Embedded Files
There are some places in cities that one appreciates and some that elicit intense sensations of 'disgust,' among others. When the reason for disgust was questioned and engaged with the forces on site, it was discovered that it was a reflection of an individual's personal beliefs, knowledge, and circumstances..
With the challenge of unlearning these conventional methods of reading, interpreting, and so engaging with the city, the participants actively spent time within their disgusting environments, experiencing them through their bodily selves and senses. After sensing the site through the energies and rhythms that exist inside it, one must consider how to interact with it. Engagement, here, is consciously defined as distinct from mere reaction or intervention, representing a meaningful interaction with the city's rhythms and forces while refraining from the urge to identify and resolve perceived problems.
The site as a catalogue of changing landscapes
Laxminarayan Society, Eksar, Borivali.
The site is a society which is 600mm below the road level on one side and 1200mm lower on the other, resulting in water logging in the building. Walking in the water filled with all the garbage that spills around in the day, it felt dirty to walk in that water.
Forces on site
Having a deeper understanding of the site and getting to know the energies, I realised that the whole society does not have any hard paving; everything is softscape—grass, soil, trees. The soil supports the growth of many plants; water seeps into the ground, maybe giving rise to a transforming forest.
"Cyclical rhythms last for a period and restart: dawn, always new and often superb, inaugurates the return of the everyday." - Rhythmanalysis, Henri Lefebvre .
On the site in Eksar, the ground is seen as a catalogue of changing landscapes.
The rhythms observed here are in the different trees, the groundcover, etc. that keep changing with the change in seasons. The groundcover, which changes into water during the monsoons, and the pedestrians hopping from puddle to puddle, making their way to the building. The repetition that allows a constant but yet ever-changing landscape.
The walk through the everyday trail
The walk through the everyday trail
A forest where people make their own paths to walk through it and a path worn by footsteps of these people is formed. Visitors going through the forest's paths are not just observers, but active participants in a story constructed by the interconnected components of these rhythms. In a place, where the wilderness grows everywhere and the people do not care to communicate with one another, the sole common point for everyone is the watchman. He holds everyone together with the different transactions he has with people. In such a dense space people only know their everyday route. If not followed, you will be lost in the dense forest, only the one who stays in the forest knows all the ways and can get through anywhere.
Engagement on site
The site as a forest. In addition to the existing rhythms of the wilderness, I try to make it more dense by adding different trees and grasses where people make their own paths to walk through it and a path worn by footsteps of these people is formed. The people do not care to communicate with one another, the sole common point for everyone is the watchman who holds everyone together with the different transactions he has with people. Except for the one who lives in the forest others will be be lost if they do not follow their everyday path.
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