Alternative world: Re/imaging living with nature and time

University of Greenwich

Project idea

Back in history, Thames used to be greener than now. Its starts began to industrialize from that moment. At first, it starts from the north side and then the south side with the span of time. Due to the shallow depth of Thames, poor payment of laborers, the effects of World War II lead Thames's industrial era ended. During that timeline, Thames especially Anchor An Hub Lane changed its appearance from a natural jungle to a concrete jungle. At the end of the industrial era, authorities idealized riverside space for housing (public and private) and commercial sites. With the development of housing and commercial zone (especially factories), the Thames is experiencing a lack of green space and somehow it could not make that cognitive relationship with plants, rivers, and users. As a result, nature is still struggling to evolve itself as well as making a divine relationship with every element. “Development or system” creates the plays the big role to keep away to look within this divine relationship that balances the river environment.
These incidents remind me of a song by Rabindranath Tagore and it hit me hard. This song is about, “conversation between caged bird (cage-minded people) and free bird (nature). In this song, the free bird said the caged bird to blend into nature, free up in the sky and feel the blessings of nature! but ‘I cannot get out from the cage and I am afraid to come out! I even cannot fly!’, caged bird replied with sorrowly!”
Closely related to the present situation and cannot make us fly in the blessings of nature. But there is another story that triggered me to come out of this situation! The story is, “ Once there was a king who had been gifted two precious baby-bird by a king, for his royal victory. The king keeps them in his backyard and rearing up. One day he saw one of his birds flying in the sky and another was sitting on a brach. He was worried about its ‘health and flying’. He called vets, bird lovers to make it fly but everyone failed. He was so anxious about this. Suddenly the king heard about a farmer who grew plenty of crops in the history of his reign. The king thought he might have natural power and called him. On the appearance of a farmer, the king told him to make his bird fly anyhow and leave him in the backyard. The next morning the king came to his backyard and saw his two birds were flying! He was so happy and asked the farmer about how he made it possible? The farmer gently replied, ‘ I just cut the branch where it used to sit then it comes out from its comfort zone and begins to fly!’ The king becomes so pleased and awarded him with gold and money.”
The story gave me an insight, is no one really forgets it's by born instinct. It just needs a push or a situation that leads itself to fly high. So it just needs to have a ‘Situationistic Space’ which will lead the people to feel dissolve into nature, into oneness, feel the tangible relation in an intangible way, feel the blessings of nature as well as making the connection with the root ( historical evolution both nature and incident that take place in the space based on literature) and a connection with designed elements (based on site’s unheard stories). Therefore, idea was to connect the visitors, inhabitants ( both residentials and natural inhabitants) under the umbrella of nature, make a physible connection between the river, inland, and Waterland, history, memories with a peaceful freshness by ensuring possible positive benefit of technological advancement and let nature flow by itself into the heart of the city.

Project description

“There is no end, no ground scheme for these agents of change, just a cumulative towards further becoming,” James Corner 1997
This project aims to figure out the prerequisites or collective direct actions that can confront the environmental crises and urban inequities. More elaborately, possible design intervention that cares about nature and natural inhabitants, which aims to create a moment of wonder, bewilderment and enable alternative relationships, and hybridization between people, place, culture, memories, history, social, ecological, spatial, economic power-relations, material and earth. To create a r/evolutionary method, a part of the Anchor and hope lane community of Thames had chosen to make a conceptual entity to crack open those relationships and create an intervention to inspire new relations, processes, actions.

Technical information

Technically this project figures out the hidden elements that keep away the natural flow in spaces from underground level, ground level, mid or residential level, and sky level. However, land and Waterland edge detailing, maximization of soft surfaces, birds space, development of nature responsive column and foundation system, no leftover building elements on the earth after the life span, economically viable, sustainable, and most importantly design process act as a voice for non-voices were tried to achieve through design interventions from micro to the macro level. A bunch of visions that can turn the world livable for all and a possibility to make the world green again.