2018_Divya Gyanchandani

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Persistence of Guilds in Pune’s inner city : Old work forms, new contexts
Systems and Organisations
Divya Gyanchandani, 2018

How has the work form and its organisational structure of craft and merchant communities in Pune’s inner city shaped their built environment? This question emerges in the backdrop of the ongoing urban regeneration in the inner city that manifests spatially into projects such as road widening, new apartments, supermarkets, malls, and retail stores. I explore this question in the neighbourhoods of Kumbharwada, Tambat Aali and Bohri Aali approaching each neighbourhood through three different scales: settlement, cluster and unit. At the settlement scale, I map the elements that shape the urban morphology and typology. At the cluster scale, I establish the link between the work form and the organisational structure of the guild to its spatial manifestation. At the unit scale, I focus on the transformations taking place in the built form and link them to the emerging contexts of urbanisation. The central argument advanced through this dissertation is that the guilds have continued to persist in the inner city of Pune. The fieldwork helps advance four sub arguments, first being that there is a dialectic relationship between the work forms and the organisation of the guild. Second, economic contexts, technological changes, state policy and plans and community aspirations have come to mediate the nature of the work form and the economic role of guilds. Third, recent changes in the above factors are shaping new contexts for the work form of craft and merchant communities, and their guilds. And lastly, guilds need not bear the entire burden of innovation; it would be mutually beneficial to Pune’s city government to create a supporting environment for such work forms in the face of their urban regeneration plans for generating an economy through heritage and cultural tourism.

Read also under ‘Systems and Organisations’:

Of Architectural markets: architecture of transactional points

Systems and Organisations
Prajyot Mulye, 2018

Architecture for digital nomads: a trace of conventional to emerging form of organisation

Systems and Organisations
Shubham Gaikwad, 2018

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