Reinventing the edge: a cultural and knowledge centre, Kanpur

Abstract

Cities are like living organisms. They are continuously growing and undergoing transitions. Each then like a living system would slowly decay, if not flexible enough to adapt to the change of the context. Hence each City today faces the issue of derelict spaces within them which tend to become the negative and dead areas of the whole urban fabric. These spaces tend to lose connections with the neighborhood and pose the dire need for redevelopment, which would in return result in regeneration of the city. A dilapidated building or decaying neighborhood can be razed, the ground leveled and new buildings put up. That is in many ways comparable to a situation in which a wound or tumor (the old and decaying neighborhood or building) is disinfected or excised (building demolition and leveling of the site) in order to allow new tissue growth (the renewal, the healing process). This healing of the city would be done through sensitive urban insertions much like a surgery to repair the infection or in cities case its lost spaces. My thesis explores the current condition of the first cotton textile mills in the heart of the city of Kanpur and proposes a design aiming at the revival of a mill premise for the benefit of the city. It is an attempt to preserve the city’s old fabric, which at one time was a city in itself and merge its fabric with the new development in a cohesive manner. The research includes a detailed value assessment study for the site and its surroundings which would help in reinventing the perceived edge of this Industrial city. The success of the building is in its layering, its discovery by the visitor and its ability to make a public building truly public. My ideas come from observation: of the site, of nature, of people moving in the city. The thesis study is a hypothetical pilot project, which I have selected as a initial response to such an issue of fragmented city fabric.