Mentors : Ravindra Punde, Dipti Bhaindarkar, Sabaa Giradkar, Rhea Shah & Design Jatra
-Dhanvi Shah, Dipti Bhaindarkar & Sabaa Giradkar
The studio intended to explore the sensitive environment, terrain and geography of the Veti village in Murbad, Maharashtra and focus on individual ecological processes and other systems that encompass cycles. The attempt was to understand, map and negotiate the boundary between these natural forces and how they are influenced by human interventions and activities and vice versa. A larger question of scale and boundaries in transient and dynamic environments was raised in order to invent a new language of communication that is expansive, inclusive, networked, connected and coherent.
As a method the students were divided into groups of two students and each group generated the perceptual maps of Veti where the study focused around twenty different lenses to generate the narratives of socio-cultural, political, economical life of the people in the village. Some of these lenses were landscape of trade and commerce, myths and spiritualities, local vocabulary, vegetation and terrain, biodiversity. The narratives or the perception maps were crafted with the help, field research and first hand experiences of a local design practice in the region of Murbad.
The different lenses and their central narratives are as follows,
1. Merging Geographies: Landscape of Trade
Govinda Agarwal and Dhruv Sachala
This map reflected the various commercial activities happening in the backyard of the house like growing bamboo and how the produce and the products made were sold at the peripheral market town and also to the North and West extreme regions within India.
2. Terrain and Practices
Khushi Singla and Bhoomi Bakarania
This narrative mapped the different varieties of crops grown on the different farmlands within the village and the practice of soil preparation, sowing, manuring, weeding, harvesting, storage.
3.Material Cycles
Yash Bhandari and Jay Kanti
This cyclic diagram builds connections and networks of material origin and ecological processes. It further cited the dependence and effects on community, living, social structure over time.
4.Occupation Cycles
Pratik Bharti and Shreya Mehta
This map narrated the processes of occupation cycles in the village. Varied practices ranging from agriculture, animal rearing, bamboo weaving and fish net making have a unique relationship with the space and the nature of enclosure. This map identified these pockets in the village to evaluate the relationship of the practice with the nature of the space.
5.Biodiversity: Flora
Ashwini Borkar and Charmi Mehta
This map identifies the 36 varieties of flora that grow along the farmlands, canals, settlements and forest across seasonal cycles in a year and along one of the transects of the village.
6.Myths and Stories
A Map of Rishabh Chajjar and Paras Burande
This map explored the stories of species, geographies and history. The investigation began with the question of What is a forest? This question dismantled the common perception of the forest as “wilderness” and at the same time ignites the ontological question of home, “the human habitat” and “civilization.” This narrative opens up living spheres of density, habitat, survival and festivals.
7.Associations
Pooja Dalal and Gunjan Shah
This map closely investigates the relationship between the humans, animals, and between animals and humans together. Cattles like goats, hens, buffaloes and cows and humans were studied for their routines and in relationship to each other. Negotiations where one villager gives its cattles to the neighbour in need for farming activities and in return expects nothing right away but rather allows the possibility of seeking any other form of help in near future is identified as a gift economy system amongst the people.
8.Forest and vegetation
Drishti Desai and Arnav Mundhada
Forest is an ecosystem, it is a dense network of processes and cycles, dependencies and inter relationships. All the trees, shrubs, planters, climbers communicated with each other through a unique communication network of the root system.This map narrates these communication patterns between the roots, trunks, foliages, heights in one tree and amongst the flora.
9.Transgenerational Practices
Sakshi Sawant and Sail Jathar
The scrolls map the engagement with activities like farming, local entrepreneurship like making craft products with bamboo across the generations. It identifies that the seasonal migration to neighbouring towns opting for permanent and physically less laborious jobs in the neighbouring towns and cities has impacted the local inter-generational entrepreneurship activities negatively.
10.Air map
Kartiki Mahadik and Netra Khodke
The overlap of the microclimatic layers, the mapping of different odours in different places and the mapping of activities by the village diameter extending to the coast result in the composition of the air in different places of the village. This overlap forms a continuum of air that constantly changes its composition in different places and thus forms an airframe through which the village Veti village and the region can be perceived.
11. Communication, language and vocabulary
Neel Shah and Tejal Patil
Every place has a unique style of conversation and language. The vocabulary and dialect of the place also characterises the people and the meaning of their associations with the landscape .This map speculates the image of the region through informal conversations with the locals of this village.
12.Local Craft
Neha Nanwani and Nitisha Parakh
Cultivation of Bamboo, processing, harvesting, treatment, designing and articulation of artifacts, their export all these processes are narrated in this map.
13.Collapsing Human- Animal Habitat through their food security systems
Shivani Patil and Ria Shah
The reducing forest covers have forced the tigers to move from one forest to another. They pass the villages while on the move and spotting of tigers in the human dominant spaces spreads fear amongst the people and that has lead to killing of animals. Boars too have been identified returning to villages in search of food On the other hand humans over the decades have used forest and its resources for their food security. This demands the question whether the habitats are restricted to the forests or to the village lands for animals and humans respectively or that they in perception have already collapsed?
14.Built Form – Cycles and Rhythms
Samruddhi Pawar and Riddhi Shah
Veti Village demonstrates a unique process of built form. It is constructed and assembled with local material from the region. The same is dismantled and the material enters another cycle of manure production, fencing, construction etc.
15.Shifts in typology that affect the landscape
Gauri Sonar and Sneha Rathod
This map recorded the aspirations of the people and mapped the changing typology of the built form along with the effects on the environment – flora and fauna of the place
16.Socio-cultural: Festivals and Community events
Sharvri Raut and Preet Waghmare
Warli painting was used as a medium to record various events in the village. This map tried to construct narratives on socio cultural practices and decode the festival celebrations, their relationship with the space and mapped various event cycles throughout the region.
17.Home Beyond the Walls
Dhanvi Shah and Mohini Surve
The home stretched beyond the four walls thus the backyard became a storeroom and the plinth a place to hang out on summer afternoons, the chula in the front garden with ample daylight and the compound wall of Karvi which became the threshold for conversations with neighbours. This map built a cohesive and expansive narrative of the home and also demonstrated the relationship of climate and topography with the varying plinth heights.
18.Idea of Permanence
Diwakar Motwani and Ninad Thatte
The narrative attempts to convey the idea of permanence to villagers who believe that it is a cycle and not the lifespan of an object or building. It identifies the intrusions into these cycles and illustrates the conflict between the “conviction of the villager” and the “intrusions,” as well as the vital impact they have on the forest or resources.
19. Learning – Structure & Everyday
Shubh Sankla & Ruthveek Gangasagar
The map explored the intersection of two knowledge structures – one of local wisdom which consists of cultural practices like farming, maintenance of the house, carpentry and other is of formal knowledge structure that is inherited from the schools. These two knowledge structures and the gender roles have resulted in a shift in the socio-cultural landscape.
20. Hydrological Cycles
Smit Lakkad & Bharvi Shetye
The map explored the lens of hydrology which helped to understand different forms of wetness in the village, with a direct connection with the vegetation in different seasons, and different ground water conditions.
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