IN-PERSON Prague Research & Teaching Conference

Abstract

“Radical pedagogies shake foundations, disturbing assumptions rather than reinforcing and disseminating them” (Colomina et al, 2012), hence, challenging the traditional method of a case study, the pedagogical stand undertaken for a design studio for 4th-semester architecture students of was that of creating a hypothetical case of a community housing and unlayering its various characteristics. An experiment where students were handed rubber stamps of house plans to be stamped on a land parcel of 150 m x 200m was the first step. The 10-minute stamping conducted without any prompts or rules of community living was purely based on the student’s instincts. The resultant pattern then became the base plan where layers of the figure-ground, proximity and accessibility of houses, relationship between served and serviced spaces and possible road networks, commercial spaces, landscape, parking facilities and large open spaces were speculated. In the traditional case study technique, the analysis often leans towards the positive attributes and weans away from criticism. This method helped recognise and discuss the reason why Belapur Housing by Charles Correa, Tara Apartment by Raj Rewal and Aranya Housing by B.V Doshi are ideal examples of community housing in the Indian scenario. The experiment conducted for the second time is a teaching and learning experience, where both the tutor and the students speculate, formulate and discuss based on the achieved result. The idea of density, by-laws, and anthropometry are hidden details that emerge with each discussion and inform the final design project of the semester.