initially propogated by (1) the kumbh family who settled as farmers and the other (2.)was the migrant influx resulting from, Mahindra setting up its factory in the vicinity. With the city growing all around, the settlement grew in its confined boundaries of the flood plains, and hence eventually right uptill the river edge. With further influx over the years and shift from agriculture, the connection over generations degraded, to people today not recognizing it as a river anymore but a drain, the only infrastructure to get the waste out of their houses.
Rethinking Slum-Rehabilitation The project took the case of the current slum rehabilitation scheme initiated in the region, and began with thinking that if planned intervention are being made in such close proximity to a natural water body, what kind of a planning would you do to make sure 1.the rejuvenation of the river back to its older form. 2. the revival of the lost connection/relation beteen the people and the river.
The idea was hence to think of these edges as layers, facilitator of daily transition. len, to intiate the system of overflow ponds at different points along the stretch, preventing floods by buying time for the water to move out. This seasonal river, that today has become a perennial drain due to the daily waste let into it, can also continue to remain a perennial source of clean water by a simple introduction of a green belt, an ecosystem similar to the wetlands of Kolkata, that delivers clean water into the pond. Sitting above and after this is the layer of ammenities and religious spaces, that serves one core function i.e. of fusing the river and the people’s lfestyle at different explicit & implicit levels. The community hall, temples, recreational space, public toilets, and everything else that attracts people in their non-working hours, are all rethought, as connectors.
04 FoAID : Wood is Good Competition To design a multifunctional piece of furniture froma given type and quantity of wood- Western Hemlock We selected our target audience as the floating population of the city, people who are always on a move, for work and live in spaces crunched to bare minimum. So the question was, how do you design a furniture that can perform all the basic things for a person, and still be able to easily be folded up into nothing more then a suitcase.