Buniyaad - architecture as resilient framework

Project idea

A framework for resilience, Buniyaad identifies cities as more than the totality of their moving parts. Investigating said parts in Bhopal, a city at the heart of India, the proposal comments on the need for an interlacing - agile, adaptive, and polyvalent framework to effectively dissipate temporal stresses.

Project description

People, Nature, Network, Buildings, Data, Infrastructure, Power. A city’s identity is manifold, and its parts considered explicitly are always at contest with one another. These contests maintain a delicate balance and flow amongst the parts - any disruption between which leads to stress in the city.

Buniyaad identifies said parts in Bhopal, a city at the heart of India and further investigates a scenario where a disruption in one has led a fracture in the city’s flow through the disjunction of the part itself.
The Aalmi Tableeghi Ijtema, a four day festivity involving preaching of Islamic teachings, leads to a temporal 40% increase in the population. The resultant stress was deemed overbearing on its historic location surrounding Taj-Ul Masajid in the old city. Owing to which the Ijtema is currently hosted in the outskirts at Islamnagar.

This shift demands a greater networked infrastructure, pollutes the existing ecological system, and deprives greenfields of a sustainable crop. After expanding 30 times in area in less than two decades, the event faces a space crunch and seeks yet another location.
The Ijtema is an ephemeral part flowing in limbo, one that seeks resolution.

Buniyaad identifies resilience as the ability to restore balance between the city's parts by reinstating the Ijtema to its original location, one that continues to live in memory.

Technical information

The architecture is mobilised against its conventional rigid framework to form a flexible, adaptive, and polyvalent body, such that it caters to disruption through tactical and decentralised ephemeral urbanism. The proposal develops the rerooted Ijtema as an ephemeral city existing vertically above on the old city’s underutilised terraces, an approach that 78% of the demographic appreciated based on a conducted survey. The ephemeral city relies on the old city for space and services, giving back an economic and infrastructural return.

For a better understanding of the flow between moving parts, the proposal suggests parts be identified as interlaced parameters - Socio-cultural, Ecological, and Economic, not as explicit and isolated entities.

01. Socio-Cultural: Mosques, a recurring typology in the area are identified as nodes to be woven together in a network of reliance and interdependence. A conscious understanding also establishes a network of non-muslim community nodes for minority communities, as relief points for urban acupuncture.

02. Ecological: The deteriorating historically significant system of three terraced lakes; Motia Talab, Noor Mahal Talab, & Munshi Hussain Talab, are brought to attention through the engagement of identified stakeholders.

03. Economic: As an effective resource management strategy to empower the old city through its own resources, an existing system of material and craftsmen is catalysed. This system facilitates the circular flow of energy, waste and other resources such that it creates a zero-waste metabolism.

The resultant is a framework of existing systems that effectively dissipate temporal stress, a multistability.

Co-authors

Gunraagh Singh Talwar, Melanie Marshal, Ananya Vachher, E'lina Liza, Shailesh Singh, Safia Rehman, Diksha Garg