2020_Sai Kelkar — SEA Archives

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An urban frontier: coexistence of contradictions

Frontiers
Sai Kelkar, 2020

What are the spatialities that allow for the coexistence of multiple kinds of productive work which may be contradictory economically and environmentally? The question is framed in the backdrop of urbanization on the outskirts of the metropolitan cities whose experiences have largely been framed through the debate on dispossession and degradation, on the one hand, and promiscuous urban frontier, on the other hand. Drawing on the latter, I open out the forms of spatiality and affordances of physical space that allow for economic and environmental contradictions.

I conducted this study in Vasai fishing village, a small settlement in Vasai-Virar on Mumbai’s urbanizing outskirts. This settlement is surrounded by environmental features such as a creek with mangrove edges and a Portuguese fort, which is a heritage monument of national importance. The study was conducted at three scales - the settlement; settlement edges including the creek, marshland, and fort edge; and, individual houses - through field notes made in the form of detailed visual observations, sketches, and notations, unstructured interviews, and photographs. This dissertation advances two arguments: one about the strategy of representation of the coexistence of economically and environmentally spatialities and the other about the form of such spatialities.

First, I argue that, in order to move beyond narratives of dispossession and degradation, one requires the framing of multiple vantage points to observe spatiality and a strategy for their representation. I developed two strategies from a reading of the work of Gulam Mohammed Sheikh whose narrative paintings work with the idea of multiple vantage points. These included the use of changing scales to open out the relationality of people and (un) built form according to their narrative importance and multiple shifts of horizon line on the picture plane to draw attention to the coexistence of contradictions. This helped me to develop a strategy of a drift that is able to draw selected parts of the whole simultaneously with one another as against a strategy of layering where parts of the whole are arranged separately. Such representational strategies, I argue, are better able to capture the experiences of promiscuity and coexistence of contradictions on the urban frontier.

And second, my dissertation uncovered that porous boundaries, modulations of building skin, and flexible and non-programmed spaces are some of the spatial forms that allow for the coexistence of multiple kinds of productive work which may be contradictory economically and environmentally. Porous boundaries are seen at the edge of the marshlands and the edges of the creek, which are unbounded open spaces used for public activities. Verandahs and the terraces are instances where building skins are modulated which allow for a multiplicity of uses - a verandah gets transformed into a general store, and in case of the terrace, where the terrace is used for drying fish in the morning, and space for karate classes in the evening. Flexible and non-programmed spaces often allow for a wide range of temporal transformations such as the use of a desolate church for prayer and for tourism.

The architectural use of this dissertation will therefore explore the possibilities of advancing spatialities that allow for the coexistence of economic contradictions in environmentally sensitive contexts.

Urban farming

Frontiers
Dimple Mistry, 2020

In-distinct boundaries: a compilation of urban relationships with water edges

Frontiers
Ruchi Dixit, 2020

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