Timepass Gateway

At the beginning of this module, I was asked to explore an urban street known as Eaksar Road. The objective was to identify the various interactions of shops, public spaces, the interaction of people, et cetera at various junctions on the street. After observing various sites along the whole street, I concluded on one site.

My site included a small steel Works shop, pan Wala, and entrance to the rooms present at the back of the shops, storage, space of the steel workshop, and a clothes drying space of the residents living in the rooms.

I found this site to be interesting as there was a various interactions and overlaps of various practises and spaces that are being used as well as with the dimension of of the entrance to the rooms.

The main elements that I identified in my site to intervene are : a small Katta next to the pan shop, and semi outdoor workspace of the workshop, the entrance to the room is present behind and the storage of the steel workshop.

I also thought about how the passour bys interact with the spaces present on my site.

After thinking about which type of petted infrastructure, I want to create on the site, I reached to an idea of creating something known as a time pass Gateway.

Here the aim was to create a gateway which is an entrance to the rooms, which gets transformed into the shade of the steel Works shop, a seating space near the pan shop, space for storage, a space for drying clothes and a dimension of creating a space for leisure.

In order to melt my gateway into various objects and spaces. I was introduced to the world of syntax.

Syntax is a phenomena in which a particular object or a space has multiple uses which could be for a similar purpose or for different purposes. It is a method with which a space or an object can be multipurpose.

Initially all of my designs were being very highly extravagant. These designs were not working with the site conditions. Then I was introduced to a concept known as Petite Infrastructure.

Petit infrastructure are heavily used in urban streets, where there is a lack of space, but the space has to be used by multiple people at different intervals of time and for different purposes or practises.

The infrastructure has to be of a small scale in order to work with the con text of the site.

After going through many iterations, I finally approached to a design concept in which the whole gateway is transforming into various spaces and objects in the form of steps. The gateway gets divided into two wings. In the  first wing there are the presence of various galleries at particular intervals which gives a sense of pause. Then these galleries get transformed into the shed for the workshop, and then gets transformed into steps for sitting around a tree besides the pan shop. The second wing of the gateway gets transformed into a two story space in which the lower space is used for storage by the workshop and upper space is used as a space of leisure and for interaction of the people as well as with the facility of drying clothes.

In conclusion, this module has introduced the whole world of syntax to me along with looking at structures in urban spaces at a very very micro scale. This module has given me a set of tools and information with which I can think about spaces in the terms of syntax, making it multi-purpose and space efficient by looking at the smallest detail through the lens of petit infrastructure.

This module has completely changed my perspective at looking spaces and architectural structure. It has given me a new lens of syntax and Pettit infrastructures with the help of which it opens up new possibilities of designing, architectural structures, more efficient in the terms of usability and space usage.