Architecture as an expression of the time

As an architect it is an important decision to make that what is the role of the

architecture you design in the current time, is it a mere habitable space designed to
perform a function or does it go beyond these standard norms to become the architects
voice, the architects position not as a mere designer but as an individual as a citizen.

This strength that an architect has that of creating a visual and spatial expression is what
can be our contribution to society.

As a citizen of Mumbai, the sad state of the city post the 26 th July 2005 floods where the
city was drowned stirred something within me.

The search began for me as how as an architect can I make a difference, and to me the
answer was not that of creating a flood control measure but was that of understanding
the true cause of the devastating floods, the destruction of the Mumbai marshlands in
wake of our creative endeavors.

Our creation of a new urban environment from the colonial era to this day has
transformed the archipelago of Bombay to a concrete land strip .We have put a
concrete mesh over the original marshy fabric of the city and the flood is not an account
of the rainfall but of the underground water surfacing.

Man for his urbanistic dreams has engulfed the marsh this flood is an eye-opener to
man but what we need is not a catastrophe to establish the importance of an ecosystem
even in an urban context.

This layering of the city and its inherent marsh morphology needs to be understood by us
so as to avoid any further destruction of the same.

The marsh and its dual nature make it a very interesting context to explore. Its land +
water condition is one that cannot be understood from a distance, it can only be
experienced by being part of the experiment itself to evolve the understanding of the
emergent system that ties the urban tissue and the ecological mesh of the marsh.

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Emergent architecture

A sensitive context as that of an ecosystem requires an architectural language that

conforms to the understanding and behavior of the ecosystem.

The architectural bridge is component driven and not a large mass it grows with the
marsh and from the marsh.

The spatial expression, emerging from the water, is devoted to the activities linked to
the marsh such as the algae lab, an experimental setup as an extension of the
educational institution and the algae energy arms that create bio-fuel to make this not a
mere art installation but a scientific art expression that would most definitely elevate
the understanding of the marsh for even an onlooker.

This emergent expression celebrates the essence of a marshland of its co-evolutive,

cooperative and adaptive systems.

An Ecological expression: Beyond the visual

To me then the architecture that would emerge from this marsh had to be an
expression of the ecosystem, its ever-changing fabric and its inherent strength. In
today’s post destruction era I agree architecture needs to satisfy the need of the time
but it also needs to explore ahead of people's immediate needs, it should pervade their
lives.

The architectural intervention should be one that desires to harness and exhibit the
biological power of existing species of the marsh. These species and their functional
strength make them the integral connection between the city and the ecosystem

Architecture is experienced not only as what we see or inhabit but also through the
senses, which therefore gives rise to aural, visual, olfactory, and tactile architecture. As
one moves through a space, architecture is experienced as a time sequence. Although
architecture is primarily considered to be a visual experience, the other senses play a
role in how one experiences both natural and built environments.

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Architecture Redefined

Where Arts and Science meet

The fields of art, architecture and science cannot work effectively in isolation. The key to
a successful project would be the collaboration of the three spheres with optimizing the
capability of each to bring to forefront the merits of the other.

Many collaborative efforts in the art and architecture, architecture and science field are
in the pipeline as architecture is always questioned to be either an extension of the
artistic or scientific realm.

My aim was to use the visual quality and impact of an art installation with the precision
and functional approach of science and create a new architectural paradigm, one that
doesn’t conform to any style; from the country or period but creates a new vocabulary
one that subscribes to the ecological codes and understanding.

CaLL: paving the path for the manifesto

The principles of Mary Miss’s Living Lab became the drivers for programming the thesis
that integrated a modern engineered system with the natural environment.

This hybrid situation hence is developed on the three ideas that of:

 Experiment city: where new ideas can be investigated and tested ( the system,
and integrated labs, testing fields)
 Experiential city ( the new topography)
 Evolving city: where issues of our time can be expressed( incremental growth
and migrating formations)

City as Living Laboratory: Sustainability Made Tangible Through the Arts

A project that largely influenced the design ideology for the project is ‘City as Living
Laboratory: Sustainability Made Tangible Through the Arts ‘, a new initiative

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spearheaded by artist Mary Miss in collaboration with EcoArts Connections director
Marda Kirn.

The goal is to make sustainability personal, visceral, tangible, and actionable. Based on
input from municipal agencies and multiple partners, CaLL projects will seed project sites
with installations, interactive activities and events, setting an example that can extend
to other sites over time and lead the way for other cities in the future. These activities
will foster collaborations among communities, disciplines, institutions, and
neighborhoods as they work together toward common sustainability goals. The CITY AS
LIVING LABORATORY (CaLL) is a vision for how the arts and sustainability can be linked in
innovative ways to create cities that help us redefine how we live our lives, use our
resources, how we communicate, educate, work and collaborate. WHO

• Artists, who specialize in innovative thinking, are a resource being overlooked as a

means to educate, inspire and encourage citizens to think in a new way about the world
around them.

• Artists, working in collaboration with scientists, economists, social scientists, urban

planners and others can lead to new ways to live in, build, and imagine our cities.

HOW ?

• By changing the way we live, work, build and play in order to deal with the
environmental, social and economic challenges we face

• Through projects that create accessible, tangible, visceral and personal experiences
WHY

• To make large-scale programs, policies and planning initiatives (that are often
invisible) apparent to the citizens through small-scale interventions in the city

• To redefine the city by giving it a global I.D. as an innovative green city and to maintain
a contemporary presence in the global marketplace

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• To make issues of sustainability tangible and visible to gain the participation of all
citizens, communities and institutions to maintain the political will to create newly
sustainable cities

WHEN

• Now. Fast track sustainable practices by giving them an immediate presence that is
visible throughout the city in a timely way. Long range goals that take years if not
decades to implement can be made visible almost immediately with fewer resources.

The data stated above are extracts from Mary Miss’s website http://www.marymiss.com
and explain the project City as Living Laboratory: Sustainability Made Tangible Through
the Arts.

Distilling the thesis on the parameters from CaLL

Through the following paragraphs I have tried to distill my thesis project through Mary
Miss’s approach and the parameters that drove CaLL.

The vision for CaLL is a beautiful merger of the world of arts and sciences, City as Living
Laboratory (CaLL) is a vision for linking the arts with sustainability to help us envisage
and create cities that redefine how we live our lives, use our resources, communicate,
educate, and work.

CITY AS LIVING LABORATORY can help make ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC

sustainability integral to all communities of a city.

It is important for us to in the current context realize that sustainability is a cumulative

result of success in all these spheres and not one in isolation. A goal can be achieved
only once it’s understood and brought to the forefront and that’s what this project and
architecture on the whole can help us achieve.

To make SUSTAINABILITY TANGIBLE and visible for citizens, communities and

institutions

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To EDUCATE the public about environmental, social and economic sustainability

To stimulate ECONOMIC VITALITY in our neighborhoods and city-wide

To ADDRESS CRISES in our cities such as environmental degradation, neighborhood

blight, crumbling infrastructure, and natural disasters

The role of art and artists in today’s world

Artists are experts in innovative thinking and are currently being disregarded as a
resource .This idea that Mary Miss is bringing to the forefront that artists, in
collaboration with people in other fields, can produce projects that educate and
motivate citizens to think about the world around them in new ways is a large
contribution to the vision of a city.

Collaborating communities

SOCIAL PROGRAMS can connect neighborhoods with their environment, culture, history,
and each other

The natural and the technological

NATURAL SYSTEMS can be made evident in local and regional contexts

INFRASTRUCTURE can be revealed and given visual expression

Parameters that make such initiatives successful

SCALE - a city’s large-scale sustainability initiatives can be expressed through phase vise
development that allows the project to be successful from a normative inception to a
large scale urban intervention as proposed in the thesis.

RESOURCES - collaborative arts projects can partner with existing programs and
institutions; the thesis project is funded by an international school on site as it is an
educational experience.

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PLACES - such as community gardens, parks, abandoned lots, infrastructure sites

The abandoned marsh considered as a negative space in the city is hence the ideal
platform to showcase how our ignorance makes us demean the value of the basic fabric
of the city.

USER APPROPRIATION

Providing a stage for various activities that are temporal and user defined makes the
project more successful and brings in a larger mix of people to the marsh which would
make it a more successful venture than programming it with a function that targets only
a certain group of people

EVENTS - performances, festivals, exhibits, talks, tours, fairs, feasts, films

TOPICS - land, water, transportation, energy, air, climate change, etc.

The marsh and the intervention as an experimental apparatus that can both be a lab for
experiments and is an experiment in itself with its dual nature offers to explore the
effects of various NATURAL elements and their interaction with the MAN MADE
environment.

Architecture is an artistic action driven by scientific support, an educational tool

With this approach I am not denying the necessity of design of spaces serving existing
interests and points of view but this is the time we must invent new points of view and
have faith that they would help educate the masses.

Architecture can educate not by just being a school or a college, that is a literal
expression of a place of learning but through an interesting conceptualization
architecture can draw interest of the citizens to pertinent issues that may seem
mundane to many.

Some leaps are required, if architecture desires to move with today’s accelerated
changes, or more so to jump ahead to help lead them.

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Incremental transformations may be the first block to building this new identity, where
adaptability and appropriation of architecture are critical.

 The primary undertaking of experimental works of architecture and art is to

identify new points of view on what already exists.
 The second task is to test them.
 The third is to move beyond the existing and invent.

How would we quantify architecture?( I am not to sure this interpretation is required

or adds to the thesis understanding)

Direction and its role in harvesting energy

Energy and the way it directs architectural formations makes me comprehend

architecture as a vector, with a magnitude and direction.

In the case of the thesis the various formations and the ‘energy arms’ or the links of
algae cells was determined by the direction that provided maximum surface area
exposed to the sun in a day so as to accelerate energy production by the algae.

The project aims to be a living laboratory an experimental setup and not an energy field
hence the arms are restricted to the least turbulent zones with the solar driven
orientation rather than populating the site with algae cells.

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Addressing the waterfront, a worldwide movement

An overview of Rising Currents, New York, USA

In 2009 the Museum of Modern Art and PS1 launched a unique interdisciplinary
experiment with the intent to re-think New York Harbor in light of the currently
occurring phenomena’s like climate change, sea level rise and storm surge. Rising
Currents, gave design a new meaning that of being a tool for addressing local and global
issues that are extremely pivotal in today’s context.

Involvement of an institution is necessary in today’s time for both promotion and

funding such ventures. Beyond the commercial aspect these ventures are about social
engagement, and hence MoMA’s involvement seems apt as “Social engagement was
one of the main themes running through Modernism and in this way MoMA goes back to
what it originally was.”

Architecture, Design and Policy

Disregarding water and waterscapes as residual spaces or landscapes has been

hindering in the growth of the cities. Amanda Burden, has very clearly stated what
should be the path in the future that of ‘embracing the notion that water deserves as
much planning attention as the land receives’. She poetically called water New York’s
“sixth borough.”

Can a design instigate policy change? What role does aesthetics play in policy in climate
change adaptation, in developing political consensus and breakthroughs? Are critical
questions posed to us today as architects questions I wished to explore if not answer

An ecosystem and its species

One can gain a lot by exploring the strength of the individual components of an
ecosystem as Kate Orff and SCAPE Studio developed Oyster-Tecture, reviving New York’s
natural history with the wondrous, dynamic oyster which both filters water and forms
natural wave-attenuating reefs. The US Army Corps of Engineers, along with the New

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York Harbor School, has actually installed an experimental oyster reef in the city, just off
Governors Island.

Beyond the global sphere zooming into the city of Mumbai

SOAK, a Mumbai-focused exhibit lead by Anuradha Mathur, a designer and landscape

architect and her partner Dilip da Cunha very beautifully explore the forts the
marshlands and unravel the history of the city and optimize the strengths of the city.

The authors of SOAK on the Rising Current:

“Every once in a while there is an exhibition that goes beyond the language by which it
is described, challenging the popular imagination and calling for a new one. Rising
Currents, to us, is one such exhibition. It calls us to go beyond the language of the
waterfront. … The era of confronting water is past. The idea of water meeting land
across an edge drawn more easily on paper than on the ground, is no longer tenable.”

Identifying this duality and the edge condition, the transition zone as a critical context
and one that offers great potential is the aspect of both these exhibits Rising Currents
and SOAK that had a large impact on my grafting into the marshland.

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Architecture as an organization of energy

A city is a network of economic, technological, social, cultural systems which overlay and
interact with one another to make it a ‘living system’. Organization of energy is the
common thread between all these systems.

A public space is an ideal platform to understand the energy generation, the cycles of
production, cleaning and the strengths of an existing ecosystem.

Existing energy relations in a city can be boosted by drawing inputs not only from the
technological domain but also the ecological domain. Input of new energy in the form of
highly temporary spatial interventions; is the key to reducing dependency on the
extremely burdened sources of energy, generating a system where the architectural
intervention can sustain itself and also support its vicinity would be ideal.

Considering that the site is a marsh, one that would not have its own water supply,
sewage treatment or energy source, the architectural intervention would be a
successful and acceptable plug in if it did not draw from the existing energy circuit but
instead could be a plug in that replenishes the energy circuit.

From the drawing board to the site

Architectural construction is the sensitive aspect of the project as a large amount of

energy is consumed in the same and simultaneously the aim of the thesis is not too
engulf the mass with a concrete creature but to weave a system into the existing mesh
of the marsh.

An enormous quantity of mechanical energy is stored in the materials used to make

buildings and the same is consumed for lifting it and placing it on site especially if a
prototype needs to be placed in the dual natured marsh.

Material and construction

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The site demanded that each component be erected with few tools, minimizing
potential transportation and construction complications. Additionally, the mould or the
skin brought to site is an inflatable system; part of which can just be inflated and used as
the component others inflated as the mould and then filled in with poured concrete for
greater live load bearing capacity.

The others could be carbon fiber structures.

A performative urban and architectural morphology

The intervention crosses the realm of static architecture and is dynamic not only as a
structural and construction system.The additive system reconfigures its form and
function both as per tidal variations and temporal succession.

The intervention is not a mono-mode lab ; one that not only explores the marsh as an
ecosystem but also is an energy field, a material lab, a space definition system as with
each user and time the use of a space gets redefined.

The Oppositional nature of the existing natural and constructed infrastructure made the
project not just in a transitional condition but transitional and transformative itself.It
became necessary to translate the vertical tidal movement in a marsh into vertical
migration of the living landscape.

The landscape penetrates into the urban fabric creating either energy streets (algae
cells) or pathways weaving the ecological and urban fabric into a single unit. These
penetrations would result the hard edge into a softer porous edge.The intervention is a
soft infrastructure that connects the two edges of the marsh and blurs the hard edge
between land and water

Its primary intention being to bring people to the marsh so that they realize that its the
Urban flooding that caused the massive destruction in 2005 as we have ignored a very
important aspect of the city .

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A peripheral strip of reclaimed land hugging the marsh has been demarcated as an open
/ green space.The same never gets utilized as it has not been activated , this installation
in the marsh beyond arousing curiosity provides a reason an activity for the people to
come to these zones as the marsh and this unutilized stretch makes the area primarily
unsafe as post office hours this International Finance and Business district becomes a
dead space.

It is hence ideal to return the demarcated synthetic open space back to the marsh and
activate the underutilized public land on the waterfront not with a program but with its
original language that of the marsh. The marsh as fingers penetrate into the urban
agglomerate, these insertions would soften the hard edge formed by the reclaimed land

In a city like Mumbai originally an archipelago this thin strip of marsh and this
intervention may be an expression at a SMALL SCALE but one that can bring a BIG
CHANGE.

The location of the site in the heart of Mumbai along the western express highway and
the new International and Finance Business district give sit the visibility that a project
with the intention of educating the masses and social empowerment requires.

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The marsh is a living machine

The Mithi Marsh in its current condition is not the most pleasant space as it has been
treated more as a nalla( drain – that’s how most Mumbaikars see it) than a rich
ecosystem. The marsh has been transformed to a dumping ground in certain pockets
and hence it would be necessary to cleanse the marsh to make it a pleasant outdoor
space.

The storm surge though of great relevance it is vital for the marsh to improve its water
quality. Improving the water quality is a critical quality of a marshland one that should
be revived to cleanse these arteries of the city.

The marsh is not just a home to various species of fauna and flora, but this neglected
ecosystem is an extremely intelligent cooperative network that is today recognized as
an effective water cleansing system,the ‘LIVING MACHINE’.

(Post these opening paragraphs I will be explaining the Living Machine and its
integration in my design – still working on that)

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