Alum Sankalpa Patel (FA PG ’20) and Abinaya Ravichandran (FA PG ’21) have won the Prabhakar Bhagwat Student Awards for 2020 and 2021 respectively. This award is given by the Indian Society of Landscape Architects (ISOLA) to the best landscape architecture thesis or final semester student project each year. Sankalpa’s project was guided by Asst. Prof. Divya Shah, MLA (Master’s in Landscape Architecture), FA and Abinaya’s project was guided by Studio Unit Tutor, Nikhil Dhar.
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Project Briefs:
Sankalpa’s project studied Nalsarovar, a visceral wetland ecosystem, and a Ramsar site, towards the northern tip of a great depression called Bhal, by the Gulf of Cambay, is home to a primitive tribe called Padhars. The way of life of the tribes is attuned to the local resources and the cycles of the landscape units of a region called Nal-Kantha (meaning edge of water). A set of non-inclusive political reforms that followed the declaration of Ramsar boundary led to many conflicts between the native tribes and the government. More importantly, it created both physical (a large earthen bund) and a notional barrier between the tribes and their place.
The project looks at re-defining the perception of this seen-unseen barrier that exists between people and place, through integrating the tribes and their ecological wisdom as a part of the protection and conservation processes of the wetland. The project as a physical manifestation redefines the threshold of the settlement and the wetland and imagines as a place of co-existence that is pervaded with a social-cultural identity for sustenance with time.
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Abinaya’s project ‘The Confluence of Cultures’, aims to revive underused land parcels around the 1000-year-old heavily polluted irrigation canal at Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu by engaging stakeholders to reawaken their memories of the place, connected traditions, associations, nuances, dependencies and aspirations.
Tiruchirappalli, an ancient, agrarian, fast-developing town, lies on the banks of the Cauvery River. Earlier religious places, shared resources, thresholds, markets are the community spaces of the city. But presently, the city lacks meaningful community open spaces. Socio-cultural changes due to urbanization have created several underutilized spaces by overlooking, exploiting, and encroaching them. These spaces have the potential to provide vital ecosystem services and act as urban greens to connect and interact with nature amidst the dense urban fabric.
Besides creating a space of escape from everyday life, the project attempts to create spaces that bring new attitudes and perspectives of the city's open spaces. Creating unique community spaces along the canal helps reclaim its lost values. Restricting human access is not the only solution to protect the environment; building relationships with them and seeding a sense of belongingness, ownership and strengthening the cultural associations will also achieve this.
