midterm presentation

best viewed in full screen

< Deplorable to Deployable >

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peFHthxPFz8&feature=player_embedded#!

The above video is about the Commonwealth Games which were held in Delhi, India this year and how the poor and homeless people were thrown out of the city to make the city look beautiful.

I think, one of the main issues is definitely the appearance of the places they live in, as they do not match up to the developing city's image which is trying to establish itself as a world city with an international look. If we don't want the city to look bad because of their filthy tent-like houses in various corners of city, the solution is not throwing them away from the city, I think ONE of the solutions (which I am proposing) can be making their dwellings better looking, and when we try to do that, the question arises again, why do these people need good/ "COOL" looking places and forms the vicious circle with never-ending argument. So, you give them tents to sleep in as an IMMEDIATE response, but bring them down after few years as they are potential slums.

These homeless people are the lifeline of the city, laborers-who make all those beautiful buildings, rag-pickers- trying to earn a living from cleaning up the city, rickshaw-pullers - very important transport system of every Indian city who cannot be replaced by a monorail/subway system for they can access narrowest of the streets and are much faster in traffic, cheap, environmental friendly. City has its responsibilities towards them and asking them to leave the city or giving them tents to sleep-in can not be a modern age architectural solution. Looking a bit beyond the problem, and analyzing the reasons for homelessness of rickshaw-pullers(highest number of self-employed homeless people), I think, instead of their deplorable housing conditions, they need deployable dwelling conditions according to their needs. Hence, this project!

Collages showing redevelopment of public transport stations which will have different activities during day time and night. After 11pm, when most of the transportation system is closed, rickshaw pullers come to the plug-in stations and sleep in their transmuted homes from their vehicles. During day time, these fixed stations will cater to various needs of passengers waiting for the buses. These stations will have water sprays for them to cool down during summers, seating options, some rickshaws can choose to stay there to sell magazines/water/fruits etc.

r-e-thinking our role as agents of social change

The final design problem will aim at a) the r-e-designed rickshaw, which can be morphed into a dwelling by night consisting of an eating station, sleeping area, cooking area and storage, b) a dock plug-in energy station where every night the vehicle comes, transforms into a house, plugs-in and get the water and solar generated energy from it for the light and cooking requirements, c) redeveloping the chosen site areas(public parks/bus stands/parking lots) where these fixed plug-in stations will be installed to provide them with a small community which can have gardens, water outlets, cleaning areas, water spray, repairing zones etc. which can be used by public during day time enhancing the uses of such places and can be used by rickshaw-puller communities during nights.

Present day concerns for single objects will be replaced by concern for relationships. Shelters will no longer be static objects but dynamic objects sheltering and enhancing human events. Accommodation will be responsive, ever-changing and ever-adjusting. Cities of future be no longer zoned as today in isolated ghettos of like activities; rather organizationally they will resemble the more richly layered cites of the past, living work shopping learning and leisure will be housed in continuous varied and changing structures. -Richard Rogers,1991

Over 4000 years ago, Noah was called by god to build an ark capable of transporting the natural world and its creatures to safety when the apocalype struck. Thsi may have been the first example of portable and relocatable architecture whose purpose was self-sufficient housing.- Jennifer Siegal

I started with exploding the rickshaw in its individual parts to study them better and exploring the options with using only the existing parts of it and transforming it to a minimal shelter. The study helped me understand the spaces it can create and the dimensions which can be achieved and the need of additional parts and changes required in existing pieces in terms of their sizes and designs.

I studied the life of a rickshaw puller in a day to understand their needs well. He wakes up at 4am, takes a bath on the road, goes to a shack to have a cup of tea, picks up school kids at 7 to drop them to school(this gives him a fixed monthly salary), eats his lunch on the rickshaw, drops kids to their homes from school and finally sleeps on his rickshaw at night,11pm and next day he has to go back to his routine with the pain in his back.

The idea is to make it a transformable vehicle to in-habitat poor homeless rickshaw-puller and give him a better place to sleep and keep his stuff.

Mobile architecture is more than just an ephemeral solution for a problem. It is a genre of building that has been there, the prototypical human shelter that first established the human need and desire to make home.

"The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future generations not as an era of political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in which human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race as a practical objective." - Arnold Toynbee, English historian(1889-1975). The word "practical objective" here shifts the utopian ambition of human welfare,which by definition is not reachable, to a design project, a practical objective.

manifesto

 
 “For the 200 million homeless people around the world of which 50,000 die every day, if our governments cannot build homes, can we provide them with shelters to sleep as an immediate response?

Can we provide them with the basics for every night- roof, food and sanitation facilities? I want to make multi-functional cocoons for the urban poor which can be transmuted as per needs.

This metamorphosis of shelters will also restrict these places becoming slums one day like most others. The transitions will have different functions which will ultimately decide its form and movements through out the cycle of a day.
The art and power of modern engineering with architecture can be used to come up with interesting ideas for this.”