RURAL STUDIO PROJECT

Conducted and Coordinated by NIASA, Pune and KRVIA, Mumbai.

Phase I WORKSHOP

 Dates :  18^th January to 28^th January 2010

Venue: NIASA, Pune.

 Registration Fees:

Rs. 3000/- (Excluding acommodation)

Rs. 5000/- (Including shared acommodation)

Introduction

The rural landscape of our country is fast undergoing transformation. The rural landscape and the farmer communities living therein is faced with the dual challenges due to contemporary form of urbanization and industrialization. These forms of development which are gigantic as well as authoritarian seem to dislocate rural communities, manipulate the resources on which these communities have hitherto survived and transform the environment in way which are clearly unsustainable. This has, in the recent past, lead to a lot of dissatisfaction among rural communities, who have been left out from this paradigm of development, which has been characterized by the extension of the urban areas, in the form of the urban sprawl, and has seemed to engulf all our metropolitan peripheries where such rural communities exist. It has never been able to explore the possibilities of integrating the existing rural with the urban in a symbiotic manner.

Aim and Objective

The aim of the research project of the rural studio is to explore the possibilities of creating an imagination of development where the rural communities could participate equally in the process by involving them. The benefits of development should also come to them.

The objective would be to strengthen the identity of these communities by reinforcing or even transforming, if required, their present activity base and preparing a plan for their development, so that they can seamlessly integrate with the urban. This could also probably help to create a new imagination of the urban which would be more self sufficient and sustainable.

To achieve this it would be necessary to work closely with these communities, comprehend and document the natural and manpower resources they possess, their physical environment, their immediate context, and finally help them to prepare sustainable development alternatives. It would work at various levels starting from helping them to prepare a new organizational system, followed by new architectural programs, exploring the use of recent and relevant technologies to construct and also help them prepare area level development plans.

The other aim of the project would be to disseminate the finding of this research within  a wider audience (publication). Thus, it is suggested that this project should be closely done in collaboration with educational institutions, government agencies at the local level and with local communities. This would help in sustaining the effort.

Proposed Work Plan

It is proposed that this research project would be initiated at various locations in the country by the National Institute for Advanced Studies in Architecture, Pune. The issue stated above is quite common in our country, but it has manifested itself in various forms in various locations. Thus addressing it in a wider perspective will help us understand the phenomenon better and come up with a wide range of solutions.

The Rural Studio will have three Phases:

Phase 1: The Workshop Phase in which research ideas will be formulated.

Phase 2 : The Independent Research Phase;

Phase 3 : The Dissemination Phase.

Phase I WORKSHOP - 18^th January to 28^th January 2010

Research Formulation Phase

In this phase the aim would be to get interested faculty members and resource persons on a common platform – through the workshop - to discuss research ideas that could turn into full fledged research proposals.

Simultaneously the faculty members and resource persons would formulate and conduct a collaborative study in one rural area during the workshop. It would be conducted in villages preferably situated in the peripheries of metropolitan centers.

The workshop, in its initial phase, would focus on:

In subsequent phases of the workshop, the focus would be on:

1. Exploring the use of local resources to achieve the identified projects.
2. The workshop could probably end with a construction of an architectural element executed through the use of local material and skills.

The workshop for the Rural Studio Project would be structured in three parts.

1. ‘Discussions’ (3 days)

The attempt is to open-out the conceptualisation of the ‘rural’ and discuss various tendencies of interventions in rural contexts arising out of such conceptualizations. The aim of these discussions is to generate a debate that problematizes existing conceptualizations and raise fresh research questions regarding rural contexts from within the discipline of architecture.

In the first part, the workshop will be evolve various methods of documentation and preparation of a resource plan for a village.

The latter part of these discussions is devoted to formulating multiple lenses through which the ‘rural landscapes’ and the questions regarding them could be critically examined.

2. ‘Field Studies’ (3 days)

The second part of the studio would undertake exploratory studies of a rural setting based on the questions / concerns raised by the various participants and explore the potentials of one or more of the lenses in answering the research questions.

3. ‘Synthesis’ (4 days)

The final part of the workshop, would undertake a compilation / presentation of field study results and generate ideas for research proposals that could be developed by participants.

The final day would culminate in the participants writing and presenting a concept note (1000 words) sketching their research proposal.

Within the allotted time frame of one month a detailed research proposal is expected to be submitted to NIASA.