a place in the sun &
a place in the shade
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To understand the weather conditions in chellanam we analyse data for temperature, precipitation and wind over half a decade. The method to frame this data was through the idea of cyclical time. Each year is noted by concentric circles and each circle is divided into 12 quadrants, one for each month. The data gets annotated each year which produces an overall sense of weather conditions in chellanam. But when one starts to mark events of disaster, change and consequences, the whole cycle starts to spiral and starts producing nodes of disposition, erosion , loss, rehabilitation and changing patterns. For instance every household in chellanam had fruiting trees like mango and chikoo with dense foliage around the built form . But after cyclones that brought sea water in land the salinity of soil increased leaving such trees dead, repeating patterns of cyclones and floods has made residents hesitant to replant fruiting trees.
Afternoon to evening
During our field study in Chellanam,completely oblivious of the weather data. our constant instinct was to find a place of shade. We would look for shade in small shops along the road, under coconut trees, inbetweens of houses, and verandahs. As we worked along the course we realized that these conditions of ‘shade’ are microclimatic conditions formed by a configuration of elements like soil condition porosity and wetness, the type of built-form its materiality, and the configuration of foliage around it. These microclimates work in volumes. The volumes are perceived through experiences, assumptions and intuition.
The method to go about was to set an imagined grid of 10x10m on the landscape and record weather at 1-hour intervals and annotate perceived climatic conditions at each node of the grid. While making the drawing different elements get to read as layers. When all layers come together they form a perceived volume of a climatic condition.