The Open Box Project 3.0: City Stories is a five-day workshop held at the 61st Annual NASA Convention in Bengaluru in January 2019.
DAY 1
Introduction to Workshop
+
Questioning the norm
DAY 2
Cities in a New light
+
Visiting Old Bangalore
DAY 3
Developing and Organizing Data
+
Understanding the effect of Time
DAY 4
Production of Material
+
Conclusion
Tutored and curated by
Q: What is the workshop about?
City Stories is a research project of the Open Box Project collective that was initiated as a workshop at the 61st Annual Convention of the National Association of Students of Architecture in India.
4 Architects and 20 Students
Working together to explore, document and analyze the city from multiple lenses of its users. The objective was to create a discourse about the public realm in India, and the role that architects play in/for it.
.jpg)
Q: How would a world without Architects look like?
A: “We are the diagonal in the world of horizontal and vertical.
We are the weird, crazy, impulsive and neon in the masses of whites.
A world without architects would be like a black and white movie,
a story without the passion of vibrant hues.”
Q: What is Architecture?
Who is an Architect?
A: Architecture is common sense
Architects are transcribers of that common sense
Q: What are Urban cities?
What are the Layers of Urban Spaces?
A: Urban cities are the epicenters of Human aspirations.
They can be understood by their built - Infrastructure, zoning and connections
And the unbuilt - the People
Time
Senses . . .
The Students were divided into groups to study the different layers of the old city. We took up the 1km stretch of Avenue road as our area of study and analyzed different aspects of it.
Avenue Road, Bengaluru
Avenue road
It is one of the oldest Market streets of Bengaluru. It is a cultural and social node that connects the economic centers to the rest of the state.
During the conception of the city, this was the chief arterial road.
Now, it is the site of all commercial activities -
retail to wholesale,
perishables to non perishables.
Anything you desire you will be sure to find it here, tucked away in a shelf of some tiny corner shop.
An Old Temple out of place in Time.
Sounds are the unique unobserved experience of a space that is perceived subconsciously.
Just like the smell of a place.
Along with Arnav Dasaur, we recorded the sounds of Avenue road.
The haggling of women, the calling of the hawkers, the bargains and colors of the wares, the excitement of buying new things.
The worry of a mother, for the food that she buys, the neglect of the others as they just walk, passing by, the crying of a child full of want and desire, the convincing of the seller that draws you in, closer
These are the sounds that describe our streets, those full of loud exotic music
These are the abstraction of what we see
And these are the ones that make it unique.
Little things that we forget exists
We pass them,
See them,
Feel them,
But don’t recognise them
To those forgotten and often ignored
The sounds of the city that make it a whole.
Illustration of Avenue road
Recordings and text by Anoushka Shome and Arnav Dasaur
Recordings edited by Joonas Parviainen
Photos by Anirudh Magesh
0:00
Amidst the chaotic traffic lies the Bangalore Fort. Protected from the onslaught by its high and mighty walls, creating tranquility inside that amplifies the ringing of the anklets passing in subtlety.
1:14
From the moment you exit the fort, your surrounded by a myriad of sounds: the buses, the cars, the autos. The hustle and bustle changes from vehicles to the people as we enter into the walkway, transported to immediately to a market. The vivid colors of street market drowning the vehicular bus.
2:07
Call of the hawker trying to find out its own identity is a moment of transition.
As we move onto the road we enter the vehicular domain. Flanked by the vehicles on all sides, the honks all around, overwhelms the space as the vehicles speed by.
3:19
As we leave the crossing behind, the pounding of our heart mellows. Finding a safe zone amongst the hawker cries and the buyers high. The road turns into as it swallows you up gently and unknowingly into its vibrant space.
4:11
Throughout the street the honking persists. With the selling of the merchandise and pedestrian traffic, it compounds into a disturbance of the mind. Solace found only in the silent chirping of the birds nearby.
6:45
As we walk past different sellers, the music of the wind chimes fills our ears, invoking nostalgia from the deepest part of our hearts leaving a bittersweet taste as we proceed on.
The street continues, opening up into a four cross junction. We are met with a myriad of sounds, and with the source of whistling sound that followed us here. In a crossing full of vendors of different wares, the bass of the sugarcane juice stall reverberates through our body, while a lone balloon sellers attempt at advertising peaks our curiosity. The sounds of a deflating balloon that drew us there.
8:22
The quality of space and idea of the street transforms as we leave the vibrant junction behind. The sounds hush in a silent murmur as the stores change from attractive clothes and random to egoistic gold and silver. And amongst the silence, out rings the bell of a cycle.
And as we settle in the peace and calm we are again hurled into the traffic noises of the impeding end.
9:43
The blinding sound of the pedestrian wait, breaks through the hum of the idling vehicles, becoming the only focus of our senses. Yet the moment it stops, it’s not the traffic that we hear, but the wonderful surprise of the birds.
Closing with on a pleasant note, as nature still thrives.
Streets are dynamic and ever changing.
Take out a few minutes, stop and just listen.
Urban spaces are essentially secular in Nature.
And nothing consolidated the idea more than witnessing the harmony in which the two religions co exist on small stretch of space.
Cities are always measured in their physical proportion, the urban fabric and its zoning. Time is a factor that holds extreme importance in urban spaces where the functions and users keep changing.
Sound on the other hand is often viewed as a problem to be tackled and hence analyzed in that light.
When we shift our focus from solving to observing we can stop and appreciate the beauty of sounds within the noise.
This workshop inspired me.
To think beyond what's taught, and to dive deeper than the surface.
|
A workshop that I entered by chance was one of the turning points for me as a designer and human.
And for that I thank you. My Mentors.
