my work and knowledge contribution
I have done my graduation in Architecture. I believe my sensitivity about the needs, value and interest of socio-cultural, economic and environmental aspects gives meaning to my work.
In second year of my academic studies my participation in a student competition UTOPIA introduced me architecture beyond its physical boundaries. My team and I proposed utopia as reformation of special families where one destitute woman nurtures four to five orphan kids as mother (inspired by NGO SOS village). While designing a place for these specially formed families we realized about the importance of their inclusiveness with the outside society, at the same time protection of their dignity and human rights, which could be denunciated because of that inclusiveness. For the sustainability of project we proposed mix of design and policy based solutions. Through this exercise I got conceptual understanding of complexity of society and responsibility of a designer.
I always view villages as back born of many burgeoning cities. Therefore my undergraduate final year thesis "School of Agribusiness" aims to resuscitate the village economy by utilizing the key feature of the fair (a public exhibition event) to advantage. This would return the lost dignity to the farmer, augment his income, and encourage women towards work participation. Because I choose to work for a remote area lack of demographic data and proper site mapping for site analysis became challenging for me. On the other hand I perceived it as an opportunity of studying through unconventional methods. I learned to have interaction with different stack holders of my site. These conversations made me aware of villager's perspective about development and internal core issues of village like migration and unwillingness of youth to become part of agriculture sector. A combination of Candid interaction with local community and theoretical studies helped me establish logical reasoning behind my design proposals.
In 2013 all north India faced devastated effects of cloudburst in state Uttarakhand (India). I was curious to know about the vulnerability and urgency of human settlement therefore joined an NGO SEEDSindia. Focus area of this NGO is disaster management. Initially, I was assigned a movie documentation of Community Restoration Project 2010 LEH Flash Flood. For this documentation I interviewed professionals ranging from Ecologist, Architects, Media persons and Managing team associated with the project. To get the maximum outcome of these interviews I planned separate questionnaire for each interviewer which gave me eloquent statements of the interviewees. My ability to articulating problems further helped me when in join the organization as a site architect for Flood Affected Schools Reconstruction Project and researched for locally available construction materials and Earthquake Resistive Designs, Conducted Design workshops and Design sharing meetings with students & teachers and local community.
I believe the most sustainable aspect of this universe is Change itself. My work priorities are to create coherence with the present scenario and preparedness for unseen threats of the future. In long term I would like to address city disputes like rights and duties of aboriginal and migrates. Traveling studios of University of Melbourn provides an exposure to work with different government and private sectors of different Asia pacific countries which gives opportunity to learn about different varied ways of addressing the common issues which makes University of Melbourn best fit with my future goals.
