Surati Richa Divyesh

AR3016

An enquiry through the paradoxes in the built environment: 

The Asarwa region (  north-east of Ahmedabad) of study comprises of three municipal corporation infrastructures- sewage centre, civic centre and the water distribution centre along with the lake, park and the hard city edge with a dense network of housing and traffic congestion. 
The proposal critiques the existence of the hard boundary of the existing civic infrastructure in the Asarwa region. It aims at dissolving the boundary by creating an inhabitable threshold through the use of hedge as a typology, thereby making the civic infrastructure open for the general well being of the public apart from its static function. We live with paradoxes. Rather than aiming to resolve the complexity of the contradictory situations, the project tries to playfully amplify the paradoxical conditions. This leads in a way to find new connections and tries to establish interaction among seemingly discrete elements. Asarwa, a northeast region of Ahmedabad, is in the focus of study during this semester’s investigation of seeking answers for what wellness is and that about the health-care. A built infrastructure of civic nature is being used as a medium to re-look as that of the social place by discovering the possibilities of it becoming a part of a community’s daily engagement with the neighbourhood. Through the course of days, the design evolved through programmatic, spatial and tectonic considerations. The base is in understanding how people ritualise the practice of hygiene and the general notions of wellness. The relation to what therapeutic spaces mean to the public and to an individual. There is a play in the choice of formal materials used for expressions resulted as a response to the existing infrastructure. Certain aspects and connections developed with arboreal nature to that of the physical infrastructure. Evoking aspects of criticism on the maintenance and the decay of the built/unbuilt. The project in a way, demonstrating the existence of the centralized and the decentralized infrastructure parallelly. At every stage, there are certain contradictions but based on this, arises the discovery of the compatibility.