Cities are formed through the interaction of several diverse forces - social, religious, economic and physical. These forces combine together and influence the form, characteristics and experience of the city and its inhabitants. However, as our cities grow larger and denser the pressures exerted on them by these diverse forces start to become conflicting rather than collaborative. Today, the very diversity that once activated our cities threatens to dissolve them.
Urban growth is increasingly taking on a pattern of fragmentation and seclusion that threatens the idea and existence of a singular urban totality. These cities produce extreme spatial typologies that range from elite compounds to refugee and squatter camps. In Delhi in particular, gated housing enclaves, university campuses, covered shopping malls, all tend to develop into partitioned and controlled zones that retain a connection to the city only through a limited number of access points. Public space, traditionally understood as the ultimate space for social encounter and equality, is being eroded through the conflicting forces of commerce and physical functionality. The challenge today is to meet these commercial and ‘lifestyle’ needs without letting our cities degenerate into concrete islands where no social interaction or balance is possible. ‘Terra-polis’ - the proposed campus design - attempts to address this urgent need to re-examine the idea of an inclusive city and translate it into specific intervention strategies.
As the pressures of urban growth intensify, natural habitats within the city have become the biggest casualty. They are damaged and destroyed as the juggernaut of ‘development’ transforms green covers and natural eco-systems into concrete jungles and glass boxes. Two-thirds of the world’s population will soon be living in cities. In order to make this urban development sustainable, we will need to achieve a balance between the three varied yet potentially complementary urban forces: social, environmental and economic. The key to the success of the proposed campus lies in the ability of the design to facilitate the conflicting elements of urban development and ecological continuity in mutually strengthening each other.
As an academic institution, through its core function, the proposed campus serves as a place for interaction and collaboration. The location and the nature of the institute thus give it the potential to counter the ‘urbanism of exclusion’ and the growing fragmentation of the city and its natural habitat, and instead propose an ‘Open campus’. The ‘open campus’ encourages and facilitates interaction with the city, allowing the city to participate in life on campus. It also encompasses the ecosystems on the site so that this interaction can thrive in its natural surroundings.
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