Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources

The studio explores how urban landscape is inhabited, made and remade through personal and collective acts, events, memories, and experiences. It cuts through the surface to expose the undercurrent of silent issues that constitute the everyday.

Studio 6 will be extending its previous work in south Delhi to include Mehrauli, the Qtb Minar, Kishangarth and the Urban Village of Lado Serai with a field trip in early November. Here, overlaid on the ancient first layering of the oldest Hindu Delhi, amongst the old haus's (reservoirs) and decrepit bungalows (and tombs converted into colonial retreats) the contemporary planned city is encroaching. Streets can be so busy that motorised traffic is all but impossible. The sheer number of old buildings and their heterogeneous nature instill a sense of panic as they disappear under the tidal wave of change as people burrow amongst the ruins to make a new life. Students from the nearby TVB School of Habitat Studies will help develop a programme of design work within the public realm involving the occupiers in the evolution of their own common ground.

Techniques of investigation together with designing with loose fit and green technologies at community level will be practised in a preliminary project in October: Fight or Flight. Woodcraft Folk are retreating into a series of ramshackle barns after having been banned from camping on their own land. This project seeks a space from which they can fight back.

Preliminary Project
Fight or Flight
October 2006

Major Project
Making in Mehrauli
Field Trip to Delhi
First two weeks in November

Likely costs:Air fare and visa - £400
Bed and breakfast - £190
Internal travel and food - £120
Total - £710
Meet Wednesday 4th October at 2pm in Room E402 (Top Floor)