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Water and Treasure, the two reoccurring elements in India’s Informal Dwellings. This was the basis of our design on affordable housing in a 3 months studio in Ahmedabad, India. Our bottom-up approach found its roots in the treasure box, the heart of the home, most sheltering and holy combined with the water box, which is always near treasure on all the scales. The system had a base in the community treasure around which the simple boxes were stacked sheltering the courtyard growing over time. More communities would join in a fractal based evolutionary pattern, leaving all the scales in tact and therefore having a solid social network for the arrivals.

A series of interviews were conducted with arrivals of the city of Ahmedabad who could afford more or less one third of a house. Soon we found out that the arrivals need to build up a new network which is based on many layers of collective being. This should be the heart of the plan. Secondly we composed the basic urban grammar of the context. Continuity and discontinuity, ground and sky, diversity of event, fixed and flowing and the tree as enabler of event.

We captured the formulated urban grammar in diagrams in order to include the expected density and predict the growth of the Habitat.

In what way does your proposal contribute to the open society?
Include scales, Expantion over time, Dignity, Network, Bottom Up.