The prototype aims to make heat vulnerability visible by creating a shared third space for residents of resettlement colonies, designed for pause, play, and recovery under extreme thermal stress.

Aaram Mane treats cooling as a commons. It offers a place to sit, gather, garden, and recover from heat, especially for women, children, and daily wage workers whose homes and streets provide little relief from rising temperatures. The prototype frames rest itself as essential urban infrastructure in a warming city.

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The prototype emerged through a futures process that worked with urban heat signals, unpacked their direct and indirect consequences, and used world-building to explore how these shifts could reorganise everyday life, access, and survival in the city.

Aaram Mane responds to emerging urban heat signals that point toward a future of vertical heat traps and disappearing commons. In resettlement towers such as those in Ejipura, residents already report indoor temperatures at night that are several degrees hotter than the air outside. Poor ventilation, dense materials, and tightly packed units transform formal housing into enclosed heat islands.

As land prices rise and cities build upward, access to ground level shade, breeze, and informal gathering space continues to erode. The transition from informal settlements to planned high rise housing has produced a new form of vulnerability: being thermally trapped indoors with no nearby place to cool down. For many families, domestic spaces are too small for rest or social life, while outdoor areas offer little respite from the sun.

The prototype addresses hyper urbanisation, the privatisation of public space, and increasing thermal stress on low income and migrant communities. It anticipates a future where cooling becomes a contested urban resource, and where the absence of shared cooling commons deepens existing inequalities.

Aaram Mane is designed as a low footprint, plug and play pavilion that can be assembled within constrained neighbourhoods. It draws from the visual language of a moving circus, using vibrant fabrics and layered forms.

Its lightweight framework supports multiple vertical levels, allowing different activities to coexist within a small footprint. Seating, play areas, and quiet rest zones are distributed across these layers to accommodate varied uses throughout the day.

Cooling is achieved through passive and low energy systems. Water channels circulate beneath the flooring and along structural elements to reduce ambient temperature, while sustainable materials provide thermal buffering between the inside and outside. Foldable rooftop solar panels power lighting and fans, creating a self sustaining micro climate that remains functional during peak heat hours.

The structure is intended to be co created with local communities, both in construction and governance. Decisions around access, gender use, programming, and maintenance are left open for communities to define, recognising that power dynamics and local norms will shape how the space is held. The prototype also gestures toward multispecies care, with possibilities for vertical gardening, creepers, and habitat elements integrated into the design.

Aaram Mane functions as a cooling stop for pedestrians, a play space for children, and a place of rest for residents navigating heat stressed neighbourhoods. By being visibly joyful and adaptable rather than rigid or permanent, it invites everyday use while asserting that rest, shade, and cooling belong in the heart of urban life.

From the Creators

"What surprised us is how the visual language of the 'circus' immediately changed the energy of the prototype and it shifted the conversation from 'survival' to 'invitation.' During the process, our understanding shifted from seeing cooling as a technical HVAC problem to seeing it as a spatial justice problem; cooling cannot exist without a 'commons' to host it. If we were to design a second iteration, we would focus more on the 'water-loop' system, perhaps integrating rainwater harvesting to make the cooling mechanism entirely self-sufficient even during water-scarce summers."