Architexturez South Asia
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An interdisciplinary framework for using archaeology, history and collective action to enhance India's agricultural resilience and sustainability
No full textSouth Asia has a deep history of agriculture that includes a range of past farming systems in different climatic zones. Many of these farming systems were resilient to changes in climate and sustainable over long periods of time. India's present agricultural systems are facing serious challenges, as they have become increasingly reliant on the unsustainable extraction of groundwater for irrigation. This paper outlines an interdisciplinary framework for drawing on patterns from the past to guide interventions in the present. It compares past and present strategies for water management and use in semi-arid and temperate Punjab with equatorial Telangana. Structural differences in water use in these two regions suggest that a range of interventions should be adopted to expand the overall availability of surface water for agricultural systems in India, in combination with empowering local communities to create their own water management rules. Active interventions focus on the efficient use of water supplies, and increasing surface water availability through renovation of collective ponds and reservoirs. We argue that this conceptual framework has significant potential for guiding agronomic and economic interventions in the future.</p
A City-Nation: Paras, Hygiene, and Swaraj
No full textIn Calcutta, the month of Ashwin—October—is marked by the annual autumnal ritual of Durga Puja. The Puja memorializes the mythical event of Hindu goddess Durga's victory over buffalo-demon Mahishashura. Kalikapurana, a Hindu epic, describes Durga as the embodiment of Shakti, the force that governs all of human existence. The collective energies of the Hindu gods Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma went into creating her. Armed with divine powers, she killed the buffalo-demon Ashura, whom no other god or human could defeat. Week-long celebrations of the Puja in Calcutta relive the moment when Durga slayed Mahishashura. Variously described as a streetart festival, a festival to preserve village folk-art traditions in the city, and a heavily commercialized rendering of a religious event, the Puja is primarily expressed in street carnivals. Neighbourhood clubs erect pandals (decorated canopies) on the sides of streets and in the city's parks. They festoon these pandals with lights and play loud music. Inside the pandal, they place an idol of Durga and engage in elaborate rituals. City dwellers crowd the streets all day and all night. They tour the pandals and offer their prayers to the deity.
Durga Puja did not always include magnificent pandals and public celebrations, however. In the late nineteenth century, it was a household festival. Hindu merchants worshipped the deity in the private recesses of their house. Their houses were enormous, containing an inner central courtyard. Surrounding the courtyard were dalaans (a verandah or open hall for receiving visitors); they placed the idol on these platforms and engaged in day-long rituals. It was only in the twentieth century that the Puja evolved into a public festivity. Neighbourhood clubs replaced merchants, organizing sarbojonin (public) Durga Pujas in the public spaces of Calcutta.
In this chapter, I argue that the transitions in Durga Puja celebrations, from a private worship to a public festival, undergirded a much bigger shift in the socio-spatial configuration of Calcutta. This shift took shape at the local, everyday spaces of neighbourhoods or paras that emerged as spatial units of a Hindu, and Bengali nation.</p
Making and Breaking: Talapady House
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Talapady house is constructed through a process of making from breaking. The building emerges from the remains of demolished tile factories – the material residue and ideas stimulated by the factory environments and their demolition. These materials and ideas are moulded to create a refuge from residue.
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Contextualising adaptive comfort behaviour within low-income housing of Mumbai, India
No full textThermal adaptation in low-income housing of Mumbai, India is investigated using a longitudinal field study and in-situ field measurements. 705 set of responses from two different neighbourhoods were analysed to understand the patterns of behavioural adaptation. Spatial configuration, temporal factors and underlying societal norms influenced the comfort-related behaviour in low-income housing. Clothing adaptation was primarily governed by the gendered socio-cultural practice of purdah system and western influences rather than thermal needs. Logistic regression predicts probabilities of 88% and 20% for using ceiling fans and exhaust fans respectively at 80% indoor air relative humidity. However, thermal stimuli cannot predict occupant behaviour well due to presence of non-thermal determinants. Security, privacy, environmental nuisances (dust, noise and odour) and insects or animals menace (mosquitoes, monkeys, rats, lizards) were the major barriers to thermal adaptation. The study is helpful in evaluating the influence of occupant behaviour on building performance and thus to inform building design and operation. The policy implications could be through the development of design guidelines for the housing schemes to create thermally comfortable low-income dwellings.</p
Socio-physical liveability through socio-spatiality in low-income resettlement archetypes - A case of slum rehabilitation housing in Mumbai, India
No full textThis study looks into the socio-physical liveability through socio-spatiality in low-income settlement archetypes. Paradoxically, recently mushrooming slum rehabilitation housing which have delivered secured tenure to its inhabitants, face threats of being deserted from lack of socio-physical liveability. Recurring of informality issues has advocated to investigate the reasons behind the ‘rebound’ phenomenon. This study explores the efficacy of socio-spatiality and its linkages with socio-physical liveability, taking Mumbai slum rehabs as case study. A comparative analysis of the current built-environment indicators and liveability status of major informal archetypes was performed, followed by analyses of the socio-physical problems associated with it. A critical evaluation of the rehabilitation housing of Mumbai highlights the problems caused by the current dense built-environment design. Reflecting on global instances, this article demonstrates the significance of socio-spatiality and suggests environmentally sustainable indicator-based built-environment recommendations, which if implemented in the forthcoming slum rehab housing planning, would enhance well-being and liveability among the low-income sector in future. While analysing the ‘rebound’ phenomenon, this study delivered a heuristics of socio-physical liveability, built-environment and their respective indicators. This method would aid the architects, planners and policymakers in reshaping the forth-coming built-environment while safeguarding the socio-physical liveability of the low-income sector.</p
Kuy-e Narmak (1952–1958): the growth and change of an urban community in Tehran
No full textThis article examines the growth and change through time of Kuy-e Narmak, a housing neighbourhood developed in the 1950s under the auspices of Mosaddeq’s Modernization Program. The project was designed by a group of young-leading European-educated Iranian architects that collaborated with the government to develop affordable housing solutions in Iran. To design this project, these architects advanced solutions that explored a cross-pollination between the principles of the functional city, and references from vernacular architecture. Over the last 6 decades, the number of households living in Narmak increased dramatically, from the initial goal of accommodating 7500 families, to the 90,000 families that currently live there. This article discusses the extent to which the initial design decisions were instrumental to cope with this extraordinary increase in the district’s density. We have used typological and morphological analysis, combined with site surveys and interviews to investigate the district’s growth and change through time. This article argues that the designer’s critical combination of modernist planning concepts with elements borrowed from Iran’s vernacular tradition resulted in a socially inclusive urban community. The plan’s rigid urban form has become instrumental in defining a neutral background to accommodate the ever-changing social and spatial practices of its inhabitants.</p
‘Without cleanliness we can’t lead the life, no?’ Cleanliness practices, (in)accessible infrastructures, social (im)mobility and (un)sustainable consumption in Mysore, India
No full textAs India, a country with a complex relationship with cleanliness, modernizes rapidly, urban infrastructures are increasing even faster than the growing population. This paper explores the relationships between access to infrastructures, social mobility and resource consumption in everyday lives through the case of cleanliness in Mysore, Southern India. We draw on interviews with 28 Mysoreans about cleanliness perceptions and practices. Analysing cleanliness across class, caste and gender reveals that in the globalizing cleanliness cultures of Mysore those who are precarious and have less access to hygiene infrastructures, tend to have to clean more but don’t resist expectations. We argue that, as cleanliness contours citizenship claims, the ‘great unwashed’ are excluded from participating in society. We question whether infrastructures and policies purported to increase the quality of life and provide basic human rights through increasing cleanliness, actually inadvertently contribute to deepening social stratification.</p
Urban Environmentalisms
No full textThe “bourgeois environmentalism” concept framed by Baviskar (2002, 2003, 2006, 2011) till date remains the most powerful paradigm to capture urban environmental projects (restoration, beautification, and housing schemes) facilitating middle-class desires, aspirations, and perceptions of urban environment at the cost of squatter clearance and eviction drives in Indian metropolises. Environmental activism in Kolkata has also been perceived through this prism. Drawing inspiration from situated urban political ecology, and using historical urban political ecology, this chapter empirically investigates, chronologically covers, and qualitatively analyzes varieties of environmental activism across conflicting, negotiating, and mediating actors using two case studies: the environmental movement surrounding the restoration of the Adi Ganga, and rounds of activisms (since the 1990s to the present time) for the preservation and protection of the East Kolkata Wetlands. The empirical findings inform the theoretical grounding that the chapter deploys. Through the two case studies, the chapter asserts that urban environmental activism comprises vibrant stories of violations and victories with long-lasting impact and future directions for urban environmental trajectories that cannot be captured by unilinear understandings and perspectives.</p
Deindustrialization in cities of the Global South
No full textRecent research by economists has shown that deindustrialization is more severe in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America than it ever was in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Nevertheless, most research on deindustrialization is focused on the former centres of Fordist manufacturing in the industrial heartlands of the North Atlantic. In short, there is a mismatch between where deindustrialization is researched and where it is occurring, and the objective of this paper is to shift the geographical focus of research on deindustrialization to the Global South. Case studies from Argentina, India, Tanzania and Turkey demonstrate the variegated nature of deindustrialization beyond the North Atlantic. In the process, it is demonstrated that cities in the Global South can inform wider theoretical discussions on the impacts of deindustrialization at the urban scale.</p
Collaboration, engagement, and Cambodia: Archaeological perspectives on cultural heritage
No full textCommunity archaeology remains rare in Southeast Asian archaeology, where most archaeological engagement takes place within archaeological heritage management contexts. What should community archaeology look like in countries whose majority populations trace their ancestry directly back to monuments which generate huge revenues and whose archaeological records are under threat through development and looting? This article introduces Cambodian archaeological heritage management and its relationships to cultural tourism and economic development. Understanding Cambodian heritage management requires familiarity with UNESCO World Heritage designations which drive many developments in the country. Two primary areas of concern for both community archaeology and more top-down approaches are: (1) the challenges of working between multiple and competing stakeholder agendas, in which local community voices are rarely heard; and (2) the impact of specific management decisions on local communities. Case studies from across the region offer examples of solutions to these seemingly intractable obstacles.</p