Past, Present and Possible: Parasituation [Ahmedabad]

In this volume, a reworking of Ahmedabad’s old and new walls through the reciprocal themes of ecosophy, wetness and dust takes a Geddesian prompt to produce architectural and urban scale speculations as part of a civic survey of “past, present and possible.” Some of the principles for our research and design speculation have been outlined already in Volume 1, Parasituation [Ahmedabad]: People and Pols. On page 14 of volume 1, I set out our intention to publish four volumes. In fact, we have only managed two: volumes 1 and 4 come together in this book; volume 2 is a stand-alone volume, successfully published, independently of ESALA, by Wedge Publications, Edinburgh, 2020; and Volume 3, regrettably, remains unpublished. Volume 2, Parasituation [Ahmedabad]: Walls and Gates, is a measured survey of the complete perimeter walls of Ahmedabad old city, undertaken by both students of the Master of Architecture Programme, 2019-2021, and the M Sc Architectural and Urban Design Programme, 2019-2020. As Robert Stephens notes in his commentary to Volume 2, we are not the first multi-cultural research team to undertake such a survey, but we are the first to make this readily accessible and “through the penetrating gaze of a mathematical survey.”

It has always been the intention, then, that all volumes be read together as part of the same civic survey of Ahmedabad. It is a pity that Volume 3 remains unpublished. However, in the ramifications of two global scale events – the murder of George Floyd (May 25 2020) and the rightful emergence of the various strands of the Black Lives Matter campaigns, and the horrors of COVID-19 – for various reasons, it became impossible to sustain the four-volume output. All the speculations and theses prepared in this volume 4 by the M Arch students should have been read along with those in Volume 3 by the M Sc Architectural and Urban Design students, 2019-2020. Especially during the fieldwork phase, thankfully undertaken pre-COVID, the students of both programmes worked together. It is safe to say that they will have influenced each other. This intersubjectivity, communitarianism and encouragement to read beyond the limits of conventional knowledge systems go some way not only in decolonising the confines of curricula but also the way we approach the contexts into and from which we take our research and design practice.