Soni Kashvi Sanjay

UR2008

(Re)Claimed

The project ‘Re-claimed' is a proposition for a speculative vision that embraces a decentralized, mobilized, and independent toolkit of infrastructure using the key strategy of working within and reviving natural water landscapes to add moments of amplified activity. Thus primarily being a re-imagination of infrastructures relating to water supply, management, and engagement for wards like Sarkhej which bear the brunt of biases and disparities.

Regional-scale mapping:-
InQuest of Water: The mapping focuses on unfolding the disparities through the lens of water supply infrastructure in the state of Gujarat. It primarily investigates the supply network that ranges from the Sardar Sarovar Dam which intends to provide drinking water and irrigation water schemes to the urban and rural population

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The project 'Dissembled Ensemble' aims at mapping and speculating on the premise of where and how the ensemble of water infrastructure situate itself in the context established previously. This has been done by looking through all the places in the infrastructure where water is found; seen and unseen. Thus essentially asking the question where is water and speculating a change in perception, complexity, and experience of it. The speculation, 'Re-scale, join, play', attempts to propose a completely radical and new system of water infrastructure. Each component of the infrastructure is re-scaled, rearranged, and re-imagined to have a different kind of engagement with it. The very aspect of how it treats water versus how water treats it is questioned as a part of this process.

The first map collates the understanding and mapping of the water supply network and its infrastructure as published by AUDA. The total supply trunk lines, the distribution stations, and the overhead and underground tanks have been plotted. Ahmedabad uses approximately 1485 million liters of water per day and with a population of 5.6 million( census 2011 ), Ahmedabad is the largest city of Gujarat. The supply has a commandment area covering 90 percent of Ahmedabad. While the municipal corporation of Ahmedabad claims to supply 150 LPCD of water. Its is when we zoom into the different wards and zones and compare the data of water supply for the population LPCD comes out to very low in most of the cases and uneven distribution can be seen among the different regions. Reductive ways of associating uneven governance across these sites with state-led intentionality to discriminate based on religion obscure how, in reality, religion comes together with socio-economic and political forces t

The Ward Sarkhej lies in the south-western part of the city, is occupied predominantly by Muslims, and faces severe disparity and scarcity from the centralized water supply, and is thus left waiting for private suppliers which are spread across in abundance to provide water without ever engaging or celebrating it.

While looking at the ward's natural resources of water, sarkhej's topographical and hydrological landscape reflects a natural drain. This inland distributary in its landscape was neglectfully built over the years. This spine connects itself with the entire lake system and the watershed which when used and managed effectively could be enough to provide for the clean drinking water supply demand for the ward. It is thus ironic to see that the ward itself borders many water bodies and tankas with rich histories of their existence over time and still faces a lack in supply of water. It makes one question the redundancy of the elaborate water infrastructure systems of today.

Inspired by ancient water management which was community-owned and water bodies that were protected through traditional customs, this speculation attempts to recreate those practices and notions lost over regiments of time and politics.

The re-envisioned plan for supply shows the sites that were thus chosen to be the lakes and the spine in the ward which is currently either built upon or nothing more than a waste dumping site. The plan utilizes these as a resource for water use and management to provide a path for sustainable growth and an example for other cities. The interventions are essentially sited in traditionally underutilized urban spaces to revive them and create zones of social, cultural exchange. The plan is also a provocation to draw our supply grids differently along with additional infrastructure for the people.

The deployments are at different scales for three main purposes: to restore, recycle and revive; each with repurposed uses to celebrate the water. By externalizing and making water use visible as one of the strategies, these interventions establish a web of relations and dependencies to develop an urban culture in a microcosm that sets in motion critical regional transformations.

To recycle, at the lakes, aerator decks help oxygenate the lake water while extending as places of play with the fountains. The water minarets clean the lake water, store and parcel it, which at the neighborhood scale are collected through these wheels of exchange, exchanging the pot parcels of clean drinking water. The making of earthen ports is an existing economic activity in the area. At the larger community scale, along the spine, water bunkers store and accommodate water for and from the spine.

Water runoffs from upland sites and road networks are collected and transported through skylines, channels, and rings of water to reconnect back to the entire river system. While the interventions of decks along them create spaces of respite, overlooking the arrangement. The spine is revived through such varied interventions(point out to the umbrellas) along with it, imagined being owned, operated, managed, and engaged with, by the people.

The Rain Umbrellas here help capture the rainfall while connecting and recycling it to the underground table through the rain gardens which contain flora that phytoremediates, additionally creating pleasant microclimates amongst the built fabric. Concludingly, all of these infrastructures are envisioned to build an argument for a creative, self-dependent, and socially engaging civic infrastructure thus claiming back lost potentials of water landscapes and water itself. Thus, all of these infrastructures are envisioned to build an argument for a creative, self-dependent, and socially engaging civic infrastructure thus claiming back lost potentials of water landscapes and water itself.