The Urban Ruin as a Sanctuary for Commuters

Aashini Sanjeev Sheth

1015-A

In the first exercise, a multi-media collage of a relief model and image projection contemplates the future of Beinecke Library in an increasingly virtual Post-humanist future. The main studio exercise is an exploration of ruined mills of Ahmedabad. After extensive mapping, a dilapidated mill in Saraspur, which sits at the junction of the railway and proposed metro, was chosen. The project explores the potential of the ruin as an urban thoroughfare for busy commuters as well as mnemonic landscape with subtle remnants of the city’s industrial past that offers a moment of pause and contemplation in a chaotic transit environment.

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Imagining the Post-humanist Urban Condition - A case of Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library , New Haven - USA

In 2500 AD the exposed structure becomes a pavilion for the new learning environments of the digital age which are virtual and interactive (the visual is projected onto the relief model)

Mapping Redundancies - Locating network of urban ruins and abandoned sites in Ahmedabad through visits

Analytical Representation of selected site - N. S. Mill, Saraspur

Suggesting Site Potentials - The Ruin as an Urban Thoroughfare in a transit environment

Identifying Program and Strategies - Understading Pedestrian Behaviour using Simulation tools

Catalog of Opportunities - The ruin possesses a range of architectural elements and qualities that can be articulated into points of pause

Survey of sections - a catalog of sequences of spatial opportunities and physical obstacles

Design Intervention - The Mill Ruins can be appropriated as a thoroughfare for daily commuters as well as serve as a sanctuary for curious wandering