Offering fast connectivity, good infrastructure and a great overall lifestyle, a smart city is a preferred choice for most people. But if you think that a smart city should only be a fancy city powered by technology, think again! It should offer smart sustainable projects which do not require a lot of investment of resources.
Pune-based youngster Snehal Chaudhari came up with an experiment Rail of Opportunities, which will transform unused urban spaces into living spaces for communities. Chaudhari was part of the recently concluded 2019 Asia Young Designer Awards (India edition), commonly known as AYDA. More than 2,500 students from across India participated in the contest and 21 shortlisted candidates competed in the finals. AYDA, a premier design award by Nippon Paint, aims to nurture young design talents across Asia by setting a platform for talents to share their design ideas with professional designers such as architects and interior designers.
This platform also provides design students with industry knowledge, personalised coaching, mentoring, and skill-building through XChange workshops across 15 countries. Ethos works towards sensitising students of architecture to the culture and ethos that their designs would need to respond to. AYDA is a flagship property of Nippon Paint and Ethos is the partner organisation that curates the whole edition.
A student of VIT’s PVP College of Architecture and a finalist from Pune, Chaudhari’s interesting concept Rail of Opportunities, makes use of inactive railway structures, making them functional again. Through her project, she demonstrates the need for mindful thinking in designing smart cities.
Rail of Opportunities raises concern over inactive railway structures that are declining due to various factors like harsh weather conditions leaving them dysfunctional. Her project aims at architecturally reusing them in order to give them a different identity, purpose and restoring the dead spaces as living spaces for communities. “Through this project, I’ve made a strong attempt to reintegrate the city and its waste into urbanism and sustainability,” explains Chaudhari.
She points out that railways have been an integral part of the transit system in India, but over the years with rapidly changing technology, not all coaches are utilised which leaves tonnes and tonnes of metal scrap that is not discarded in a proper manner. Chaudhari asks: Why can’t these discarded resources be reused, without creating an additional expense? She says that not just in India, but there are many such train graveyards, called Urban Ghosts in countries all around the world like Auschwitz, Pennsylvania, Essex and many more where there are several rusting engines and carriages that no more have a fate.
Chaudhari says that with a change in thinking, it is not only possible to give life to these defunct coaches, but also provide a shelter to people in urban cities who are migrating from rural areas without having to invest in more infrastructure that conveniently is clearing the green patches present in the city. “Using architecture, we can reuse and give them a whole new identity and purpose, ultimately eliminating dead spaces,” she says adding that through her project she wants to put forward the concept of using dysfunctional railway carriages in order to serve as a platform for sustainable development.
The young student wants to address the question as to how we can reintegrate the city and its waste into urbanism and sustainability. “When we talk of smart cities, we often think about building new things to improve the living conditions, only in terms of comfort and accessibility.
However, a smart city is more than that. It is a city which knows how to strive on the beliefs of sustainability and clean thinking, and hence provides a good life to every individual. The main attempt in this project is to revive the transit-spine as a social and economic corridor between two places, considering the nodes and its potential to develop it as an ‘Urban Link’ and regain its lost identity,” she says.
In the said project, Chaudhari divided the carriages in four modules — Training, Marker, Reading and Community — that would host certain actions. These modules are not just a design, but a concept of marrying economic growth with community building.
Her vision doesn’t end with this project. Chaudhari wants to work with CatalyticAction, a charity and design studio, which works to empower communities through strategic and innovative spatial interventions. “I really want to take up more community based projects in the future, however, I will not shy away from suggestions and briefs that clients would give, because customer feedback is important for a project to be successful,” she concludes.