Chaitanya Gaikwa

Background

This course introduces participants to the ways of reading and deploying elements of architecture towards synthesising functionality with meaning in the act of producing built form. The varied natures of practicing space by people inscribes spatio-material forms into new configurations that enable a renewed politics of living for emerging contexts. Here functions and meanings of stable, conventional architectural elements are revisited, their properties and arrangements are challenged and the resultant folding of space suggests new ways of experience. Students will learn to develop a language of architecture by setting the “rules” of putting together space and form – which in essence, is the grammar of space, in other words, syntax or code which disposes the form in its material, behavioural and political dimensions.

Moving beyond the optimizations of the plan layout that has been the primary fixation of analytical apparatus of Bill Hillier’s space syntax theory, this course will delve into architectural language that may emerge in the elementary orchestration of volumetric configurations, material tectonics and behavioural cultural forms within a small setting. Thereby, the studio asks: How do forms come together and what meanings do they produce within a given context? What kind of spaces may be invented through the considered collusion of available space-forms and material-experiences? From the arrangement of forms to the manipulation of light and materials, students will develop a nuanced perspective on spatial composition and its impact on human experience.

Roadside Shrines

Contrary to the institutionalised form of large temples, everyday religiosities across most urban centres of India unfolds around the seemingly temporally set up roadside shrines. Often varying in their shape scales and sizes, closely responding to the physical, social, cultural and political context, roadside shrines present diverse dispositions and unique manifestations within dense cities. They are put together through provisional materials and continue to settle incrementally over time. Roadside shrines fall in the everyday routes, are easily visible and mostly adjacent to a public roadway. Often, they are triggers, or safe havens for a variety of enterprises and allied functions that support the economy of a place. Roadside shrines may not always be benign and are often politically embedded. Here, the rituals of the city combine with those of the spiritual producing spatial hybridities. What rituals of the city and community come together in the bringing together of the roadside shrine? How do contesting interests, spatial constraints and urban pressures shape the form of roadside shrine? Despite these, if the roadside shrine remains a publicly accessible resource on the road, what diagrams does it take? How can these diagrams be strengthened to formulate spatial syntax that not only speaks to the interests of a community, but grows incrementally into an urban culture.

Objectives

To familiarize with elements of architecture
To familiarize and explore the principles of Spatial and Formal Composition and Organization: Proportions, Grids and Scale (essentials of syntax and grammar)
To develop capacities in analyzing spatial hierarchies and sequences
To familiarize and explore materiality and tactility
To develop understanding in context and site integration
To develop an understanding of anthropometrics and ergonomics.
To develop capacity in scoping and program of architectural project.

Methodology

Students shall identify a roadside shrine from their vicinity that they (either / or not) traverse in their everyday traversals. We adopt the following framework to understand what qualifies a roadside shrine:

“It is in the study of shrines in Mauritius by Colwell-Chanthaphonh and de Salle-Essoo’s that we find the first elaborate characterization of “wayside shrines.” They define “shrine” as “a receptacle, shelter, or building made hallowed by prayer and the placement of offerings, which becomes a place of religious veneration and pilgrimage” (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and de Salle-Essoo, 2014:255) and propose three criteria for a shrine to be a “wayside” one: it must be (1) immediately adjacent to, (2) visible from, and (3) publicly accessible to a public roadway. Adjusting this definition to better suit the South Asian context, we propose to demarcate a “wayside shrine” as a site that houses a worshipped object that is immediately adjacent to a public path, visible from it and accessible to any passerby.” The emplacement, visibility and accessibility are thus three essential criteria that distinguish wayside shrines from “temple shrines” and “domestic shrines.” “*

*Borayin Larios and Raphaël Voix, “Introduction. Wayside Shrines in India: An Everyday Defiant Religiosity”, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal [Online], 18 | 2018, Online since 20 July 2018, connection on 03 May 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/4546; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.4546

The roadside shrine must ideally demonstrate parasitic/symbiotic programmes that thrive on it, or are supported by its infrastructure. Students must observe three key aspects in documenting the field:

Context and Practice: What are the specific adjacencies of the shrine, how does it take form within its physical context? What programmes happen around it, how is the space used?
Transacting bodies: Who is using the space and how? How many people use the space and at what times? How does gender, age and orientation play a role in the imagination of space?
Materials: What materials are deployed to make the environment possible? How do they come together and what are the potentials and problems with such an assembly?