INTRODUCTION TO SPACE DESIGN THROUGH 'ORDINARY SPACES'

2016, The Design Village, NOIDA.

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This week-long workshop was meant as a formative and foundational course for first year design students at The Design Village, an experimental design school on the peripheries of Delhi. After an initial workshop on experimenting the semiotic spatial triad of Lefebvre with the students, I sought to take them outside on the streets and learn from the ordinary spacemaking practices of people inhabiting street edges. The students identified and documented a range of ordinary spaces around them such as tea stalls, repair shops, and food kiosks. The students were encouraged to not only document the spatial characters of this architecture which is often considered 'ephemeral', but also to engage in long discussions with people who were producing them. To document the lives, and journies of the people who were producing them, and to learn how they inhabit them.

After this, the students were encouraged to design strategic interventions that would accentuate the spatial character of these spaces and in consultation with their owners carry out them in real life. As a further exercise, the students were encouraged to design posters that would provide visibility to these spaces.