The Future of Everyday Urban Spaces

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...

A threshold can be defined as a barrier or boundary between two entities. Due to the pandemic, the old thresholds have been broken and new ones have been created because of the social distancing and the safety measures that are being taken. A threshold could be the virtual lectures that we’re attending or the usage of the terrace or balconies as a replacement for the public spaces during these times. The map shows the daily schedule of my family and neighbor during this pandemic and how the comfort level of the activities have changed and how the various thresholds are safe or unsafe. The comfort level of “0” defines itself as a state of comfort before the pandemic. The comfort level of the daily activities has also changed due to the pandemic. If we look at the schedule of my father, he used to go to his office with 5 more people in one car including the driver. Now because of the social distancing, there are only two people in one car where they both wear masks and hence, my father h...

  In the recent months of the pandemic and the lockdown, the streets became empty with no schools, malls and many other public spaces being closed. Under the compulsion of not being able to leave our homes or to reduce going out, we resorted to using spaces that fall under the periphery of our homes or neighbourhood but also provides us access to the outside or the public world, the 'threshold spaces'. Spaces like our balconies, terraces, front yards, smaller informal gathering spaces, sidewalks and street edges were the only active spaces. In the apartment block level, we can see balconies take up a prominent role from interacting with neighbours to clapping in appreciation. We've also seen people use their terraces to compensate for their inability to use public spaces or take up new hobbies in the apartment level. The front yard of houses that seemed like public places with vendors occupying the space in front of hundreds of eyes on them now feels like a perfect place to...

The past 3-4 months have been crucial for everybody staying home, but mostly the kids who had a hard time staying home and not enjoying their vacations or their day of the school. In the following plan of my aunt's house, I mapped the average amount of time spent by my 4-year-old brother in each room around the house. This mapping shows his time spent in a day and the safety threshold. The colours signify the amount of time spent, red being the highest and blue being the lowest, yellow is mediocre. His daily activities included, the meal timing, watch tv, studying for an hour, playing, etc. The lines dividing the rooms which act as walls are basically the thresholds of the place according to safety. The deeper we go into the home the privacy increases, similarly, the living room is the first room which comes in contact with the outsiders, rather than the bedroom. Muskaan Mansuri

  https://www.earthlymission.com/amazing-visualization-of-swedish-immigration-into-the-united-states/ https://www.parishink.com/meandering-mississippi-river-print-15.html The map above has been inspired by the existing representation of the records of years of the Swedish immigrants in the United States. I saw this as an opportunity to look at it as a threshold which could be shown in an abstract manner for my observation.  The second example the map took was from the mapping of the Mississippi River along the years which allowed me to explore ways to show my daily movement in a month time period. Every day we cross a number of spatial boundaries to reach a different zone. Threshold spaces are required for the transition from one zone to another. The phenomenon of thresholds thrives on spatial ambivalence.  They live in a sequence of what lies in the past, present and future. This means, threshold space also lives in the expectation of what is to come. As transition point...

  Ever since the lockdown, millions of people have been effectively confined to their homes, with a sudden change in their daily routine and leaving themselves alone with their thoughts. I was having a hard time adjusting to the new routine as well. I was not at all used to sitting back at home alone. Neither was I used to being with my family for the entire day and giving an explanation for each and every action of mine. Therefore I decided to take care of myself before it got worse. To achieve the peace of my mind, I had to escape from my daily life to heal myself. The illustration is a map showing all the activities that I started doing after the lockdown started to and that helped me get through. I woke up very early in the morning and escaped my house on my bike with a friend. Waking up early makes one's mind fresh and active. We went to faraway places to the outskirts of the city on our bikes to leave behind the city’s aura of the pandemic. While doing so we tried to take ro...

  Things have drastically changed in the past few months. So have the thresholds of society changed. Contained in the threshold of lockdown, the balcony of my home was my only connection with the outer world. The view from my balcony was the only part of the world that I could see. Contained in a threshold, I was able to view the thresholds of the people of the neighbourhood. Each bounded by their own social and physical thresholds, they carried their new daily routine. This map shows a glimpse of the life of my neighbours contained in their own thresholds. Abhishek Mummithi

  A treasure hunt is one such game which I have been playing at my place from the past 3-4 months because of this pandemic. The treasure here is basically my neighbourhood or the outside world which I want to visit but am not able to do so because of the pandemic. So to fill in this empty void I actually hunted for some spaces and elements (thresholds) inside my house which will help me interact with the outside world but not at the cost of my safety. To get a step closer to nature I planted some plants in my verandah and even started having tea near the indoor grill windows while watching the trees, birds, sunrise/ sunsets, stray animals and so on which sometimes even relieved my old memories. For the social interaction terrace, online classes and video calls became my Savior . In order to avoid contact with the delivery guys we designed a small wooden table outside our house where all the parcels were kept and sanitized before bringing in. The “ laari wala ” who visited our buil...

During the last few months, each of us has been confined to the physical boundary of our home. Being safe and healthy was our utmost concern. This map represents the idea of ‘My Home’ being a physical threshold for me.  On one hand, I started doing some new activities like clicking pictures of my house and attending online classes, on the other hand activities like talking to neighbours and collecting courier changed in small ways.  Most of the activities performed were to stay protected and to keep myself occupied and engaged. The possibility of attempting to do all these activities could only be discovered due to the lockdown. Srushti Kottai  

Since the time when the pandemic struck, it has changed lives. People are facing different challenges across the globe in order to survive through these difficult times. The unseen barriers that are being faced are different for every individual. A child that wants to play is stuck in walls of restriction, migrants are struggling to get back home, the pressure of being unemployed is affecting mental health, animals are starving from hunger, the homeless are wandering for shelter, women have been facing harassment, commerce is demolishing, fulfilling the basic necessities of living has become expensive and the Internet has taken over the world.  We need to take a pause and reflect on what is happening not only in our lives but of everyone’s around, learn lessons and fill all the loopholes that have emerged in this pandemic.  All of these challenges are the new thresholds around which lives revolve. However, there is always light at the end of the tunnel, and we can still hope w...

The shift from one city to another due to the pandemic changed movement patterns and neighbourhoods which brought a transition in the physical and social threshold. The map shows these changes at a small scale, at a personal level. The workplace and public spaces like gardens and riverfront now have shrunk inside the boundaries of home. The terrace has become the space to relax instead of the college lawns. The kitchen is now a canteen, a cafe, and a restaurant. The guest room is now the working studio as well as a place to hang out with friends virtually. The spaces inside the house also have altered thresholds. A bedroom has converted into a workspace and also a storage unit due to one additional member returning home.  The map used colours to differentiate between spaces and show doodles of activities and annotations to represent the concept graphically.      Namoshi Basu

The map represents the thresholds of my family. The circle around acts as a radius that is the bigger the circle more is the time spent in that activity. While the inner circle represents the major part of the day spent and the outer circle represents the threshold. As you can see video calling is the common and major social threshold for all three members of the house. In the case of my dad, social distancing becomes a physical threshold while going outdoors. Looking at my mom, the wash area acts as a physical threshold for her as she communicates with the neighbour and spends some amount of her time there. In my case again video calling is the only social threshold because of the online classes. Therefore the physical and social barriers due to the pandemic act as the thresholds at this time. Archita Varyani

In the past 3 - 4 months, I have spent most of my time at home due to the pandemic. Therefore, my home acted as my physical threshold. The map represents the activities that took place within my physical threshold at home. The major activities included attending online classes, working on assignments, eating, binge-watching Netflix, reading, playing with my brother, etc. Activities that took place in each area are in their specific areas. The colour coding represents the time I have spent in each room with my house. I have spent most of my time in my bedroom and the living room and the least amount of time in my parents’ bedroom. Priya Thottappally

Considering each room of the house as a Threshold, I have tried to build a relationship between space and time. Here each member of the family has certain movements denoted by lines.  Colours ranging from red to green show progress from how we acclamatised ourselves with staying indoors, each passing lockdown. Green being the most comfortable phase and red being full of anxiety, since lockdown and staying home was new for all of us. Aditi Mishra