Urban physicality is a complex network of systems; a family homemaker would be worried about the hike in the price of tomatoes in the grocery store, (s)he starts discussing with another homemaker from the neighbourhood vis-a-vis the dialogue is carried out to a water tap, where men and women wait to fill up their buckets, the tomato’s price hike is now a notification in the online social messaging groups, a government employee discusses the price hike with his fellow morning walker who is in the vegetable market business, the saloon debates about this as a potential political problem that migh ..read more

Fig 1 – “The Etheral Junkspace” a photo manipulation by Manaswini Rajesh.etcetera, etcetera and etcetera.  City centre of Madurai, a sterilised urban form, on the river banks of Vaigai, is defined by its streets that were constructed with a yardstick that fits exactly a bullock cart. Don’t even get me started on the current tensions of violation that are in mutiny against the statutory. Statutory is order, statutory is harmony, statutory is a win-win, so is money. Imagine a landowner expecting the most out of her holding in the Central Madurai (Oh come on, I am not going to call it a CBD ..read more

Spring, 2016. It was a scarlet coloured door, Becky opened the front door with a creak. The doors and windows looked perfectly crafted, must have been carpentered by one person, perfectly proportioned and seamless throughout the facade. The opening strains of Floyd’s ‘Pigs on the wing’ were audible from the living room, though one can actually listen to the elevation of Gilmour’s guitar, surely a .wmv format (‘Animals’ is their most underrated album, she remarks. Oh, I love her already). Her deeply wizened skin, in the threshold of the fifties, fighting a losing battle with time. So was Sandra ..read more

வசந்த காலம், 2016. Beckyதான் வெளிக்கதவை திறந்தாள். நல்ல சுருங்கிய சருமம், வயது எப்படியும் ஐம்பதுகளின் ஆரம்பங்களில் நின்றுகொண்டு இதற்குமேல் முன் செல்ல முரண்பட்டுக்கொண்டிருக்கும். Sandra வுக்கும் இதை ஒப்பாக சொல்லலாம். கூர்ந்து கவனித்தால் இருவருக்கும் இருக்கும் வித்யாசம் அறிவு, தத்துவவாத கீற்றுகளின் சார்புடையது என்பது அங்கு தங்கி இருந்த நாட்களில் புரிந்து கொண்டேன். Sandra 1990களில் Melbourneனின் corporate வளர்ச்சியின் முக்கிய அங்கமாக இருந்த property financing firm ஒன்றின் மிக முக்கியமான ஒரு analystஆக இருந்து  பின் ஓய்வுபெற்று இப்போது துணை பேராசியராக Melbourne ..read more

Ignored- framed is about the forgotten textile mills of Mumbai, that became disused and non-functional after the Great Bombay Mill Strikes of the 1980s. Occupying more than 6 acres in the heart if the city, Shakti Mills was allowed to degenerate for more than 35 years, a span of time that devolved it into a house for informal activities like the taxi wallas drawing water front he underground baoris (wells) to clean their cars, to other morning errands of the surrounding community, and other illicit drug activities that questioned the very image and position of the important mill within the cit ..read more

Perungudi, a densely populated suburb along the IT corridor of Chennai, houses one of the two major garbage landfills in the city. Perungudi gets around 3,000 tons of waste per day, from seven of fifteen zones in the city. When Perungudi was carelessly chosen as a dump site way back in 1987, the government gave scant regard to the ecologically sensitive marshland of Pallikarnai-a hot spot for biodiversity that was situated right next to it. Ever since, the marshland has shrunk in size and the sewage treatment facility that is located nearby only makes matters worse for ..read more

Graphic Map showing state of Solid Waste management in Chennai. Where does your waste go? Apart from 5000T/day of waste transported outside the city, 1250T fall out of the system and remain uncollected inside Chennai. This solid waste is unceremoniously dumped inside the 3 riverbodies of Chennai- Cooum River, Adayar River, and Buckingham canal. Cooum River flows through the commercial and industrial areas of Chennai, collecting 750MT of solid waste every day. The river banks of Cooum are home to 16000 encroachments and slums that bear the brunt of the city’s negligence towards C ..read more

Our relationship with waste in today’s time and age, is from what we consume to the dustbin, rarely do we choose to know what happens to it after the ‘kachrawala’ collects it from our house. The blame for this lies with the boon of globalisation and urbanisation, wherein specialised systems are put in place, tending to man’s every beck and call. The downside of this though, is that these systems are rarely thought of in a holistic manner, one system is rarely intertwined with another, thus leading to discrepancies in functioning as a well organised and symbiotic network. The most striking exam ..read more

The industrial revolution provided us with the engineering and power necessary to make profound economic and social change. However, with this unprecedented growth and new found prosperity, an abuse of natural resources and our environment initiated a trajectory of unforeseeable consequences. Today, we are leaving our historically wasteful and turbulent manufacturing economy in favor of a seemingly more stable and mainstream digitally driven era. With this, we are seeing the massive areas of disrupted land that once stood to represent the height of innovation and success appearing as abandone ..read more

Hailing from a small town in Kerala, being  a  passionate foodie , my first fond memories of a city are the huge malls, pizzas and sizzlers which were once (until about 10 years ago) exclusive to only the metropolitan Indian cities. In fact I would always look forward to visiting my cousins who lived in the city, for my yearly pizza. It was not until I moved to Chennai for my undergraduate studies, five years ago that I could truly explore a city in terms of the multiple culinary dimensions that it has to offer. Food is as much a part of culture as architecture is. But what is fascin ..read more