Recap: April: Mid-Term Critique

I'd like to remind you all that by April 14th, a scant two weeks had passed since we got back from India. And it was during those two weeks that we had come up with our conceptual designs. So the images that you see here are not reflecting a lack of progress; what you're seeing here are the initial stages to our design project.

That being said, as you are aware from the last critique, a mere seven days earlier, we were working in pairs or small groups. For the Mid-Term crit, we would present in large groups of three to four people. I suspect Nick and Lili required this so that we could produce more in less time. Or perhaps to see "what would happen." :) The commentary during this crit would focus on our "structural logic," and by that it is meant knowing where to put everything.The first group consisted of Maren, Daisuke, Lizzy, Jong, Ji Hyun and Morgan. This merged living showers, walls and constructed wetlands. Topics of conversation among the critics included "Modules don't work" (Lili), and "looks like you're doing an edge strategy" (some guy).
Stephen, Filomena, Mike and Christian merged ghats and water catchment by "weaving into existing [urban] fabric." Commentary included, "Try to be elastic," (Lili), and "projects are heavily driven by environmental [factors?] and not social" (unknown). A reference to the Ebenezer Howard Garden City diagram was mentioned as well.

Atisha, Bo Young, Hao-Hsin and Sally had a "woven fabric typology" and critics commented that they had a "design [that] developers would love."The next group, Shannon, Melissa, Erin and Josh, presented their warp, weft and weave concept with earthern berms. Yes, that's what I wrote down. I also wrote "pedestrian movement and water retainment."
Finally, the last group, of which I belonged, along with Devon, Colleen and Kelly, outlined our structural logic revolving around a system of water inlets leading from the Adi Ganga canal into Kalighat. The inlets would be constructed wetlands and our buildings would be multi-layered as the diagram above suggests, while perserving as much as possible the existing fabric. I don't have a photo of our lovely group but I hope that adding the following commentary will help imagine our project: recommendations --> "change countour for low/high tide - let it flood", "inlets -- create edges along inlets", "how does the retreat work? diagram", etc. A reference to Fatehpur Sikri was brought up (in terms of water movement across the site).

We would have a pin-up the Thursday of that week in which we were encouraged to test our ideas, come up with a environmental and social diagram, and draw lots of thumbnail sketches of how we imagine our structural logic. Our next significant critique would be on April 23rd with Ann Tate, the pre-final mockup on May 14th and the final critique on May 21st.

Recap: April: Caffeinated Soap and What We Do

Back on April 7th we had our "Living Unit" critique. Highlights included Erin and Melissa's caffeinated soap model, to which they replied, "It was raining, so we couldn't use resin." The emphasis on this crit seemed to be mostly on water filtration. Lili mentioned the city of Fez in Morocco that is designed to flush out periodically (though its method is impromptu). Other highlights were Morgan and Daisuke's "Living Shower", "monsoons-on-demand" (Kelly & I), living units as stormwater management (Stephen & Filomena), ghats as dwelling (Mike & Christian), manipulative walls (Devon & Colleen), Ji Hyun & Jong's water filtration as a grid, "distinguishing the generational transformation" (Bo Young & Atisha), community and individualism as a network (Shannon & Josh), Lizzy and Maren with their "wall as living unit", and Hao-Hsin's and Sally's idea of wall manipulation for experiential micro-climates.

What We Do

What We Do premiered at RISD on a torrential, rainy April 11th. As you might remember, it was a student-run initiative to show the RISD community and public what exactly we do in our various departments and disciplines. I suspect that the event was a response to either the real or perceived isolation that happens at the school. :)

Maren and Melissa volunteered to give a powerpoint presentation on our trip to India. There was an initial hardware problem, but eventually the WhatWeDo people got the projector working. One of the things presented was the "questions for the studio" probably better known to all of us as "The Mutiny" which happened during our trip. I never blogged about it because I failed to understand why people were upset. Now I can finally understand the hullabaloo from the following slide:

If you can't read it, it says:

• Why Kalighat?
• Why the red light district?
• What is its significance if we are complety re-designing the area?
• How do we know and design for the needs of the people of Kolkata?
• Should this be designed by Indians?
• What can we do with the canal?
• Have you seen the canal?
• Really?
• Are we housing the people we're displacing with the project?
• How do you design a site-specific, hypothetical model to be applied elsewhere?
• How do we treat site-specificity in this case?
• How do we maintain all of the religious needs of the site--processing sacrificed goats, running bodies to the crematorium, etc--while making it a comfortable place for tourists?
• Do we design for those necessities?
• What do we do with trash?
• Do we design a new sewer/sewage system for the area?
• How do we deal with our own emotional and physical discomfort while analyzing the site?
  

The next post will cover our Mid-Term critique on April 14th. Stay tuned!

The End*

* Not quite. :)

We had our Final Presentation on May 21st. I intend to give every studio presentation its own entry and I'm waiting to get some items from Lili. So stay tuned :)

In the next post I'll be updating everything that transpired from April 6th to May 20th. Yay!!! Finally!!! After I post the 13 planned entries for the 21st, I'll also be doing do some postings for the final for Design for Development and I might continue to post periodically about our upcoming Kolkata presentation package, due end of June 2009.

So what is this mysterious Kolkata presentation? It's simply (heh, not that simple) putting together everybody's studio concepts in a, what I'll call a "digestible for community understanding" package to be sent to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. That means creating or creating more contextual diagrams that would make our concepts easier to understand. I guess you'll understand what that means once I post everybody's projects :)

Thanks for patiently waiting!!

The Return to Providence

We arrived back in the US after a long and arduous flying journey. Many of us subsequently fell ill, or were ill and continued to be so for several days. We did not have studio on Tuesday for this very reason. Thursday's studio was a fragmented return to the life at RISD. I say so because Thursday, April 2nd, was also our department's open house for this year's incoming class and with the events all day, studio got off to a slow start. Many of us were still dreadfully tired and sick but we mustered to the best of our ability to begin our return studio assignment:

A UNIT OF MEASURE.

This short design problem is an opportunity to identify the essential and driving components of a “living unit” as a way to (1) assess the carrying capacity of the land, (2) organize the spatial functions of the given program and (3) consider the practicability of built typologies at a comprehensive level prior to responding to the larger planning strategies.

We have learned through our mapping that it is almost impossible to study a dataset without referencing several others that are intrinsically linked. You might also say that the same is true in devising a system of operations for a site and its program.

For example, one might imagine quickly the articulation of the ground would immediately confront the question of surface drainage, its requisite contour and its material composition. The same might be said through the means of crafting a roofline which would systematically deal with the mitigation of rain, sunlight and ventilation etc.

Finding a way to control and regulate what might otherwise be a problem into a resource can formulate a unit of measure or a design imperative for an otherwise complex and deeply encrusted site.

Choose one or several compatible unit/system relationships that you might anticipate for the project. Consider the relationship between a localized condition (unit) vs. a shared/communal one (infrastructure). For example, does the "living unit" mitigate the climatic conditions of the site throughout the use of blinds/screens or is it done through the infrastructure of the project (Central A/C?) Does each individual unit collect potable water for its occupant load or is it supplied centrally through a cistern with filtration?

Can this lead to a tangible strategy for developing the site and furthermore how is that relationship manifest in architectural form? What material and labor might be required for such a unit and how are its users related in its daily or seasonal function? (I.e. Does the user simply flip an electronic switch or does it require a physical act to make it function?) The "living unit" can shape the directives of the urban systems through its exigencies just as the limits of a system will, to a great part, determine the underlying constraints of the unit.

For this assignment we ask that you do not to simply plan out a strategy but attempt to build it. Workings in pairs consider the unit first as a diagram and then quickly attempt to build a concept model to scale. The “site” is an imaginary edge on the right bank of the Adi Ganga canal. As you build the model of the unit, simultaneously attempt to draw the section thought it while developing the narrative of compatible unit/system relationships.

Schedule
April 2nd Working Desk crits in pairs.
April 6th Group Review of models and diagrams
April 9th Proposals for site strategies with a unit of measure.

I'll leave you with Nate's exhaustive collection of photographs he took in Kolkata with his D-SLR. I think he wins the award of the most articulate collection for the six days he documented (he later got sick so he wasn't in a position to continue). I've linked directly to each of the six sets he has posted on Flickr, representing the six days he shot:

JFK, Dubai, Kolkata - Day 1 (36 hours)

Kolkata - Day 2

Kolkata - Day 3

Kolkata - Day 4

Kolkata - Day 5

Kolkata - Day 6

I'd highly recommend clicking on the slideshow link. Ah, and sit back with your milk and cookies, there's a lot of 'em!

Day Nine - শ্তভযাত্রা (śtabho jātrā) - Bon Voyage

Our last day in Kolkata, India. We had to board the bus to the airport at 5pm but that meant we were free for the rest of the day. I went with Lili, Mike, and Atisha to see Howrah in the morning. Howrah is on the west bank of the Hooghly River and is very often left out when any discussions arise on the topic of Kolkata. It is frequently omitted from maps as well. This neglect is physically evident when you're there in person.The stench on this side of the city is overwhelmingly worse than in any other place in Kolkata. We purposely went out to see the bustees but I don't think we found them. What we did find were narrow streets, tall buildings, and a densely packed atmosphere. Raw sewage flowed openly in the channels on the edges of the streets. There was little regard for hygiene. Black flies were everywhere.
The photographs I chose to post here do not illustrate the things I describe. I was not feeling up to the task of documenting such things, but the others did so.
I spent the afternoon with Mike and Atisha at a mall. Atisha noted that we saw a highly one-sided perspective of India and she wanted to show us another side. I was surprised to see Baskin Robbins there. Mike and I had pizza from Pizza Hut Express. I think we felt quite saturated eating Bengali/Indian cuisine continuously for nine days. Perhaps it would be fitting to end this trip with an image taken on our way to the airport...

In the interest of present-day time synchronization, Day Nine was Saturday, March 28th.

Day Eight - American Center

Our presentation at the American Center (a part of the US Consulate) was at 10:30 but we had to get there an hour earlier for security checks. I took a taxi with Erin and we ended up going to the US Consulate and not the American Center. It wasn't until we got through a few security checkpoints that they realized, and we realized, that we were at the wrong complex. The American Center, although linked to the US Consulate, is in a building a few blocks away. Keep that in mind in case your taxi driver sends you to the wrong place :)

The presentation to the Consulate Staff and others was much like the presentation to the CBE -- essentially the same content but we had more time to talk in depth of our Atlas.

Lili began the presentation and Nick and Jonathan added their own words as well. I've transcribed both of their speeches; starting with Jonathan:

Good morning.

I am Jonathan Highfield, associate professor of post-colonial literatures and head of the Department of English at Rhode Island School of Design. I have published essays and literature from Australia, Botswana, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, among others. My work looks at the legacies of colonialism and the ways in which artists and writers working after the official colonial era attempt to repossess the culture and its physical manifestations for the people.

In the seminar attached to Narrative Flows I set up my readings designed to provide the class with the cultural, historical, and social background of Bengal so they had a context within which to design their project. We began with Bengali folktales, a history of the East India Trading Company and Kolkata, and readings on the cultural history of the city. We moved from there to read essays, letters, and short stories of Tagore and Mallaran's novel A River Called Titash. We anchored these readings in fiction with Homi Bhabha's work on hybridity, Gayatri Spivak's discussion of the Subattern, and Arundhati Roy's Power Politics.

There are three students solely in the seminar traveling with us: Danielle Cox, Jordan Seaberry, and Jessica Wu. There are also two students in both the seminar and one at the two associated studio courses: Sally Harman and Winston Mi. Each has brought a unique perspective to the seminar and their enthusiasm and opinions have driven the course and made my time teaching in Kolkata stimulating and enjoyable.
While in Kolkata, the seminar students have worked on mapping the area socially, not only looking at Kalighat but trying to understand human interaction across the entire city. By talking to people across a range of professions and experiences, they have tried, in the best tradition of the Liberal Arts, to keep the human at the heart of their inquiry.

Ten days is not enough to even begin to understand a series of communities as complex, as overlapping and competing, as changing as Kolkata. By talking to people about their work and aspirations and responding in kind, we hope that we have begun a dialogue with the people of the city, whose lives, successes, and struggles are not as hypothetical as this design project.

After the presentations we laid out the Atlas and had a lively discussion with everyone there. Here are Nick's words describing the Atlas:

I would like to speak briefly about what we are calling “The Atlas” and its pedagogical objectives in our framework for the studio course.

Firstly, the “Atlas”, which is basically a series of experimental maps, is the medium we have chosen to communicate our understandings and perception of our site and its various scales (global, national, regional, urban and neighborhood scales).

Although maps sometimes appear authoritative and purely objective; commonly they are biased and didactic. With this understanding we have approached this exercise with the precept that all maps must ask questions; that no single map can contain all the data sets for a given situation.

No single authorship can comprehend the complexity and superimpositions in a given territory. We feel therefore the “atlas” as a consolidation of the group's findings might facilitate the broadest possible spectrum of data.
Historically speaking, the map is a transcription of what is known or understood and attempts to summarize, quantify, and qualify a territory or condition – not through the use of verbal description or mathematics but through the language of code figures and pictures. So what might otherwise be a complex and advanced topic to discuss with any brevity. The map attempts to display its measurable relationships in an abbreviated yet concise fashion.

Not surprisingly, the cartographer or map maker was one of the most prized artisans in Renaissance Europe for their ability to take the experiences of explorers and translate their stories into meaningful and useful templates for others. So they might determine the topography; resources and cultures of unknown lands and permit new explorers to navigate through them with care.

I also would like to note that these maps are not empirical, or derived through experience but were developed at a great distance from Calcutta utilizing information we have collected from the internet, primary source materials, photographs, journals, as well as the stories and opinions of those who have traveled here before.

Furthermore, and most importantly perhaps is that all maps tell stories. Hopefully our database of narrations in graphic form may prove helpful or imperative in the service for our project in Kalighat of its critical objectives.

We are only in the primary phases of our analysis and now that the students have had the opportunity to test their assumptions in situ, our mapping process begins anew.
I really have no idea why I was a focus of these photographs. Must be my glowing personality :) I think it was just my sharp tunic purchase from West Side. :D These photographs were graciously supplied by Mr. Moulik D. Berkana, Deputy Director to the American Center.

We had the afternoon free again. Some went shopping I heard. I went back to Kalighat for a final time with Hao-Hsin to sketch out some sections in the perpendicular alleys to the Adi Ganga Canal.
The built typologies were more tightly integrated here than elsewhere. There were some curious structures/remnants of structures that we found. We also mapped out some shrines that found themselves at the apparent-end of an alley. I say apparent-end because the alley wove around like snake; one was not immediately aware of its continuation. We both felt more comfortable with this visit as previous visits we felt like intruders. This may have been because of a different time of day or perhaps either us or them were more comfortable with our presence.I leave Day Eight with this photograph of an Kalighat artisan drying his wares...

In the interest of present-day time synchronization, Day Eight was Friday, March 27th.

Day Seven - The Hooghly River, Jute, and Bricks

The boat in the foreground was our river tour boat. We were doing this tour in conjunction with Calcutta Walks, the tour group we walked Dalhousie Square earlier in the week. The weather was pleasant as it was much cooler on the river.

We had breakfast (the fruitcake was amazing!) and lunch on the boat.Our first destination was the Jute Mill. Jute is a sustainable fiber that has a lot of potential for our site. There was a rhythmic "tum-ta-tum-ta-tum-ta-tum" here on the top of the roof, standing on a viewing platform.
Inside, the sound turned anxious with floating specks of jute fiber and machine cacophony.

Alas, I cannot provide you the feeling of being there -- the thudding and clacking of machinery, but perhaps this video can give you an idea...

The fragrance throughout the entire (interior) complex was one of fabric dipped in mineral spirits. No... that's not quite right.

We anticipated seeing a crafts village... but, the village which belonged to the Jute Mill was the crafts village and it was simply uninspiring. Our boat guide made a quick call and we steamed over to the community of Akra to see a brickyard.
A fisherman's boat above. Lest you forget that you're in a democratically-elected Communist state...

The brickyard... each of those bricks are cast by hand...The oven. We're standing around it.
When we got back to Kolkata, most of us spent the afternoon shopping :D

In the interest of present-day time synchronization, Day Seven was Thursday, March 26th.

Day Six - Zoo, Jadavpur, and CBE

We had the morning free but were told that we had to be at the Fine Arts Academy by 4:30pm for the Centre for the Built Environment (CBE) group presentation. I believe there were at least three groups -- one went off to Jadavpur University to see their program, one went off for shopping, and the third went off to the Zoo. Guess where I went? :)

The top image is the Nilgai, and just above is the Sarus Crane. Both native to south/south-east Asia. We couldn't go to the Sundarbans so we got to see the Bengal Tiger in it's "emulated" habitat...

And the star attraction is.... hippos! Please note that I'm only an advocate of hippos being in zoos for the sake of the gene pool, research and education (for those who cannot go to Africa and the hippos in their native habitat).
Mama hippo and baby hippo! The baby hippo is on the right, in what looks like a protrusion from the water edge.And of course, we're in India -- so no trip to the zoo would be complete without seeing the Indian elephant! Here's a photo shoot of Mike's shenanigans... :)

Jadavpur University, Architecture Department

The other group went to Jadavpur University's Architecture Department to see what they do there. I was told by Josh and Matt that walking into that place was like walking into an abandoned building -- all the desks were empty and had a thick film of dust on them. There were only two architecture students around and even they had very little to show. The image below I assume to be from one of their architecture studios:

International Seminar: Water and City

The seminar on Water and City was meant to be a significantly larger program. I believe there were plans to co host a conference on water at RISD and Brown but things fell through except for having a landscape/architecture studio/seminar course and this seminar in which the Centre for the Built Environment (CBE) presented some of its scholars and their research.

The presenters for CBE were:

• Dr. Barendra Purkait, Director, Publication Division, Geological Survey of India, Kolkata. He discussed "Deltaic Alluvial Plain of West Bengal - Some Environmental Issues"
  
• Dr. S.P. Sinha Ray, CBE Water Studies, with "Ground Water of Kolkata Metropolitan Area"
• Parthan R. Das -- which I didn't notate the title quickly enough, but he had a graphically rich presentation on built river edges. I personally thought that some of his ideas were very questionable from a landscape architect perspective, especially in terms of the reactions of a built edge to flooding, but I was definately impressed with the quality of his work. It was a pity that he did not have more time to discuss his slides, since he showed at least a 100 slides!
• Architect Sobhanlal Bonnerjee, CBE, with "Canals and Waterways in and around Kolkata Metropolitan District"
• Dr. Shivashish Bose, Dept. of Architecture, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, with "Urban Flooding, Case Study: Kolkata"

Then we Jonathon and Nick present, followed by a representative selection from our class to show the atlas we had been working on since the start of the semester. I should add that Lili (Elizabeth Dean Hermann) gave the first talk as way of introduction. We ended the seminar with an explanation of Design for Development.

New Light

Dearest Readers: many apologies for the lapse in posts. I had caught the "oh-dear-Kolkata's-air-is-so-polluted" sickness that is so pervasively rampant in city. The addition of sporadically working wireless delayed the posts as well.

As was previously mentioned in the Design for Development post, one of the projects is the Interwoven Storytelling project, led by Joann, Coleen, Atisha, and Devon. The project is attempting to provide a sustainable model for perserving the local cultural traditions of textiles, generating income for those communities and for education of these traditions.

There are four phases to the project, the first was completed in Providence and the second phase was tested in Kalighat over two nights. The first night (day four) had the kids of New Light [these are children of the red light workers] use the printing blocks created in Providence on paper.

The group then unveiled the tapestry created in Providence from those printing blocks, but created by RISD students before we left for Kolkata.Colleen and Devon, from the Interwoven group. Maren, Shannon, Matt, Mike, and others were the very patient volunteers. The kids were crazy!
Yours truly giving out crayons above. Some of the kids and their creations below.