Inhabiting the Forest

Question :

The Kalai fishing village near the bank of the Kalai river experiences increasing intensities of floods every year during monsoons which results in a pause in fishing activities throughout the season and huge loss of property. This is largely due to extensive solidifying and extension of the coastline resulting in the depletion of mangrove patches and wetlands around the coast. The community has responded to the growing floods by creating an even harder edge as a natural defense around the coast thus creating a strict line of separation in the landscape between the ground of habitation and water. The current hardened wall has also not been able to resist the water seeping through the edge. Thus it raises the question of how can one rethink the idea of the line such that the affordances on either side coexist? How can one think of responding to the coast as a continuum through variations of thickness, gradations, and smudges of the line?  Are there other possible natures and grounds of habitation? How can the intervention respond to the future shifts in the village?

Site :  Kalai, Gujarat 

Argumentative Drawings :

Individual argumentative 1

Individual argumentative 2

Site analysis:

Lenses to see the site :

How different people would inhabit the space:

Design plan:

Design sections:

Module :

A singular module of 2.5 x 4 could take form of a temporary inhabitations, habitable for a family of 3-4 in monsoon and pavilions in other seasons just by adjusting the foldable hinge walls.

Intervention in Summers /Winters :

Intervention in monsoons :