Seetharam V. Vallabhaneni

Departing from the central theme of Hijra, the project frames trade as a medium of exchange for more than goods or wealth - as a facilitator of movements of skills, technologies, knowledge and knowhow, all contained in lores and expressed through craft.

Particularly focusing on the trade of cotton and indigo from India, an interesting anecdote led to identification of Arabia and Western India as sites of interest. The presence of cotton in arabia always confused historians as the soil composition wouldn’t have allowed for cotton to grow here naturally - it was obviously introduced. For the longest time it was thought to come from Africa but recent forensic studies show it's from Kutch in India instead. As you look through archival images from these regions more parallels appear - materially, socially, and gesturally. Geographically it is interesting that the cotton seed found in Arabia and two most powerful movements in the struggle for Indian independence, both involving very humble ingredients (cotton and salt) originated in Kutch.

Inspired by Charles Dickins’ Tale of Two Cities I wanted to establish trade with a twin site - not identical but similar with its own difference to allow for a counter dialogue and perspective, which, through cross pollination would add value to both sites much like that cotton seeds that got traded in Arabian ports leading to creating of better, hybrid cultivars of cotton. Thus establishing the sabkhas of Arabian landscape as a counterpart to the seasonal salt marsh/flat of Western India in Kutch.

“Architecture exists in time as salt exists in water... the only architecture will be our lives..”

Superstudio (Exhibition at Pinksummer, Genova) 

Water is a symbol for the universal sum of virtualities - a reservoir of plural existences according to Eliade in The Sacred and the Profane. Across cultures water always retains its symbolic function - to disintegrate, abolish forms. “Everything that is form manifests itself above the waters, by detaching itself from the waters”. Metaphorically and metaphysically the ancient mythologies refer to water as the container of life, strength and eternity. Almost universally it is perceived as a purifying medium.

Rann of Kutch is the only large flooded grasslands zone in the Indomalayan realm. A land that finds itself existing in continuous duality - geographically shared between India and Pakistan, geologically sandwiched by abundance of water on one side and complete scarcity on the other, ecologically between mangroves, and deserts, socially between being a settlement and abandoned land, cartographically between “protected” and unsurveyed.

Split into Great and Little ranns of kutch, these regions are briefly connected during heavy monsoons. Being a seasonal salt marsh and flat - it is submerged in water for 6 months of the year where it is abandoned only to be occupied once the water recedes. A condition that dictates lives of humans and other than human species living off of this landscape. Seen in isolation the monsoons and the seasonal floods are problematic in the way they displace communities and wash away their homes and fields. However it is this seasonal washing away that allows the communities to inhabit the land by keeping the top soil salinity in check.

The Rann is a land of many realities and is home to nearly 70% of India’s salt production. It is interesting that two similar landscapes offer communities inhabiting them vastly different things - one one hand you have the salt farmers in Kutch harvesting salt from the saline brine where as in Arabia, the saline landscape is home to its desalination plants. One community values the salt left behind as water evaporates into the atmosphere, where as the other treasures the water extracted from the brine and lets the salt go back into the landscape.

A space created over multiple cycles of floods, an organic and incremental settlement (/lobby/campus/complex/vessel). A container of lores, myths, and lives; a lobby.

The site is framed by villages, invasive prosopis juliflora, and the grasslands of Banni on one side and the saline landscape of the white desert of Kutch on the other; a pivot. Two groups of “farmers” intersect creating a diptych - farmers of the salt & farmers who harvest prosopis to then convert that into charcoal, they are also pastoralists. In fact there is no “site”, there is only a negotiation - with nature - with the tides - with the water and earth. This negotiation is cosmic, tied to the sun, the moon, the movement of this earth and planetary shadows. It is in that sense dictated by the inhabited land - a platform, and the ephemeral shade of the moon creating tides. 

Project sits on what is currently a tourist point, where visitors get dropped off in cars to venture into the desert on camel back - a threshold between formal settlements and the desert - a literal Lobby to the desert. The main entry into the site is through a long and narrow road - parting the safed Rann - traces of people who walked into this saline landscape for the utsav. At the entrance are a set of stairs moulded from the earth framed by a copper arcade. The arcade is a datum and the copper records each interaction with water and salt. As the visitors pass through this arcade they arrive at an elevated platform sitting on top of a tank collecting filtered rainwater and a cistern storing excess water produced by the Desalination Facility. 

On this platform they encounter a series of structures. This set, or plan is a mere suggestion, presenting one of the many possibilities. Over it’s lifecycle all these structures may be built as shown, or none, or maybe few, or more of one kind and less of others may be built - it is all up to the inhabitants of this landscape. The configuration is fluid as these structures are built in tune with the cycle of floods using readily available materials (Salt, Saline Sand, and Concrete made from Salt Brine) - some may dissolve, others may disintegrate through repeated exposure to the saline water, while some may live on, recording everything that is happening around them. The desalination plant becomes the central node around which different structures start to emerge over time, dialogue, and exchange. Each of these structures is a character and has been based off of a particular stakeholder but could cater to other stakeholders as well.

When built with materials that are metabolic, in sense that they can be absorbed back into the land, the architectural space(s) would always be in a flux - constantly adapting and responding to life around, echoing Superstudio’s dream that the only architecture we leave behind would be our life - contained and communicated through lores. These lores are some of the most resilient, fluid, empowering, assimilating and plurality-embracing forms of knowledge present in this world.