Islands in the City
This project is based in Khirki, an urban village in the south of Delhi, India. It introduces spaces that better integrate urban informality with formal development and lend a higher degree of legitimacy to small-scale businesses in the face of increasing socio-economic unsurety. Specifically, this project looks at consolidating and strengthening material manufacturing and artist networks within Khirki through skill training, resource management, digitization and exposure. The project specifically deals with multiple local artist and makers NGO’s to establish a space that helps them better connect with individual artists and material manufacturers within Khirki. It would incorporate locally available labor and material in its construction - providing the community with a means to contribute directly. Observing a model of shared ownership across individuals, NGO’s and the government agencies - it argues for collective urban efforts. It establishes that providing sustainable spaces for skill training, community gathering, welfare and learning along with infrastructure that reinforces neglected systems of resource management is vital towards the long term strengthening and de-stigmatization of Delhi’s urban informality.
Project
Directory
This document summarizes the project proposal and the supporting technical information and drawings that constitute the various stages of project execution from contracts to construction details
Contents:
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The Brief
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Background
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Site Overview
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Current Situation
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Local Networks
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The Three Steps
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Client
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Strategy
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Materiality
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Sequence
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Build
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Ventilate
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Access
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Safety
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Execute
Echoes from across the Century
Understanding how contemporary ‘Smart City’ urbanism has strong ideological parallels to the early modernist urban design movement,
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Critiquing the design approach’s relevance in the subcontinent
Jugaad and the Urban Theatre
PILOT THESIS
Can India’s smart cities be oriented away from polarized & technocratic narratives, towards reviving the spontaneity and resilience of their existing diversity?
" - The new age of resistance originates as frugal, flexible and inclusive interventions, or the jugaad of informal settlements in developing countries like India, which have been forced to navigate the urbanity that arises as a consequence - "
" - cities have, and will continue to resist technocratic
narratives. The ethos of cities and their spatiality must be re-oriented towards rejuvenating the Urban Theatre. Technology, policy and design must cater to this ethos, not the other way round - "
Series of overhead connections that move through and over the settlement, connecting at fixed points via vertical pillars
The Nest, the Ribbon and the Market form the three major areas of study, looking at how housing, transport and commerce within the settlements are reconciled with the outside
Gully in the Sky
CONCEPT DESIGN
This was an early conceptual exploration into how design can change the spatial equation informal settlements have with the outside city
It explored creating overhead connections that moved across and through the network of Khirki Extension, plugging into fixed points that allow residents to move up into the network. These aerial streets or "gullies" were envisioned as digitally enriched thoroughfares that would facilitate movement & commerce within and outside the settlement, and in the process create more room for housing