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The beginning
Some time in the year 1967, the plan that is
popularly known as the Galaxy plan came to be accepted by the people
concerned as representing the concept of the city of Auroville.
This plan was very appealing to the visual senses and gave a marketable
symbolism to the new ideal city. At the same time there was the
parallel reality that was stubborn in its aridness, lack of infrastructure,
trees, capital and willing competent architects and builders.
First years
The years 1968-80 saw a pragmatic approach to
development and architecture in Auroville, during which limited
manpower and capital was imaginatively used with local materials
and techniques by the Aurovilians to house themselves. Roger Anger
(the chief architect) meanwhile had started to work on developing
the area along the Coromandel Coast to establish the Auromodele
settlement.
As the name implies, this settlement was to
be a model for the city of Auroville, with a projected population
of 3,000 people. There was a cluster of houses and a couple of educational
buildings in the Aspiration area that were built.
Self-built structures
These buildings were in direct contrast to the
minimal vernacular of the self-built structures generally used at
the time. The latter were curvilinear and earth-hugging, and they
changed the popular mindset of what built space should look or feel
like. The spaces within these houses and schools were also curved
both in plan and volume, so the apertures were more than windows
to look out of or to ventilate the space inside; they became something
to look at in their own right.
The seventies
The decade of the '70s saw a lot of structures
coming up imitating this style in houses and community spaces, as
in the settlement of Djaima. Of course there were architects who
were designing clusters of residential and non-residential buildings
which were in styles that evoked a temperate clime setting, like
in the settlement of Certitude. The industrial architecture of Fraternity
was a full-fledged play in the use of asbestos for roofing, walling
and openings. While the official planning and architecture office
of 'l'Avenir d'Auroville' (presently 'Auroville's Future') was designing
and model-making for a series of projects that were hopefully going
to be built in Auromodele or in the city area of Auroville, the
residents were struggling with the pressing reality of evolving
survival techniques.
Sustainable practices
The pace of development was marginal in the
decade of the '70s and the mid '80s, during which the public buildings
of Matrimandir and Bharat Nivas were commenced as acts of faith.
The trend changed some time in the mid '80s, when development picked
up with a reversal of Auroville's fortune. With the post energy-crisis
awareness there was a trend towards more sustainable practices in
architecture in terms of materials used, implementation of designs
that were more climate conscious, and incorporation of recycling
and renewable energy
systems.
Local materials
From self-built houses in earth and ferrocement
to public buildings, projects like the Visitors' Centre, Vikas community,
Solar Kitchen and the Kindergarten school were done by various architects
through the Auroville Building Centre. Many architects now systematically
began to experiment with vernacular materials, styles and spaces
- as in the settlements Petite Ferme, Yantra and Samasti.
New language
We seem to have come full circle at the end
of the millennium, with both the architects and the users having
this uneasy feeling that it is not enough to be just sustainable,
or worshippers of pure architecture, no matter how convincing the
style.
Auroville has now to come up with a language
of architecture and development that will reflect the uniqueness
of this experiment without losing the sense of rootedness to the
plateau of land on which Auroville is sighted. There is an urgent
need to explore options that can give a free rein to our imagination
within the carrying capacity of this bio-region.
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