2020_Nikunj Dedhia — SEA Archives

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Retrofitted domesticities

Memory and Belonging
Nikunj Dedhia, 2020

In the event of a voluntary shift to a new place of living, one often tries to reshape, repurpose, readjust and recreate to fill the gaps between ‘what was’ and ‘what is’ which translates into an ‘act of remembering’. This act of remembering generates memories through which earlier spaces are remembered and narrated. We keep projecting meanings and significance to everything we encounter. Our recollections are situational meaning they are memories attached to places and events- we tend to remember through various modalities of objects, fragments, people, events and even insignificant things. Thus, built environments inevitably trigger memories that generate different meanings over time and stimulate the past.

In revisiting my own memories of space through my older place of living, I tried to explore the overlaps between what is real, what is imagined, what is created and what is experienced to understand its influence on my interpretation and imagination of space. This thesis aims to map the traces which people carry from their older environments into the new ones. To accommodate the memories and spatialities of the past in the new space of inhabitation is what I term as ‘Retrofitted’ Domesticities.

In order to situate this research I interviewed people who had shifted from one place of living to another place of living across various typologies. The thick interviews of people were analysed and then summarised into short narrative stories based on their memories around space and their re-adjustment in the new urban environment. In this transition, new moments are generated between the remembered and the aspired which are unique and distinctive for each individual. Addressing these urban memories, I draw that people recreate their past in the present based on: Spatial overlaps, Object overlaps, Overlapping acts & behaviours, No overlaps. The study pushes us to consider an architecture that could work with memories in a more nuanced and empathetic manner for its new occupants.

Read also under ‘Memory and Belonging’:

Spatialities of everyday heritage

Memory and Belonging
Aashika Vijaykar, 2020

Galalelya jaga ("गाळलेल्या जागा"): overlaps of memory and home

Memory and Belonging
Aditi Bhandari, 2024

Remembering ghar: continuities of memory

Memory and Belonging
Anika Pugalia, 2024

Architecture of a monument: Vasai fort

Memory and Belonging
Chinmay Kadwadkar, 2018

Architecture and memory: remembering home in involuntary dislocation

Memory and Belonging
Dhruv Chavan, 2018

On Sindhi refugees: making home in Jalgaon

Memory and Belonging
Khushboo Tejwani, 2024

Architecture and healing: civil war inversion of public space Borella, Colombo

Memory and Belonging
Rutu Kelekar, 2018

Spatiality of remembrance: encounters between the native and urban

Memory and Belonging
Tanishqa Rodrigues, 2020

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