Exploring new research methodologies and tools at ‘BYPASSLAB: bypass infrastructures of the peri-urban fringe’ workshop, June 26 – July 2, 2016 at Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development
WHAT: BYPASSLAB:bypass infrastructures of the peri-urban fringe
WHO (organised by): Indo-German Centre for Sustainability, IIT Madras
WHERE: Rajiv Gandhi National Institute for Youth Development, Sriperumbudur
WHEN: June 26 – July 2, 2016
WEBSITE: http://www.bypasslab.net
Chennai, June 22, 2016: Urban designers, architects, new media professionals, GIS/mapping enthusiasts and social scientists with an interest in visual and spatial analysis, will come together for a week-long interdisciplinary workshop, ‘The bypasslab’, to collectively explore the potential for new methodologies and tools to capture the changing landscape of peri-urban areas. Organised by the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS) at IIT Madras, this workshop will be held at the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute for Youth Development, Sriperumbudur between June 26 and July 2, 2016.
As India debates smart cities, it becomes extremely relevant to question and imagine how we are to live in such cities, the boundaries of which are being redefined every day. The workshop will take place in Sriperumbudur, an area undergoing rapid urbanisation, and itself emblematic of India’s emerging (peri)urban future.
The lab/workshop will consciously avoid a conventional, structured, lecture-based format and will instead offer an open platform to allow for an immersive, hands-on experience. A combination of exposure to the field and post-field discussions will be used to explore elemental questions around peri-urban design. How do we deal with the overwhelming scale of transformations and what sorts of methods and technologies can we embrace in this regard? Can we go beyond the paradigms of urban design, on-site fieldwork, data analytics and GIS technologies to come up with more suitable, contextual and sensitive strategies of data collection? And can we come up with more intelligent mappings and forms of representation?
Starting June 26, the lab will feature lectures by Deepta Sateesh, Dean, Department of Humanities, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Mapbox (Bangalore), Seetha Raghupathy, a senior urban designer from Singapore, Kiran Keswani, doctoral fellow at CEPT University (Ahmedabad), Arunava Dasgupta, Associate Professor at School of Architecture and Planning (SPA) (Delhi) and other experts in the fields of design, mapping and spatial data analytics. The workshop is set up as a one-week “hacklab”, with participants of different disciplinary backgrounds exploring the peri-urban through multiple forms of media. It builds towards a collective presentation and discussion on July 2,2016.
Karl Beelen from IGCS, one of the organisers of the workshop said, “We hope to pull out new and daring visualisations and narratives about the wave of urbanisation that is currently redefining the face of urban India. But mostly we are excited about the possibilities for exchange and collaboration that such a workshop can offer to a new generation of minds.”
