architectural compositions in tropical monsoonal ground
About the Study
This study began with the premise that the ongoing challenges of climate change demand that we rethink and rework many of the concepts, methods, and practices in the field of architecture.
These include the large-scale infrastructure projects being implemented across different geographies, the dystopian architectural imaginations, the data-driven modeling practices that are informing architectural inquiries, as well as inquiries into building techniques and materials for ‘future-proofing’ against climate change.
The Field
This Settlement Study was conducted in the tropical monsoonal grounds of Chellanam and Kumbalangi–two villages situated on the southern outskirts of Kochi. Chellanam is a narrow strip of land located along the confluence of the Arabian Sea and the Vembanad Lake, with households engaging primarily in fishing and small-scale agricultural activities. Kumbalangi is a fishing village known for its chinese fishing techniques, demonstrating craft of making boats and fishing nets and attracts tourists throughout the year. The terrain is primarily composed of brackish water that flows from east and from west through a complex system of estuaries and canals.
Over the past few years, this geography has been experiencing different challenges as a result of climate change, including frequent floods and cyclones, coastal erosion, drought coupled with high rainfall in short periods, unseasonal rains, changing among others. These climate change related challenges have triggered shifts across different dimensions of life, including: changes in built forms, construction techniques, and building materials; changes in economic activities, networks, and practices; changing vegetational and marine lives; increased in and out migration and changes in relationships between communities; and most importantly, implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects to fight climate change.
Architectural Compositions: A Conceptual Framework
Architectural Compositions in Tropical Monsoonal Grounds (ACTMG) began with an expanded notion of architecture. It understood architecture not simply as constructing built form, but as the will and act of constructing relationships between different human and other-than-human entities. The study was guided by the following questions, with a specific reference to the villages of Chellanam and Kumbalangi, Kerala: How do we map the changing spatial relationships between human and other-than-human life in the context of “climate change”in tropical, monsoonal grounds?
How can we map a settlement and its built-forms as manifestations of changing relationships between different life-forms? What kinds of temporal rhythms are these different life-forms located in? How do we study spatial forms with the expanded notion of architecture? And lastly, what are the architectural compositions in tropical monsoonal grounds, and how can they help us revise the dominant understandings of “built-form”, “settlement,” and “climate change?”
Concepts, Methods, and Findings
The study was conducted using different conceptual and methodological devices at different stages.
Dérive: The students were divided into 8 groups. Each group was asked to undertake a long, slow, purposeless walk from across the two villages. Walking as a mapping method draws upon conceptualisations of derive as a drift without predetermined goals that encounter practices of everyday life. Along the way, each group identified different other-than-human entities: terrain, built forms, work practices, religious buildings, gendered entities, plants, animals, insects, fishes, heat, smells, sounds, infrastructures, elements of public life, and so on. At the end of this stage, each group narrowed down on one entity, which they followed through the rest of the field study. These included: Tide, Heat, Harbour, Vegetation, Edges, Sound, Dilapidated Structures, and Water Bodies.
Rhythms: The second stage was guided by a series of questions on time: What are the different temporal rhythms (circadian, seasonal, annual, cosmological, everyday, event, long-duree) in the life of this entity? These rhythms were studied through observations, informal conversations, drawings, photographs, and sound recordings. The findings helped understand how the rhythm of each entity is interrelated with those of others. These others include insects, birds, cycles of different types of vegetation, religious festivals, fish breeding cycles, tidal and lunar cycles, cycles of human migration, and so on.
Networks: Next, each group studied the forward and backward linkages that connect the entity to the other. The aim was to study the relationships and interdependencies between different human and other-than-human entities, as well as the form of assemblages that emerge in the process. These networks were documented through semi-structured interviews, unstructured interviews with different residents, government officials, as well as secondary research. The networks documented by different groups include: economic linkages, infrastructural linkages, environmental dependencies, gravitational forces, and so on. What emerges through them is a sense of the nature of relationships between different entities and how they affect each other.
Spatial Affordances: The last stage of the field study focussed primarily on built forms. Here built forms referred not just to buildings, but the spatial interplay between human and other-than human entities, and the forms that this interplay takes in different instances. These included hardening of edges, abandonment and repair, intertidal habitational forms, household microclimatic spaces, among others. These were documented using photographs and drawings.
Drawing Architectural Compositions
Post-fieldwork, the documentation (photos, interviews, sketches, videos, and audio recordings) became the basis to explore the larger question asked in the course: What are the many architectural compositions in the tropical monsoonal geographies of Chellanam and Kumbalangi? These explorations involved using different representational techniques to find what best suited each entity and how do you use drawing to compose experience, rhythms, networks, and spatial interplay.