(in)-between Transience and Permanence

Abstract

Within my graduation project I am investigating the drivers of change which have resulted in Urbanisation of the Himalayas. Seasonal activities such as pilgrimage, tourism, militarisation and hydropower production have rapidly altered the Himalayan Ecology as well as the socio-cultural landscape and its regional economies. To support these activities, large scale Critical Processes such as Infrastructural Development and Resource Extraction have been operationalised amidst the vulnerable Himalayan Geography has resulted in a state of Accumulation, . The existing model of urbanisation and anthropogenic appropriation of the Himalayas is transforming the region into a Global Hinterland and it will only amplify the degree of risk as well as the frequency of disasters in the region. This calls for a pedagogical shift in the model of urbanisation and the spatial logic of developing and maintaining infrastructures within the vulnerable Himalayan Landscape.Thus, this project hypothesises an alternative approach of Spatio-Temporal Synchronicity which synergises the various ephemeralities within the critical processes in the region, through the agency of Spatial Design. A series of strategic operations are undertaken to synchronise the ephemeral processes within the material geographies of their context by adding, repurposing or removing infrastructures to serve a certain program during a certain time period which are further recycled and displaced to a new site to cater to a new process/program. Thus, the existing practice of accumulating infrastructures is acted upon by a set of Reductive operations which follow a Spatio-temporal program.The region encompassing Alaknanda and Niti Valleys and the subsiding town of Joshimath, situated on their intersection, is chosen as a paradigmatic area to investigate and test this hypothesis through the research by design approach. Methods such as literature review, critical cartographies, field visit, interviews are employed to analyse the context which is followed by an adaptive cross-scalar strategic framework. It proposes a set of spatio-temporal operations that are manifested in the form of design experiments which try to spatialise and project development along the lines of Spatio-Temporal Synchronicity.