Cities are places where phenomena mirror and reflect. Each formal statement has its unformed free counter-part. Each feeds the other. The energy of cities wells up from the roots embedded in everyday life, where complex interactions create heady forms of economic activity, social patterns and cultural expressions. This is like the ceaseless productivity and exchange happening below the surface in a forest. Everything is interconnected, seemingly chaotic and jumbled up, but it is really a higher order that is constantly and dynamically creative. Above ground the tree produces leaves and flowers and fruits. This is the comparatively well-organised, somewhat pale reflection of what is happening below, unseen. This is life showing itself at its best, neat, clear and unambiguous.
Neither can exist without the other.
Alter Ego!
The unseen creative energetic space of life.
The ecology of the river Yamuna has been deeply entwined with the history of the city that we now know as New Delhi. Seven successive settlements have conjoined with the river, responding to her seasonal cycles and shifting course to emerge as a living cultural geography. The settlements that were built here recognised the eternal law that ‘man follows the paths of water’. Every pagdandi* in the field, city street, or trade route was tied to the indelible print of a water course. This human inhabitation was intrinsically linked to the hydraulic logic of the river. Daily lives of people were intimately tied to the river for water, agriculture, security and recreation. Immortalised as the Goddess, the river lived in the public imagination “through prose and poetry in song and lore”.
About a century ago the city of New Delhi was envisaged as an Imperial Capital. This intention demanded the use of a more formal, geometric, abstract, and symbolic logic that expressed the power and prestige of the Imperial order. With the independent nation coming into existence, it became the capital of the Indian republic. Retaining the layout of the imperial capital, the new democratic independent nation-state gave new meanings to the urban and architectural artefacts, associating them with the pride of nationhood, the spaces of democratic expression, and the institutions that the nation promoted.
In the last five decades, this urban cultural geography has been challenged and modified by the effects of infrastructural projects on the river and even more so by the exponential growth of the city that has engulfed the river and reduced it to little more than a drain of highly toxic discharge. However, in the COVID lockdown, the Yamuna has regained some of its sacred beauty. The pollution has vanished, the water sparkles, birds have returned and some of its ancient ecological power is visible again giving hope that with a little care we may be able to acknowledge her magnificence once more. In our acknowledgement we cannot be merely symbolic or recreational, the environment is real, physical and is inevitably ingrained into the very daily processes of our urban lives. These processes are often unrecognised, spontaneous, complexly layered, seemingly messy, and yet vital. They have the ability to enmesh human activity with natural systems in gentle yet resilient ways. The Capital Complex of New Delhi is a symbol of the nation, recognised by citizens across the land as the formal centre of the nation, connected with the drama of history in the post-independence period.
Yet the nation is made by the diversity and vitality of peoples, cultural forms, languages and customs that India is blessed with. This subcontinental geography is made up of diverse geologies and is habitat to all kinds of life-forms, including the human species. Thus, processes of continuous interaction have inhabited this space and given it its specific character. Can all these rich processes have a presence and find expression here? Thus, the location of the project must consist of all these, yet the visible markers are - the river, trees, flora and fauna, landforms and water flows both above and below ground. Would it be possible that this place becomes a site of kinship, of mutuality, of gentle consideration for the whole? Will the practices adopted here allow greater responsiveness to the idea of human participation in life processes rather than mastery, control over both nature and human propensities? Can the practices and therefore the architecture of such a place be based on the richness of potentialities rather than achieving neatness and uni-dimensional clarity? Can it become a place of peaceful receptivity and open-ended intent in contrast to places that emphasize control and elimination of the unexpected often based on exclusion and violence? Perhaps the very idea of constructing a dialectic between human and nature is problematic? Perhaps the ‘natural world’ as we make it today is in every way as constructed, regulated, measured, and mediated inevitably by human responses… Can we explore new paradigms for constructing/ reconstructing the world that allow for greater kinship across all forms of human, non-human and other-than-human ways of coinhabiting what is now widely acknowledged to be a dying planet? In the context of the recent redevelopments of the Central Vista Project which continues to consider development through neatness, exclusion and violence, this Online Studio invites you to re-imagine an architectural extension of this political centre to encompass a vision that once again situates a larger geography into the public imagination of the city.
*Pagdandi, n., (hindi): Walking trail
We hope to generate an inquiry and an architectural/urban expression of the “Open City”, the participative and inclusive city, the life-affirming city. In doing this we propose to create an alternative narrative, a creative challenge to the notions of 'city' that remain purely organisational, narrowly symbolic, exclusionary and controlling.
The credo of the studio is:
“Life is diverse and ever-changing,
and architecture and urban form
that affirms rather than controls life
is what we seek”.
Equally the method of the studio will be exploratory and playful, participative rather than individualistic, continually self-reflexive and therefore creative and unpredictable. The pace of work and discussion will be intensive.
The Studio is open to an unlimited number of students to audit. However, only a limited number of participants will be accepted.
Instructors and teaching associates will interact with teams individually and collectively during designated hours. The studio will be infused with formal lectures by eminent guest speakers from time to time alongside informal chats during late evenings or after studio sessions. Weekly presentations shall be made by participants that will also be put up on the website and made public. Requirements for a final presentation at the end of the 4-week studio will be posted and the 5th week shall be reserved for production towards the final presentation. Individual contributions within teams shall be observed and tracked throughout the duration of the studio and certificates of participation along with merit certificates will be awarded to deserving participants.
Participants shall be expected to learn and adapt to emerging methods of learning and working online using platforms such as Slack®, Zoom®, and Autodesk BIM 360®. These platforms along with learning resources shall be made available to the participants.
