TA: Namratha Dharwad venkataramanaShifting Paradigms : Moving from Designing Form to the Curation of Practices
The studio seeks to design environmental practices that act as catalysts of landscape transformation in response to readings of people and place in three monsoon biomes. Along a riverine transect, from the coast upto the upswept Sahyadris. Each of the biomes is associated with a typical body of water- lotic, lentic, coastal. The studio pushes for a paradigm shift in the focus of design from the articulation of final forms, to the design of practices that sustain equilibriums in landscape. The studio hopes to dismantle the forced binaries between natural and built, ecological and cultural, to help students develop a nuanced understanding of the temporality of cultural landscapes. We begin with thick readings of the site through anecdotal interviews, non-human studies, and spatial and visual representation. Our interviews and representation will focus on deforestation and damming in the lotic, the transformation of grasslands into orchards in the lentic, to the industrialization of the coast. Finally, for one of the three biomes the students will design practices of landscape resilience on a demonstrative site, projecting a transient form, that can help local agricultural communities and companion species thrive in the face of industrial transformation and climate change.
