Divya Mishra

LA4002

Experiencing memory garden

A word abandoned always creates an image of a place that is deserted, restrained and totally disowned by the society. Walking through an abandoned place gives a sense of perception associated with it built form, its user and landscape. Landscape plays a vital role in creating a niche in our memory of the place by weaving its built form and nature. Although it is a transient quality that changes with respect to time and user. Vice versa landscape of a place reflects the purpose of the place and its association with the user and their collective memory. The project is about evoking the memory associated with the place, regaining its identity through the language of landscape and associating people with its heritage structure by creating an experience through the collective memory of a place. The idea is to revive the lost identity of industrial heritage sites through a mill walk giving an experience of different eras of the mill through different spaces by memory as a design strategy that weaves landscape , sense of space and user identity.


Report Content

The project is about cotton textile mill built in 1982 outside the walled city of Ahmedabad which is now totally abandoned.The first impression of getting into the mill is like ruined and neglected but silently holding the stories of glories past that contributed in shaping the city . Silent stories of its built and nature gave a thrust to recurrence the spirit of the mill. Understanding its importance and historical past before going into detail of the project .

Location : Rajnagar mill is located at the outer periphery of old walled city in Ahmedabad near Prem Darwaza, Jahangirpura ,Asrawa area at Idgah circle. The site is within the vicinity of 108 year old abandoned Rajnagar mill. The Rajnagar Textile Mill is part of Ahmedabad’s glorious industrial past.

Space 1 : Perception of a place Before going into the actual space of the mill ,to create the experience that will led to revival of the mill, one have to understand how a common man will perceive an abandoned mill by memory of the past. The narritive is about the journey of a boy named Rutvik in Space 1 of the mill.

To understand the inside of mill spaces ,its form ,shape ,texture ,rhythm ,order and geometry yellow lines are used to depict the true quality of spaces.

From the inferences till now it has been derived that the site will be a memory garden that will be explored through mill walk. Two different ideation helped in exploring the suitable journey for the mill walk in which following aspects were considered : 1.The journey covering more prominent places inside the mill like chimney, boiler space, ginning ,office building,sitting pavilion. 2.The journey which suitably describe inside of the mill spaces ,the process of cotton making.

The initial idea of the project is to associate and educate people about its industrial heritage that has lost its identity . The storyline of different programs will be shown with the help of exhibits.The program for the mill walk to memory garden will be guided heritage interpretation walk, around 10-12 people at a time that spread awarness and educate people about how cotton textile industries shaped Ahmedabad, the importance of cotton, its farming and production , export and import .

.The grain plan of the space have exhibits narrating the history of the mill in series along the walk.Planting identity of each set of space will evoke the experience acccording to the program of the space .

Taking part 3 from the grain plan to go into further detail of planting composition . The ideation of 3 options of planting composition is done to explore the ways how it will create suitable experience for the space. The initial idea is to create the experience of the place according to the narration of the 3 exhibits which one read moving along the walkway .The narration of the story in 3 exhibits demands setting of rock garden in 3 part ; harsh ,moderate and soft .

Character of the Place : The setting of the place will showcase 3 exhibits which will demostrate the era of the mill when workers were protesting for their rights. Design intent of planting composition : In terms of planting composition of the place the idea is to demostrate the experience according to the narrition of the exhibits .Here is the comparsion of 3 options of planting design to analyse which one suits best according to the narrition.

The aim is to explore the space in terms of seasonal varition and how much it live up to the initial idea of creating the experience of the space. A part from the grain plan has been choosen which is showing decideous tree (depicting the reopening of the NTC mills) ,dense tree grove (reflecting the phase of tense situation of the mill) and cotton plantation ( reflecting the phase when mill finally shuts down) to show the seasonal varition.