Empowering women for me is to get the unaware, aware and give the aware the way to be. The aims are definite but the process difficult. With such diversity, empowering such a vast mass via a common platform would sum up my thesis. Both the genders play an important role I believe. How is it that architecture provides the help needed would guide me to my design. Wanting it to serve as a catalyst for a change.
What happens when a society is given the answer directly, without questioning them?
The answer renders as a luxury and not a necessity. To provide a space that questions them and then enlightens them with even a shadow of the answer would encourage one to seek their own.
Giurgola's proposed Parliament House in Canberra was not a monument imposed on the landscape and the citizens but was integrated within a hill, thus putting the people above the parliament. Expressing the intent of democracy literally through architecture.
Unschool-लिंग is a space of clear contrasts. The underground and the above ground, the green and the barren, the built and the un-built thus representing bipolarity and duality of existence. Duality being the aspect of existence by negation, ensuring individual expression yet within collective consciousness. And bipolarity being the aspect where opposites reinforce each other.
The observer reaches the viewing point trying to find the experiential space expressing how one needs to try a little harder to observe the internalized patriarchy in our day to day lives. The visitor reaches the observation point only to observe the movement of the institution and the stark contrast of landscape. But the luring green sight could only be reached after one experiences the underground space. An interpretation of those women’s lives who strive to get back to life after their unfortunate experiences.
Six emotions, Control, Blame, Uncertainty, fear, monotony, and hopelessness is converted into architectural spaces, through thorough research of neuroscience, elements of space making and observational studies. Various mediums such as media, sounds, texture, etc. would be used so as to provoke the mind into experiencing the same.
The institution caters to spaces that were decided after thorough research done through surveys and interviews done in my various travels and questionnaires sent to women across the world. Since the institution is built by the women themselves, eco feminism as a theme is carried out through out the site planning, making sure the women along with the unbuilt(guilds) are self sustainable.
Site Analysis
What? Why? How
"Architecture is the reflection of the society it builds in"
-Shabbir Unwala
Experiential space design
The experential space design was converted into a comic strip for a better and wholesome understanding of the design as the space contains, audio and visual elements emphasizing on emotions which could not have been expressed in any other visual format.
Institution design
The construction details for unschoo-लिंग are provided with precise detailing owing to the complexity of the design itself:
Construction details I
Construction details II
The journey is about making one realize where a woman comes from. Ignorance is bliss they say, but what happens when one breaks the bubble? When one sees the other in a new light, when the “weaker” inspires the “stronger”?
I believe they see the other for what they are, as an equal, not as a liability. For one to see another beyond all the physical realities and to see the light within them, is when the barriers break, they become “genderless”.
