SITE AND CONTEXT

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Urban lakes very often constitute man-made ecosystems, resulting from excavation processes that provide building materials for residential developments, road system and walkways. They form components of urban parks through the enlargement of smaller water bodies to support recreational activities such as angling, swimming and boating. They have small direct catchment areas and much of the water feeding these lakes is drained from relatively large metropolitan, paved watersheds through stormwater channels and pipelines.

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Rabindra Sarobar, ‘The Lakes’ as it is locally referred to, acts as a refuge amidst the busy cosmopolitan hub of South Calcutta. In the mornings, the urban park operates as the venue for joggers, fitness and yoga enthusiasts. Earlier known as the Dhakuria Lakes, named after its neighbouring district and urban context, it includes 73 acres of water, pathways and gardens dotted with many large and old trees. Migratory water birds visit the area during winter while the lake is home to several aquatic species. A number of rowing and swimming clubs use the water for their activities, claiming portions of these urban water bodies within their club premises. The Calcutta Rowing Club (CRC) which was established in 1858 making it one of the oldest clubs in the country, alongside Bengal Rowing Club, Lake Club and the Indian Life Saving Society (formerly Anderson Swimming Club) are among some of the sports and recreational centres situated in the immediate vicinity of the lakes. The sports stadium Rabindra Sarobar Stadium, anchors the complex in its north western corner, functioning as an important landmark in the area. In addition, the open air theatre, Nazrul Mancha serves to function as a significant urban node and attractor, where the city dwellers convene for festivals such as the annual Dover Lane Music Conference. A theatre in the vicinity which also functions as a literary club, Chakra Baithak is housed in a quaint tiled roof house. The only Japanese Buddhist temple in Kolkata is close by.

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In this diverse context that juxtaposes natural habitats with cultural and recreational urban spaces, the research enquires into the instruments and mechanisms which bridge the gap between the natural and cultural realms, creating diagrams of existing realtional networks and infleuntial actants while ascertaining the impact of urbanisation on aquatic and avian habitat in an effort to contribute towards the rewilding of cities.

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CONCEPTUAL PREMISE

                                 

The island is representative of a city contained within. As a land mass and urban territory, it exists as a self-contained entity separated from the surrounding expanse of urban form and living practices, while remaining connected to them. Alternatively, the island represents an entity independent of the city, while simultaneously remaining delimited and restrained by the surrounding bodies of water.

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The park (and the island) cannot be interpreted as self-contained entities but “ rather a process of ongoing relationships existing in physical region.” Employing the reading of Central Park, New york as a precedent, Robert Smithson and Rem Koolhaus’ work offer insightful perspectives that can be contextualised here. As Smithson states, “ Olmsted’s parks exist before they are finished which means in fact they are never finished ; they remain carriers of the unexpected and of contradiction on all levels of human activity, be it social, political or natural. ” As Rem Koolhaus writes, the park is comparable to a horizontal skyscraper ’ that manifests on the ground and reflects the functional and spatial complexity of a city tower, as well as embodying its potential for expansion. Alternatively, it represents a permanence that opposes the ephemerality of the urban skyscraper, where towers are demolished and rebuilt, and interiors adapted, based on transforming demographics and corresponding changes in the needs of the city’s inhabitants.

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The park and the water bodies contain several islands that constitute the habiats for migratory birds and species, existing idenpendently, as isolated, disjointed entities that complement the urban cityscape and networks emerging on the periphery. Relative to Central Park, an islandic identity embodied by the urban green expanse of the Rabindra Sarobar park, is compared to a singular unit, an urban block similar to a skyscraper that represents a type of urban form, modular and replicable in its external physicality, and flexible and interchangeable within its interior structure. A strategy of disjunction manifests in the form of “ frames and sequences ” that unfold as one traverses the expanse of the aforementioned projects . The sequential positioning of urban and architectural objects in specific locations within the city take the form of the park, the tower, the street and the block , employing the use of existing elements that define the urban fabric. The urban blocks within the plan are similar in their external definition while different extensively in their internal constitu- tion. Collectively, they present a choreographed narrative of the metropolis through separate but interconnected identities.

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Le Corbusier describes Manhattan as a ‘ spectacle of contrasts ’ made evident through a cross- sectional examination of an apparently homogenous island that brings forth these differences. The sectional studies conducted in this context seek to illustarte the complexitities and contrasts that articualte a sequntial layering of urban collective spaces and naturally existing enclsoures. The Manhattan transcripts are exemplary of an architectural practice that “ rejects synthesis in favour of disjunctive analysis, and the opposition of use and from, in favour of their superimposition and juxtaposition, through their fragmentation and combination. ” The theory and strategy of disjunction rejects the notion and approach of totality , representative of the city in its entirety, and instead seeks to introduce a project that represents a ‘ dynamic montage ’ realised through the presence of
‘ discontinuities between objects ’ and an open-endedness that resists completion, encouraging interdisciplinary forces to participate in architectural production. The filmic montage explored by Bernard Tschumi in the Manhattan Transcripts, facilities the creation of “ explosions, disjunctions, spaces of non-control (spaces that are not designed and whose form and use is not pre determined) and voids. ”

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In the first Transcripts, Tschumi develops the Park as an “ open experimental field, an architectural language of events spaces and movements ” that is connected to the city at large by the other urban elements associated with them, namely, the block, the tower and the street. In the context of Rabindra Sarobar, the cultural and recreational block, the sports ground , the pedestain route, the water bodies and the islands constitute elements that collectively orchestrate a rhythmic synchrony of event spaces and movements within the park. Additionally, the city connects to the park and vice versa through a series of ‘ spectacles of contrasts ’ that constitute the green space within urban settings, representing a ‘ horizontal skyscraper ’ that interacts with the inner city fabric.

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Within and beyond the expansive urban green, city fabric exists as a tension membrane stretched between the water and sky, articulating a threshold between the two. As a “ space of tension ”, the city “ works to establish and constantly maintain its limits ” suggesting a form of enclosure, but refraining from clearly defining a territory.

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Consequently, the city and the island are understood as a dynamic space, aided through representations, employing the use of different media and interdisciplinary methods that offer a lens for perceiving architectural form and urban space through the dialectics of interdependence.

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References : 

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Teresa Stoppani, Paradigm Islands: Manhattan and Venice : Discourses on Architecture and the City Routledge, 2012.

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Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, 1. publ. in pbk, Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007).

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