Quadruped Animal Shelter Project
“Our concerns for the street animals and our concerns for people are probably related to one another. The troubles that street animals face are not independent from the troubles that we face (as humans). It would be easy to see the street animals as a problem and handle them as a problem. Whereas if we can learn to live together again, maybe we’ll solve our own problems as we try to solve theirs. That could well be our path towards regaining our fading sense of humor and rekindle our slowly dying joy for life.”
KEDI – documentary film by Ceyda Torun illustrating the lives of street cats in Istanbul, Turkey.
Drawing parallels between the urban humans with street animals like dogs/cats, we observe how they tend to interact (or not) with these co-inhabitants and the way they exist alongside each other.
How does one define a home? Would it be a sprawling built space customized to fancy our luxurious desires? Or would it be a finite volume just enough to accommodate one’s daily existential needs? Or then, would it be a sheet of tarpaulin stretched over a couple of bamboo’s on a neglected pavement, saving one from the onslaught of weather. Or does it simply mean that tiny space below a parked car, or a hole in the compound wall?
Stepping outside the realm of what architecture along with art notionally stands for in its literal sense, The Initiative explores a logical take on the emotional dependence of the urban animals with humans through the lens of what one may call their safe haven ‘my space’.
There lies immense merit in the argument in today’s time that designers should utilize their skills to resolve societal and environmental problems in the manner of an anti-consumerist approach rather than in support of the capitalist world. From supporting a single user to a group of users, designers have the ability to create an impact through social design. (Interestingly, social design limits itself to certain sections of society, more so, society implying humans.)
While we share our world with fellow humans as well as animals along with nature, social design in densely populated human areas currently lacks exploration that empathizes with the welfare of street animals. The Initiative aspires to explore bridging that gap, combining art and design towards this endeavour of creating architecture for the non-human component of cities.
We notice them when we want to, we don’t when we don’t.
Objectives.
The Initiative presents a study and illustration of the lives of stray animals and their habitat in different given cultural and physical conditions in the city of Mumbai. This further culminates into building animal shelter pods and feeders as usable/habitable art installations in different areas by deconstructing a typical street usage in a given city in India and intervening accordingly with the opportunities that present themselves. These pods would then begin to act as a safe haven for animals along with a pause point for humans, facilitating interaction if they desire acting as non-intrusive art inserts for the street dwellers and passers-by alike.
Initial Imprints.
Mumbai city houses (or rather, witnesses) a stray or street dog population of close to one lakh. Out of which the population of street dogs in the Suburban Mumbai district is eight times larger. [1] (There is are no statistics available for the street cat population as of today.) Compare this to the 220 lakh human population of Mumbai, out of which the number of humans populating the slums/streets is close to an astonishing 60%. That’s 132 lakh in numbers. [2]
Interestingly, the street dwellers, humans and animals, share a rather strong interdependence with regards to their psychological well-being and security. These animals are often conferred upon a name and considered as a close family member by those who live with them on streets. They end up forming an inseparable bond, which continues through life and generations. The street animals are found taking shelters under parked vehicle and other unsafe areas in proximity, often running a high risk of meeting with critical physical damage being run over and a lot times with an utterly painful death.
[1] As per survey carried out by the Mumbai Municipal Corporation in Oct 2017. Sources: the Asian Age, the Indian Express.
[2] As per survey carried out by the Mumbai Municipal Corporation. Source: the Indian Express
Observations.
It emerges strongly that their existence is easy to be ignored (we assume ‘their’ in this regard to be animals as well as humans that dwell on the streets); Ironically, shutting off their presence from the spectrum of vision for the (remaining) privileged 88 lakh urban dwellers of the city equipped with a shelter above their heads is often the case than not. Here probably lies the germination of the problem, and hence an attempt at a design intervention to address this lacuna.
Research + Analysis.
Learnings from research study ‘Kutta Kisko Bola’ were applied as a substrata to develop an understanding for The Quadruped Animal Pods Project.
Opportunities and Vision
With these imprints at hand, we begin to envision design/ art in a uniquely layered city such as Mumbai. This offers an opportunity to dab into the tangible and intangibles while exploring the overlaps between various paradigms like culture, emotions and ‘human’ values.
Locations such as a busy street corner, a dilapidated dysfunctional planter at the edge of the main road, the neglected dead end at a mohallah, the niche in the compound wall of a housing society. These give way to a collapsible pod for temporary fosters on the street or inside a structure for a frail pup or that tiny abandoned kitten amongst many other locations, thus believing in making a difference, a tiny one nevertheless, to those whose lives matter.
Direction
The design intent dabbles between what would be absolute necessities with generous sprinkles of dreams and aspirations. The direction varies from responding to materiality, temporality, efficiency, climate responsiveness, durability, reparability and minimal intrusion to aesthetics, art installation value, high detailing, sustainability, modularity, light weightiness, collapsibility, and cost effectiveness.
Simulations
Scale models are the first step towards actualizing design, they help understand proportions and provide an early stage in the process to easily make design changes. The models below have been made using various processes, primarily 3D printed bioplastics (plastic-like materials made using fermented plant starch).
Prototyping
Prototyping is the final step before final production, while this step usually helps understand the scale and volume of the designs at life-size, it, more importantly, allows us to test whether the designs make animals curious enough to proceed to interact with them. This aids us to make more informed choices about materials and manufacturing methods. The following designs were prototyped using corrugated sheets made of recycled paper, and waste concrete at construction sites.
Designs
Cues from the prototyping process were used to further design more pods that utilize materials that serve their individual functions and contexts. While some pods were also designed the other way around where the design revolves around properties of particular materials. These include pods that serve animals and pods that serve both animals and humans.
