BLURRING THRESHOLDS
Faculty: Dipti Bhaindarkar, Anuj Daga and Freyaan Anklesaria
Blog Post by: Tanushree Bhagwat (A20-06)
ARGUMENTATIVE DATA:
The public toilet, pathology lab, and balwadi create alleyways and courtyard spaces along with neighbouring houses and workshops. These shared spaces witness an overlap of programs like storage, parking, gathering, and play. Various age groups and genders use and perceive this space differently. The kids play and move freely in the larger courtyard spaces where bikes, cycles, rickshaws and haath-gaadis are also parked. The women residing in this area tend not to move beyond the bounds of their homes and prefer staying inside. They generally occupy their thresholds and ootlas to watch over their kids playing in the open spaces in front of their houses. Women and young girls also use this space to do everyday chores and converse with others.
The men in this space inhabit it very differently. Unlike the women, they move and gather freely in various pockets at any time during the day.
ANALYTICAL DATA AND SITE FORCES:
The intent to design new spaces is driven by the thought of blurring the currently existing boundaries of gender in the space. Through experimentation of the type of thresholds, the question here is; What does it mean to construct an extended threshold, that develops beyond the edge? And how does it then encourage the softening of these stark social boundaries?
Design detail:
Rethinking multiple threshold conditions in the area while examining projects that experiment and redefine the typology of a threshold.
Generating a singular form that holds the various programs on-site without compartmentalizing them and providing a seamless sense of movement through the form.
The design is thought through the floor, roof and walls; creating spaces and volumes.
REFERENCES AND LEARNINGS:
DESIGN ITERATIONS:
DESIGN PLANS:
DESIGN SECTIONS AND ELEVATIONS:
MODEL:
