Project
Weaving Fiction and Reality

Category 
Best Project of Public Space by Student

About the project
The project investigates the translation of narratives into architecture in the anachronistic context of Mandu, India. Translation across media is fundamental to address different forms of creation and expression. The contribution enhances the folklore of Mandu by creating a public intervention that becomes a text on the site where the design is a syntax for its past while the interventions are the semiotics required to communicate. Through a constant shift in time and place, Mandu’s folklore disintegrates into various follies to generate a spatial narration creating an imaginative memory in the form of visual manifestations. These landscape elements remain accidental pauses for visitors, generating a memory of the past to create an anticipatory imagination of the site as a story. Such textual architecture validates fiction by pulling it out from mythical tales to give it a more permanent residence in reality, thus weaving a narrative through the tool of «translation».

Location
Mandu, Dhar District, Madhya Pradesh, India

Project design year
2019

More project images
https://photos.app.goo.gl/o9FhV1n4ftp9QAk87

Additional information
The project has been selected amongst the 50 entries to feature in the forthcoming book «Unbuilt Volume 2.0» http://unbuilt.in/?fbclid=IwAR2-_H3BQBIHogZJ8xSMKJe_YFJkXver7dtnetgFeEX1X5847PRppIOBrqQ

Applicant and author of the project
Nishi Sujal Shah.
Nishi received her undergraduate degree in Architecture from India and is currently pursuing her Master of Science from The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design, part of the Delft University of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment in the Netherlands. With a close affinity towards research, Nishi has gained experience in academics as a research and teaching assistant to explore new methodologies of thinking and approaching architecture.