︎

Experiments in anti-zoning


This project redevelops an abandoned mill site, and uses the mill’s footprint as the central open space and organizing feature of a phased redevelopment proposal. The development is an experiment with a novel paradigm, which we termed “antizoning:” a form of development that celebrates Kolkata’s dense and dynamic urban fabric. The proposal embraces flexibility and organic growth over a long-term development timeline. The organic development around the carved-out mill building is structured and guided through tactical infrastructure development.

This proposal was part of a semester-long project in an urban design studio at MIT. Working with architecture students, we were asked to develop an urban design proposal for a single jute mill in Kolkata. My partners (an architect and an urban planner) and I, chose to develop a proposal for Surah Jute Mill, the only jute mill in the metropolitan region that is landlocked. Read more about this project here, on the MIT Architecture website. Drawings made in collaboraiton with Angie Door and Gabriela Zayas del Rio.



Our proposal was based on a phased approach, for which we also drew up rough financials. The first phase would set up three infrastructural systems that would physically limit the freeform development in the subsequent phases. Surah after 20 years of antizoned development. We don’t fully know what the Surah will look like at the end of 20 years, and this is largely the point of the development approach: by not fully preconceiving what the end-state of the site look like, we avoid locking the project into a design and development plan that cannot accommodate future uses of space. A view into the central open space. Rendering by Angie Door. The first infrastructural system that will govern the “antizoned” development is the street grid, which is drawn around the footprint of the mill and is based on existing street patterns in the area. The second infrastructural system that guides development is a network of bridges and roofs that links economic hubs on the site to each other and to regional trade flows. Two typologies of connectivity are physical manifestations of larger regional flows: Bridges are used to connect buildings. Roofs are used as communal space shared between buildings These two typologies both act as anti-zoning elements by limiting further building and protecting open space. Water towers and a bridge guide physical development and provide essential infrastructures that support this growth. The third infrastructural system that supports and guides development is on-site water collection and treatment. The buildings themselves would be part of this functional system: water would be collected on buildings’ roofs, and stored in water towers that dot the site. The water would be treated in a series of treatment tanks that would be placed in Surah’s central open space. Water treatment and recreation in the former mill turned central open space. Rendering by Angie Door.

Warren Woodlands


This project explores a non-demoliton approach to the maintenance and care of overgrown vacant residential lots. It is based on a reframing of these overgrown lots in the hearts and minds of the communities from sites of neglect and inattention to places of ecological value that are cared for.


Warren, Ohio has a number of residential lots that are in an overgrown condition. We learned through conversations with the local land bank that residents prefer cleanly mowed lots to overgrown ones, in keeping with research findings by Joan Nassauer in the 1990s. The spontaneous urban wilderness present on these lots could provide a huge boost to the ecological health of the region, vital considering the many decades of heavy industry and manufacturing. Moreover, this approach could save the local land bank hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on clearing and mowing, which is the current strategy for maintaining these lots. The work was grounded in a series of atlas sheets. The first of four explores the larger regional context of Warren, and establishes themes of extraction and value. Throughout Warren’s history, value of land was extracted and transferred somewhere else. Extraction of any kind has consequences. By celebrating land’s non-monetary, non-transferable value, by caring for it as an important resource in its own right, will we start to value the land differently? The second atlas sheet builds on the themes of extraction and value, while exploring the spatial relationship between 19th century transportation infrastructures and present day household income. The third sheet examines the spatial relationship between local historic preservation efforts and vacant land. The origin of historic preservation is steeped in whiteness, and the discipline continues to celebrate a settler colonial perspective of the past. But history is a powerful tool: by telling stories that have gone untold for so long, it can help reorient the present and the future to be more inclusive. In the third atlas sheet, I propse putting historic preservation in conversation with vacant lots. Can we practice a new form of historic preservation in these vacant spaces, and possibly make them places. Mindy Fullilove argues in Root Shock that everywhere is a place to someone. Vacant lots can be a place to embrace that truth. A final atlas sheet presents the overgrown lots as an asset, a citywide system that can be thought of as a whole rather than discrete parts. This GIF shows the various stages of "reframing" that I propose for overgrown lots. This particular site, on Wick Street SE, is near a school, so the interventions here build off of that community asset. The frames (legal, formal, and emotional) are low-cost and intended to be flexible, allowing for different implementations at different sites across the city. The future condition of the Wick Street site includes a spatiallydifferentiated clearing strategy that maintains most of the woodland, and signage throughout. The “formal” intervention is based on a clearing strategy that creates human-scale “rooms” in the woodland. The approach was first developed at Berlin’s Naturpark Südgelände. Signage is a key part of the program. The appearance of wild urban woodlands could suggest a lack of attention. Signs can show that someone is paying attention, that someone is looking after the land, and that there is intention behind the site’s appearance.

Sketchbook

A quick look at my sketching and diagramming process. 

Preferred tools (important details!!): plain black hardbound notebook, a black Sharpie, and a Precise V5.

Photos updated occasionally.