Aim to influence positive change in favour of communities and eventually help empower them to become an agent of change.
Contemporary Perspective of Learning Around Temporal Transformations.
July 2019
Curating the City: Reimagining Urbanism
CONTEXT
Bidar Region, Karnataka.
COLLABORATORS
Deccan Living Labs, Team YUVAA and UNESCO Chair.
DURATION
1 month
TEAM
Malini. (Civil Engineer, Public Space Designer)
Komudi M. (Architect, Heritage and Conservation Designer)
David V. (Architect, Urban Planner & Designer)
Manan G (Civil Engineer, Urban Planner & Designer)
KEYWORDS
Contemporary perspectives, learning, urban global south, water cultures, karez system.
The project critiqued on the role of society and culture in the shaping of settlements to build an understanding of the complex interrelations between the built environment, urbanity and society. It also investigated the role critical urban theories play in the visioning, design and evaluation of human settlements.
The team worked towards developing a research framework of contemporary perspectives, with 4 different focus area of temporal transformation. Each pathway portrays possibility of a contemporary shift in perspective from on-ground engagement, interpreting the core intent of Urban Global South, and laying paths for a paradigm shift.
The intent of the individual pathway was to connect people and places by opening a space for thinking, learning, knowledge and action. We need to acknowledge that the system in the Urban Global South is very diverse and particular to the context. Hence the project sets a premise to create learning from a space, which can be a collective process.
The project made an attempt to provide a contemporary learning perspective around temporal transformations in water culture and its link to the natural system. Water has been one of the major interaction points with nature, as evident from human civilizations across the globe. These interactions with nature, especially in drier around water, has been informed of harnessing, transporting, usage and management. To further elaborate, Karez system in the context of Bidar city has been realized as an empirical case to develop a learning system.
The larger framework opens up space to understand the context-based upon real-life data about trends, practices and conflict. The project will make an active attempt to look beyond traditional authority, religion, and informality as central to legitimate urban narratives and re-imagine urbanism to build an understanding of the complex interrelations between the built environment, urbanity and society.
The framework further aids us to engage in a creative manner through activities, engaging a wider range of audience. The key to activity lies in co-designing and co-learning, where the roles of researcher, designer and user get mixed up: the person who will eventually be served through the process is given the position of ‘expert of his/her experience’, and plays a large role in knowledge development, idea generation and concept development. The process of designing and engagement are also intended to be collaborative. Activities can bring diverse audience such as students, localities, tourists, authorities, officials, ground practitioners, researchers, to illustrate a few. Engaging in such new forms of knowledge production may also encourage conscious political commitments toward shifting the balance of theoretical power and academic resourcing to match the emerging global configurations of urbanization.