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resulting from intense human activity, and tries to set-up criteria to identify the same.
It aims to examine the factors that lead to the creation of such landscapes and the
larger processes they symbolize. By acknowledging such lands and the circumstances
of their production, the research seeks to investigate the relationship between man and
nature today, and understand and challenge our current understanding of what ‘nature’
means. It aims to examine the new spatial types and uses that arise in relation to these
lands, and the architectural questions these pose.
On Defining
This cycle, assigns the term 'post-intensive landscape’ to describe wastelandsresulting from intense human activity, and tries to set-up criteria to identify the same.
It aims to examine the factors that lead to the creation of such landscapes and the
larger processes they symbolize. By acknowledging such lands and the circumstances
of their production, the research seeks to investigate the relationship between man and
nature today, and understand and challenge our current understanding of what ‘nature’
means. It aims to examine the new spatial types and uses that arise in relation to these
lands, and the architectural questions these pose.
a. Dockyards of Mazgaon
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b. The Poisar River and Mindspace
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c. Rajavali Stone Quarries
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d. The Salt Pans of Bhandup
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e. Sand Mining at Panju Island
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f. Shivaji Nagar and Rafiq Nagar at Deonar Dumping Ground
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On Drawing Out
How do competing imaginations of the futures of post-extractive mining landscapes at
Sonshi, Goa, shape their present? This cycle points that a new, non-human nature, shaped
partly by a diversity of interventions made in preceding eras of extraction, has aggressively
taken over Sonshi’s post-extractive mining landscapes that are widely interpreted as ‘wastelands’
produced by a situation of an impasse between competing interests. In drawing attention to
Sonshi’s new natures, we advance two arguments that offer a wider purchase for thinking about
the ‘post’ of post-extractive landscapes. First, we argue for and create interpretive openings to
move architectural discourse beyond reading post-extractive landscapes through metaphors of
‘wastelands,’ ‘impasse,’ and ‘fractures.’ And second, we argue that architectural discourse
needs to advance thinking about environment and sustainability beyond the sketch of extreme ends
of a future: a dystopian future as wasteland resulting from intensive extraction, on the one hand,
and a utopian future of ecological restoration of land to pristine nature, on the other hand.
On Drawing Out
How do competing imaginations of the futures of post-extractive mining landscapes at Sonshi, Goa, shape their present? This cycle points that a new, non-human nature, shaped
partly by a diversity of interventions made in preceding eras of extraction, has aggressively
taken over Sonshi’s post-extractive mining landscapes that are widely interpreted as ‘wastelands’
produced by a situation of an impasse between competing interests. In drawing attention to
Sonshi’s new natures, we advance two arguments that offer a wider purchase for thinking about
the ‘post’ of post-extractive landscapes. First, we argue for and create interpretive openings to
move architectural discourse beyond reading post-extractive landscapes through metaphors of
‘wastelands,’ ‘impasse,’ and ‘fractures.’ And second, we argue that architectural discourse
needs to advance thinking about environment and sustainability beyond the sketch of extreme ends
of a future: a dystopian future as wasteland resulting from intensive extraction, on the one hand,
and a utopian future of ecological restoration of land to pristine nature, on the other hand.
a. Sonshi Pre Agricultural phase
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b. Sonshi Agricultural phase
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c. Sonshi Mining Phase
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