Thesis Title: Architecture with Uncertainty & Certainty: Change in Wetness
Project type: Community needed infrastructure
Year of completion: 2021
The inquiry focuses on the architecture that strengthens people’s capacity, adhering to the uncertain and certain conditions arising from the wetness change.
Monsoons in the form of rain, snow, or fog, a moment during the hydrological cycle, are often depicted as visitors that connect the sky with land with sea. The rain has different meanings across varying minds, geographical, cultural, economic, and political conditions. It unifies us through poetry, literature, visual mediums, and even typologies of built forms responding to the change in wetness and temperature by making gestures in the form of a sloped roof, plinth height, etc. At the same time, rain enhances stratification among the economically, culturally, geographically varying societies at some level, affecting lives and livelihood. For Instance in the movie “Parasite” directed by Bong Joon-ho, depicts a scene in which a sudden rain floods the home of an economically weak family living in poor dwelling conditions, which sees rain as an element of destruction, fear, and anxiety. In contrast, the same rain is treated as an element of joy, leisure, and blessing by an economically sound family living in much-advanced dwelling conditions. Therefore it forms a dual nature characteristic, which unifies and stratifies a place at the same time. In the duality between the monsoon as an element of joy compared to an aspect of destruction and fear, my inquiry would be more focused on the latter. Studying the lives and livelihoods who have been affected by the monsoons and at the same time, is an integral part of their life.
Rains in the form of rivers/ lakes/ streams/ ponds are an essential part of the hydrological cycle carrying rainwater back to the sea through varying landforms. They act as physical and political boundaries in administrative regions, provide irrigation water for agriculture, act as a fluid medium for waterways transport, drinking and water storage, and effluent dilution and nutrient distribution. Traditionally rivers were essential for trade with population hubs developing around ports and harbors and were also used as a political and defensive tool to defend or attack territories. They are physical, tangible entities captured on cartographic maps, aerial photographs, and satellite images. Rivers are also worshiped and are the foundations for religious, cultural, social, and national identity.
Taking inspiration from the book Soak Mumbai, written by Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha have re-conceptualized received cartographic and geographic understandings of rivers. They trace the land/water divide back to its ancient construction in Western knowledge systems and colonial mapping practices. European cartographers drew fixed lines where no stable boundaries existed. It ignored and altered the ways communities lived with, in, and on water. Rather than being known as the ‘landscape of rivers’, India is better served by being thought of as an ocean of rain. A river landscape is a surface drained of water inflows between two lines to make land the undisputed staging ground of settlement.
On the other hand, an ocean of rain is found everywhere in the form of wetness that does not flow as water does but instead soaks, spreads, blows, seeps, osmotic, and transpires in nonlinear ways. It helps to defy the so-called ‘line’ between land and water and instead is looked upon in wetness measures. Rigidness to blurriness accommodating flux, flow, and other boundary-blurring phenomena. By questioning what permanence is and introducing ephemerality and ephemeral landscapes of wetness. Using the methodology/ action of blurring the boundaries and so-called demarcation lines in which a traditional black and white nollies map of an area starts to become gradients and blurred diagrams that change with season/wetness rather than a binary.
These are the research questions I’m focusing on:
● How has rain shaped our built form, and how does the built form respond to it?
● What is the architecture of uncertainties/ certainties relating to change in wetness, and how has society responded to it?
● What defines an edge between land and water? And whom does it exclude?
●What could be the architecture that strengthens people’s capacity, adhering to the uncertainties/ certainties occurring from change in wetness?
Over the recent years, one could see definite changes in intensity, nature and seasonal fluctuations of rain, rising seas, warming temperatures, and the increasing frequency of floods. Explosive economic growth and rapid urbanization are increasing the uncanniness of its behavior.
The frequency and severity of its impacts on human and non-human life are accelerating. For example, Kerala floods of 2018,19 or be it the recent flash floods in Uttarakhand that created a loss of lives and livelihoods and economic and infrastructural losses. Built environments shaped for tropical/vernacular architecture are also victims of these uncertainties. This brings to the thought on whether the tropical architectural form, bound to change or improvise to the Change in Wetness? and how can we design flood/ rain resilient built forms, catering to uncertainties/certainties as well as strengthening people’s capacity to change in conditions leading to a safer future?
To Reimagine the tropical monsoon architecture of a water landscape (wetlands) by providing community needed infrastructure that helps to strengthen people’s capacity adhering/ adapting to change by introducing a dialogue between land and water.
To develop a reimagined tropical architecture form that caters to the needs of the site and its changing conditions adapting with it.
The study and the inquiry are limited to the Macro context of Kuttanad wetlands and the micro context of Kainakary. Through this inquiry, I seek to explore different possibilities and scopes on developing a reimagined tropical architecture that makes a dialogue between land and water, adapting to the changing conditions. Focusing on the destroyed or absent public needs infrastructure that caters to duality in programming and adapts to the transient states of the water landscape.
The project and the study, to be positioned where lives and livelihoods are affected or are prone by the uncertainties/certainties of nature with the aspect of Change in Wetness.
Selection of a site integrated with a water landscape ephemeral in wetness + occupation + built forms + socioeconomic structure with the water landscape and through the season. An area in which the livelihood of the community revolves around the temporary condition of the water landscape.
Kainakary, known as the rice bowl of Kerala, is the most affected region in Kuttanad wetlands. The village itself has numerous small water bodies, rivers, canals, and ponds. People dwell near canals and river banks. Being part of Kuttanad, vast paddy lands make up the central part of the village. These paddy lands are below sea water level; due to their geographical position and the proximity to the longest lake in India and the largest lake in Kerala, it’s uncertain and certain to be most affected by wetness change.
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