र.
(living heritage) · 2019–2020 · ambli · ahmedabad · 14 communities (close)

Living Heritage

what are the invisible boundaries inside a village, and where do they overlap?

(role)
embedded fieldwork · participatory systems mapping
(period)
2019–2020
(context)
ambli · ahmedabad · 14 communities
(status)
excellence award
The village, whole. Interventions sited only where the boundaries overlapped. fig.01
The village, whole. Interventions sited only where the boundaries overlapped.
(opening)

Co-design to revive and strengthen collective spatial associations.

Ambli is an urban village on the western edge of Ahmedabad: fourteen communities inside forty thousand square metres, and a set of boundaries between them that no plan records.

Ambli's evolution, 1800 to 2019. The city arriving at the village edge, mapped from residents' accounts. fig.02
Ambli's evolution, 1800 to 2019. The city arriving at the village edge, mapped from residents' accounts.
(00) context

The system nobody had mapped

Urban villages inside Indian cities change fast once the city reaches them. Long-time residents move to the new neighbourhoods next door, the care for the old houses and open spaces goes with them, and the fabric decays.

Months in the village before proposing anything about it. Mostly with children: playing, listening, helping with homework. fig.03–06
Months in the village before proposing anything about it. Mostly with children: playing, listening, helping with homework.
(01) embed

Access before research

Access came before research. Months inside the settlement, mostly with the children, playing, listening, helping with homework, before proposing anything about it.

Mostly with children: playing, listening, helping with homework. fig.03–06
Mostly with children: playing, listening, helping with homework.
(01) embed

Months in the village before proposing anything about it.

Mostly with children: playing, listening, helping with homework. fig.03–06
Mostly with children: playing, listening, helping with homework.
(01) embed

Months in the village before proposing anything about it.

Mostly with children: playing, listening, helping with homework. fig.03–06
Mostly with children: playing, listening, helping with homework.
(01) embed

Months in the village before proposing anything about it.

About two hundred drawings from the transect walk, sorted by what they show: the ambli tree, the temple gate, the chabutra, the playground, a lane where a game happens. Together they are a map of what the children of Ambli are attached to. fig.07
About two hundred drawings from the transect walk, sorted by what they show: the ambli tree, the temple gate, the chabutra, the playground, a lane where a game happens. Together they are a map of what the children of Ambli are attached to.
(02) instrument

Participation as the instrument

How do you survey a boundary system that its own inhabitants will not name? The answer was to ask the people with the least reason to hide it and the most at stake in the outcome.

Perception map. The boundary mesh and its varying degrees of discernability. Blue: spaces generally liked; red: collectively not. fig.08
Perception map. The boundary mesh and its varying degrees of discernability. Blue: spaces generally liked; red: collectively not.
(03) locate

The mesh, and where it overlaps

Laid over the community boundaries, the drawings showed the few places claimed by more than one group. The boundaries have degrees: some are walls, some are habits.

Attachments overlaid against community boundaries to locate the pockets of overlap. fig.09
Attachments overlaid against community boundaries to locate the pockets of overlap.
(03) locate

Strategy.

The workshop call. Re-imagining Ambli, 22.09.19. For kids, aged 5 and above. fig.10
The workshop call. Re-imagining Ambli, 22.09.19. For kids, aged 5 and above.
(04) co-design

Designing into the overlap

Posters went up at ten places around the village, and the children came to the temple hall at the entrance.

What the children built, in lego, on the sites their own drawings had identified. fig.11
What the children built, in lego, on the sites their own drawings had identified.
(04) co-design

Co-design.

The model. The village whole, with the interventions built into the pockets where the boundaries overlap. fig.12
The model. The village whole, with the interventions built into the pockets where the boundaries overlap.
(05) model
Play, grow, celebrate together. Shade, water and community; food, learning and sustainability; culture, expression and belonging. fig.13
Play, grow, celebrate together. Shade, water and community; food, learning and sustainability; culture, expression and belonging.
(05) model

The interventions.

(outcome)
Non-programmatic play structures carrying micro-climate functions, greenhouses, water harvesting, study areas, small farms, sited only in the pockets where more than one community's attachments overlapped.
(recognition)
CEPT University Student Excellence Award. The jury: “identified and mapped the invisible and virtual boundaries and thresholds that exist in our communities … through the resultant mesh, he identified pockets of potentiality and greater commonality.”
(what I'd do next)
Go back five years on, run the same exercise with the next set of children, and redraw the map. Did the pockets hold, and did the children who drew them stay in the village?
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