The Future of Everyday Urban Spaces

  In this exercise, each student prepared two photomontages. In the first one, they used a photograph from IIM Bangalore - as the background; and superimposed images from their own streets, in their own neighbourhoods - as the foreground. In the second one, they were asked to use their own street - as the background; and create an imaginary condition to reflect utopia or a real-life situation that they might like to see as the future of their city.  The exercises of Week 1, 2 & 3 - the audio walk, the threshold maps and the photomontages have been on the one hand, different methodologies to understand the everyday city; and on the other hand, a reflection of the back and forth between 'the real and the unreal' that we have been subjected to soon after the pandemic happened. Some have pointed out that the pandemic happened because man has tried to overtake nature and others who say that man is himself a part of nature. It seems then that our fallacy lies not in believing th...

This utopia is inspired by the ideology of camouflaging the forest in the streets such that no one can differentiate between the two. The streets in the sky are pedestrian while that on the ground is vehicular. There is a staircase from the street which leads you to the cliff of the forest. The larger idea behind this is when the street is seen from the top or from bird's eye there shouldn't be any significant difference between the building/streets and forests. It also has a great futuristic approach that is reducing the built and increasing the greens. Bringing back the forest life and the fantasy forest world.  Archita Varyani  

      Venice is a unique city and it owes its uniqueness to its transport system. What if something like that is implemented in India? What if people move around the cities on a boat. Reimagine the car parking being replaced by boat parking along with pedestrian movement happening on bridges and banks. Imagine mobile vendors selling their goods on boats. This is a glimpse of a street in Ahmedabad reimagined as Indian Venice. Abhishek Mummithi  

      The photomontage attempts to re-imagine the neighbourhood street. The central idea is to blur the hard thresholds that exist between the built and unbuilt spaces on the street (refer to the key picture). This is been shown using exaggeration of natural elements into street furniture and structures. For example, the curvilinear, green bridge, the floral seating elements, and mushroom-shaped sheds. It also depicts how natural elements can give a character to space. All the elements specifically bridge brings order to the movement of pedestrians and vehicles. The levels (of the bridge) not only bring playfulness and liveliness to the street but connects different pockets for easy and safe travel.  Namoshi Basu  

In the times of pandemic when everyone’s concerned about who is breathing down their neck, we can imagine a dimension where people might move around in pods with no connection to the outside. In such a situation, animals who were seen as trespassers can move more freely. There might probably come a time when climate change worsens so much that penguins start adapting to hot or tropical climate. Shaurya Singh  

The background image is of the street that is right outside my house, different elements are added to imagine the unimaginable. This street is very calm, it is mainly used for walking, vehicular movement, parking and once every week a pushcart vendor sells flowers and vegetable here. There are barely any activities that take place apart from these. Since the space is simple and quiet, I decided to create something intense. This resulted in a crime scene which is dark, chaotic and suspicious. Loud sirens, people running around, investigating and documenting evidence. This brings about the questions, what is wrong? Who defined it? What makes something wrong? Is it the same for everyone? Surprisingly, all of these questions can be related to space or a street. What is the street? Who defined it? What are the characteristic features that define it? Is it the same for everyone? Srushti Kottai  

  The photomontage has the background image as the neighbourhood of Chandkheda, Ahmedabad. The blood-red sunset sets the mood of the forthcoming end of the earth. Suddenly people realized that because of their reckless habits, the earth is getting destroyed and the busy roads which were once filled with traffic congestion have now become a place where only parking and trees reside. The fuel-driven transport has been replaced by cable cars and new walkways have emerged for more pedestrian activity. Glass domes have emerged for farming and to accommodate homeless people. Shrayana Ray

“Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder.” — Littlefinger, Lord Petyr Baelish, Game Of Thrones. Chaos is all my neighbourhood is described as, and this chaos builds up the economy of this area, it’s the major occupation of the people living in this area and the elements and scenes from the series, game of thrones was the first thing that came in my mind so as to create a chaotic scenario. In this photomontage, there are multiple activities going on at the same time. Where there is Daenery's comforting her dragon on one side and the soldiers on the other ready to fight the white walkers approaching their way from behind the car and Bran Stark near the tree of goodwill. Also, the dragons destroying the place as per Daenerys order so as to acquire the throne in the palace behind called kings landing. Muskaan Mansuri  

The image above is the current context of the street in my neighbourhood. This crossroad has a lot of scopes if we wanted to be utopic about it. A public garden right in front of the commercial front. The image on the left is the utopian imagination of the existing edge. The colourful pavement which connects the park to the shops, a complete pedestrianised corner, with an urban insert where people could relax and wait for their buses or simply just be a passerby. Beyond this urban insert is another time zone, which is completely different in its nature. The sketchy black n white is the representation of the different zone from what you’re seeing on the left side of the whole crossroads. Garima Sinha  

  The photomontage is a depiction of the street if it existed in the 5th dimension. The concept of the fifth dimension is needed to solve many of the problems we currently have, with the movement of time. If time flows at a rate of one second for every new second as per standard clocks, it wouldn't actually go anywhere at all. So we need a new spatial dimension in order to measure the flow of time, which is the 5th dimension.    Anything that has happened, will happen or might happen, you'd see it all at once in there. For a physical space, you'd see every possibility of its life, along the infinite paths that that specific space could take. You'd see parallel worlds! The photomontage shows a void in one of the universes from where the people from the past are looking at the future of the space that they are standing in , in a parallel universe and are trying to alter the future as they have full control over their own timeline.   Ketki Nandanwar

The street is originally a secondary street in a quiet neighbourhood in Evershine City, Vasai, Maharashtra. The street is surrounded by housing societies on both sides and is devoid of much activity. In the photomontage, I transformed the street into a place nature meets technology. There is thick vegetation on one side, and apartment blocks and monorail on the other. Several people can be seen, a man riding a scooter, two others in formals, a man sitting very close to a crocodile, two kids going about their daily life, This is a scenario where all kinds of people live together, where there are no divisions such as village dwellers or city dwellers. One can also see animals and humans freely going about their lives without fear of each other, they coexist peacefully. Priya Thottappally  

  In the times of pandemic when everyone’s concerned about who is breathing down their neck, we can imagine a dimension where people might move around in pods with no connection to the outside. In such a situation, animals who were seen as trespassers can move more freely. There might probably come a time when climate change worsens so much that penguins start adapting to hot or tropical climate.   Sneha Ramachandran

  The composition touches upon the idea of self-sufficient neighbourhoods and streets as a safe place of everyday activities and interactions. Prioritizing People over the Vehicular Movements is what this montage on Imagining the Unimaginable is all about. On the contrary of today’s scenario where the streets are dominated by cars and two-wheelers this particular street is just designed for the people and animals of the neighbourhood. The vehicles now no longer have any marked territory on the streets; the only way they are connected to the outer world is through the bridges. Sitting on the asphalt paved roads and painting them, a lake full of ducks, swings and fountains, greens, clean and happy streets is all that people can take a sight of in this type of utopic depiction. Samriddhi Dugar

This street here, in particular, is one of the tertiary streets in the neighbourhood. The montage below is a representative of a haunted street, trying to show the inactivity of the street in particular. The horror scene also tries to depict how these streets are less preferred by people due to the lack of lighting and activity on the street. Aditi Mishra  

While the Week 1 exercise, Everyday-X was about creating an 'audio walk' where you experience the everyday life of the city and reflect upon it, the Week 2 exercise was about mapping thresholds. It meant drawing upon the memories of the last 3-4 months of being in the pandemic situation and how we have changed the way we inhabit spaces - spaces of our homes, our neighbourhoods. The maps were meant to reflect a typical day during the lockdown period or what one thought was a typical day for one's neighbours, or a map that brought out experiences on the personal front or one's thoughts as a designer during these times. The MAP had to be based on the idea of 'Thresholds'. This could be a physical threshold - between oneself and one's family, one's neighbours or one's schoolmates. It could be a social threshold. It could mean a crossing of boundaries. It could also draw upon the idea that we are today at the threshold of a global change/outlook towards...