Sahana Desai

UR3001

CONNECT

This project, CONNECT, deals with transforming edges in a way that connects the existing urban fabric to nature. The site is located in Chandlodiya, Ahmedabad, and showcases a stark division between the green and the built. Its uniqueness lies in its form which results due to the three railway tracks that run along its edges, dividing the green and the built, making it an isolated piece of land.  This project, due to the existing compound walls of railways, becomes a great opportunity to convert the hard edges into soft edges, creating interactive edges and interfaces, allowing people to connect to nature that is present around them in such a great form.

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Manifesto - The rapid urbanization since many years has been the major cause for shrinking green spaces. There is an alarming need for humans and the greens to precariously coexist, without hindering each other's growth. A minimalistic approach of identifying buffer spaces and edges as a means to establish a coexistence that can be harmoniously and mutually beneficial.

Partee Diagram - The concept of Buffers. The diagram imagines green spaces to be surrounded by dense urban fabric. The shrinking of these green spaces form gaps in between which act as buffer spaces for both the fabrics. The buffer spaces mainly get formed by the edges of both these fabrics, where the edge conditions play a role in initiating the interaction between the two.

Mapping edges and the green pocket, capturing the character of the site.

Site Plan and Mapping - Identifying railway tracks and the area around it as buffers.

Existing Site Conditions - The compound walls of the railway platforms, completely block the physical and visual access to the green space, which in turn encourages garbage dumping, bootlegging and encroachments.

Design Partee - The concept of Hard and Soft Edges. The diagram showcases how hard edges block physical and visual access to the green spaces and how transforming them into soft edges would increase the range of interaction allowing partial physical and complete visual access.

Design Strategies For creating Soft Edges. How do we reimagine these boundaries as soft edges? Edges that help us recreate spaces? The edges that allow us to connect with the huge pocket of nature in front of us? The elements used here to achieve this are levels and landscape. As the height of the compound wall from the ground varies, a common way to bring people at a particular level to experience the space is through steps. It leads to a ghat type formation integrated with green elements that invite people to use the spaces in different ways at different times of the day.

Design Strategies For creating Soft Edges. The strategies involve areas where only levels are proposed or only landscape is proposed, as well as areas where there is an integration of both.

Proposed Plan 1- Imagining railway platforms and its boundary walls in a different way. The proposed design has been drawn in red, showcasing the active edges that got formed due to the above mentioned strategies. Seatings have been provided facing towards the green which allows people to experience its calmness and serenity, without actually interfering with it. The railway compound wall has been re imagined as a railing, allowing visual access for people facing towards the green.

Proposed Plan 2 - Re imagining railway crossings as public spaces. The less frequency of trains provides an opportunity to create seating spaces (otla type formation) allowing people to gather near the green space. This also proposed levels instead of slopes used by people to cross the railway tracks.