Architexturez South Asia
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Reconstruction of the Late Holocene climate and environmental history from North Bolgoda Lake, Sri Lanka, using lipid biomarkers and pollen records
No full textThe catastrophic impact and unpredictability of the Indian Ocean Monsoon (IOM) over South Asia are evident from devastating floods, mudslides and droughts in one of the most densely populated regions of the globe. However, our understanding as to how the IOM has varied in the past, as well as its impact on local environments, remains limited. This is particularly the case for Sri Lanka, where erosional landscapes have limited the availability of well-stratified, high-resolution terrestrial archives. Here, we present novel data from an undisturbed sediment core retrieved from the coastal Bolgoda Lake. This includes the presentation of a revised Late Holocene age model as well as an innovative combination of pollen, source-specific biomarkers, and compound-specific stable carbon isotopes of n-alkanes to reconstruct the shifts in precipitation, salinity and vegetation cover. Our record documents variable climate between 3000 years and the present, with arid conditions c. 2334 and 2067 cal a bp. This extreme dry period was preceded and followed by more wet conditions. The high-resolution palaeoenvironmental reconstruction fills a major gap in our knowledge on the ramifications of IOM shifts across South Asia and provides insights during a time of major redistribution of dense human settlements across Sri Lanka.</p
Rethinking the minimum space standard in Indonesia: tracing the social, culture and political view through public housing policies
No full textAccording to the Constitutional Decree (Indonesia, the President of the Republic of Indonesia, Article 27, 1945), living in a healthy and comfortable space is a basic human right. In modern times, proper dwellings for all citizens are continually acknowledged, in most government regulations on public housing. To provide affordable accommodation to all Indonesians, the Dutch colonial government standardised the living space of Indonesian houses. However, the minimum space standard created by the Dutch government attracted many objections, mainly from local Indonesians. Discrimination and inferiority-complex promotion were among the factors triggering its rejection by locals. This paper investigates the sociocultural and political implications of imposing the minimum space standard on public housing in Indonesia. This paper follows the timeframe from the beginning of Woningvraagstuk (Housing Question) in 1901, which started the first recorded standardised housing plan for Indonesians by the Dutch government, to the Kongres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat (Congress on Healthy Public Housing) in 1950, conducted by Indonesian patriots endorsing the ‘from locals to locals, by locals’ spirit. With current research and development on public housing standards focusing on land-use, human anthropometry and health issues, this paper develops a fresh perspective on the discourse of public housing in Indonesia. To this end, it traces the social, political and cultural aspects at significant turning points in Indonesia’s history. The discussion relates to major events in social housing to the housing policies released by Indonesian governments. Finally, it argues that any newly proposed minimum space standards cannot be separated from the current sociocultural conditions.</p
Urban Governance Through Religious Authority in Touba, Senegal
No full textBased on the study of the holy city of Touba in Senegal, this chapter demonstrates how the autonomous management of urbanisation by a religious institution can produce a city which provides affordable housing and basic civic amenities to its residents. Touba is the spiritual capital of the Muridiyya Sufi order, which administers it largely independently of state agencies with a distinctly noncapitalist land management system. Rather than being based on private property, real estate markets, financial institutions and debt, which is the norm for city building today, this system is founded on traditional, precolonial legal practices and on Sufi socioreligious concepts. This Sufi system of land management was first developed for the purpose of agricultural homesteading in the 1880s and since the 1970s has facilitated mass urbanisation.</p
Vernacular Capitalism, Advertising, and the Bazaar in Early Twentieth-Century Western India
No full textThis chapter examines the way small manufacturing firms in western India began to use advertisement in the print media to develop markets for their goods during the early twentieth century. The chapter suggests that advertising gave small producers an opportunity to create the cultural meanings of commodities far away from the point of production. In many cases, they sought to usurp the role of local mercantile actors in fashioning product meanings; that is, they attempted to disembed the process of meaning construction from their local contexts. The chapter explores how advertisements became central to the operations of three firms involved in making indigenous medicines: Amritdhara, Jadibuti, and Dhootapapeshwa. Though the efforts of small manufacturers to undercut the role of local agents were only partially successful and often led to new forms of embedment, advertising was crucial to the creation of a “vernacular capitalism” that has largely been ignored by scholars.</p
Space in Motion: An Uneven Narrative of Urban Private Property in Bombay
No full textAlthough it is well known that the colonial state embarked upon creating a “rule of property” in India from the eighteenth century onward, the manner in which this project unfolded in early East India Company settlements such as Bombay was different from the territories that only later came under British control. In the latter, a confident and assertive colonial state executed its agenda; in the former, a tentative Company was concerned initially with asserting its sovereignty by asserting that all the land in Bombay belonged to it. In cities like Bombay, thus, a deep and enduring tension lay at the heart of the rule of property: between a state that endorsed a liberal vision sanctifying private property, on the one hand, and a state that jealously guarded its proprietary rights over lands, on the other hand. This tension was deployed by state and nonstate actors to pursue their own ends.</p
Religion as Conceptual Scaffolding for Architecture
No full textReligion and Architecture have a long and intimately intertwined relationship in virtually all cultural histories. Through a wide-ranging discussion centring on India and its global diaspora, this chapter considers some of the many ways in which religion continues to be invested in architecture in the world today, and vice versa, broadening and deepening understanding of how religion is literally ‘placed’ in contemporary life. Architecture, we conclude, sustains at least a part of the project that religion pursued more dominantly and directly, with the aid of architecture, in other times; it constructs and articulates space, both physical and social, as a medium in which individuals and collectives may engage and cohere, and through which the self and its relationship to greater wholes or entities may be defined and realised.</p
Basel Mission Industries and The Balmatta Printing Press
No full text
Basel Mission Industries were established to support the Mission principles of work as worship. In tandem with the building of churches, education and training institutes, the industries provided income, material resources and human infrastructure to support Mission activities.
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Surface Pleasures: Bicycling and the Limits of Infrastructural Thinking
No full textThere has been a resurgence of recreational cycling in Mumbai, as elsewhere in India, since the early 2010s. A significant reason for the new popularity of cycling has to do with the immersion in the urban landscape that it offers; people are attracted by the pleasures of the embodied experiences of cycling as well as interactions with the varied communities of cyclists with whom they share the road. This paper shows how surfaces matter both materially and metaphorically in opening new possibilities for understanding fun, recreation and pleasure. Whereas in critical urban studies and related fields, surface often connotes superficiality or a cover over the real, I argue that attention to surfaces and its pleasures is what enables people to emphasise the productive possibilities of ‘convivial alliances’ across differences and to promote an agenda for sustainable transportation politics that goes beyond infrastructure building.</p
The war-time urban development of Damascus: How the geography- and political economy of warfare affects housing patterns
No full textIn the spring of 2019, the Syrian civil war has entered its eight year. Although the heaviest fighting has taken place elsewhere, Damascus is heavily affected by the ongoing conflict. First, large parts of the eastern and southern fringe of the city are heavily damaged or destroyed. Second, the inflow of internally displaced persons is large, which has resulted in a very tense housing market in the undamaged districts. Third, the war-time political economy has changed the role of public and private actors in spatial planning and housing provision. This paper shows how the geography- and political economy of warfare has impacted upon residential patterns and housing practices in Damascus during the civil war. The empirical results are based on satellite imagery, policy documents and a survey among spatial planning experts and students. The results indicate that the formal response to the housing crisis consists of a reinforcement of the existing authoritarian neo-liberal planning model. This model has resulted in the construction of unaffordable luxurious showcase projects at symbolic locations. The informal response to the housing crisis is more pronounced. Alternative housing strategies, such as to self-construction, family housing, squatting and sub-letting have increased in popularity, as the formal response does not deliver immediate relief for war-affected households. The use of alternative housing strategies is concentrated in the existing informal settlements. This suggests that the civil war exacerbates housing poverty, but as well contributes to rising levels of socio-economic segregation
Land subsidence in Isfahan metropolitan and its relationship with geological and geomorphological settings revealed by Sentinel-1A InSAR observations
No full textRecent reports from Isfahan, Iran, have proclaimed cases of land subsidence arising from persistence of drought events and groundwater overexploitation. In this light, the present study attempts to conduct an PS-InSAR analysis of subsidence events using the Sentinel–1A Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery technique, in order to develop a subsidence map of the target study region, covering the period from October 16, 2014 to November 22, 2019 as well as to investigate its relation to geological/geomorphological factors. Toward this end, the methodology proceeds to detect land subsidence phenomenon across the Isfahan Metropolitan area, situated on the Zayande-Rud River Terrace (ZRT) and Isfahan Alluvium Plain (IAP). A total of 198 Sentinel images were used to derive deformation specifics observed throughout ZRT & IAP by dint of incorporating ascending and descending passes of the InSAR technique. As maintained by spatial and temporal variation maps of surface deformations in the urban regions of Isfahan, ZRT & IAP have undergone various orders of subsidence throughout the observation period, at an estimated rate of −5 to −100 mm/year. Overall, land subsidence appears to increase from south towards the northern, northeastern, and eastern sectors of Isfahan Metropolitan, while the southern sectors are nearly a stable area. This study indicates that the spatial subsidence pattern during the study period corresponds closely to the spatial distribution of ZRT & IAP in the Isfahan Metropolitan area.
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