Moulshri Joshi Enacting the Past LA

` 900.00 | ISSN 0975-0177 77 2024 lrÙkj SINCE 2001 7 2024 7‰ LA JOURNAL OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE report 14 LANDSCAPES OF COEXISTENCE MANIFESTATIONS | RENDITIONS | EVALUATION | DIRECTION 15TH ISOLA CONFERENCE Report by SHARAYU GANGURDE the region 20 REGIONAL CONTEXT VISHAKHA KAWATHEKAR nature in the city city & culture IS WISE USE OF BHOJ WETLAND, A RAMSAR SITE, A DREAM? PRADIP NANDI BHOPAL IN THE LAP OF NATURE SUHAS KUMAR 34 THE CITY P. K. BISWAS ‘A LIVABLE CAMPUS’ INDIAN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE EDUCATION AND RESEARCH IISER UJAN GHOSH 56 38 86 THE LOST HISTORIC GARDENS A GLANCE MEERA ISHWAR DASS 44 SHAURYA SMARAK A MEMORIAL KISHORE D. PRADHAN: ARCHITECTURE+LANDSCAPE 61 PLANNING OF LAKE CITY OPPORTUNITIES AND COMPLEXITIES SURABHI MEHROTRA 91 ENACTING THE PAST MOULSHRI JOSHI WITH VERNACULAR NIPUN PRABHAKAR | DHAMMADA COLLECTIVE landscape, architecture & design 47 24 80 seeing the unseen 72 NEGOTIATING CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT ABHILASH KHANDEKAR 98 FROM THE ARCHIVES 50 MOVING THROUGH SPACE & TIME MANJUSHA UKIDVE 74 CLASSICS ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND PLANNING ‰ 100 INDIRA GANDHI RASHTRIYA MANAV SANGRAHALAYA IGRMS | NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MAN RAM SHARMA & ASSOCIATES VISUAL MANIFESTATIONS OF THE LANDSCAPE STORIES GOND PAINTINGS KHUSHBOO ADHIYA NOTE | Icons at the end of articles and features in the issue have been drawn from some of the landmark sites of Bhopal city LA JOURNAL OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE REGISTRATION NUMBER: 75500 | PRINT DURATION: Quarterly, 4 issues per year EDITORS Brijender S Dua Architect | New Delhi Geeta Wahi Dua Landscape Architect | New Delhi ADVISORY BOARD Savita Punde Landscape Architect | Delhi NCR Rohit Marol Landscape Architect | Bengaluru Sujata Kohli Landscape Architect | New Delhi Rajat Ray Urban Designer | New Delhi DESIGN+LAYOUT M Shah Alam+studio earth Atul Naahar Paramount Printographics EDITORIAL AND SUBSCRIPTION OFFICE: C-589, Vikas Puri, New Delhi 110 018 INDIA [W]: lajournal.in | ISSN 0975-0177 | D1x1 2024.04.09 | OFFSET S1x500 2024.04.13 OWNED, PRINTED & PUBLISHED BY Brijender S. Dua, C-589, Vikas Puri, New Delhi 110 018 INDIA PRINTED AT Paramount Printographics, Darya Ganj, New Delhi 110 002 INDIA Views expressed in the Journal are that of the Authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Editors or the Publisher. While every effort is made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission where required, it has not been possible in all the cases. Any clarification in this regard, if brought to notice, would be remedied in future issues. No part of the journal may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the Editors. PRINTING ADVISOR | D. K . Z .G . H . I . J . C . & S . J . H . P R Z D. [T]: +91-11-41584375, 9810252661 | [E]: [email protected] SUBSCRIPTION 1-YEAR [4 ISSUES: PRINTED COPIES] RS. 3,000.00 DIGITAL ISSUES: AVAILABLE ON MAGZTER SUBSCRIPTION+PAYMENT DETAILS ON: www.lajournal.in magzter.com/IN/LA,Journal-of-Landscape-Architecture/ Journal-of-Landscape-Architecture/Architecture/ facebook.com/pages/Landscape-Journal-India @lajournalindia city & culture | Moulshri Joshi, Architect | [email protected] ENACTING THE PAST Moulshri Joshi is an architect and a teacher leading the awardwinning design practice SpaceMatters based in New Delhi. In 2005, she was part of the winning team commissioned to design a memorial at the site of the former Union Carbide Factory in Bhopal. While the memorial is yet to be built, the studio has worked in the field of Industrial Heritage since 2003 with a focus on the study of industrial heritage and sustainable remediation. More recently, Moulshri works with various organisations such as ICCROM, IIE and INTACH to train students and professionals on critical study of post-industrial landscapes. She is the member of the Board at PHOTO CREDIT | ANIH Team TICCIH International and an active contributor to ICOMOS India and Asian Network of Industrial Heritage (ANIH). She is the Associate Editor of the book ‘Bhopal 2011 – Landscapes of Memory’ published by SpaceMatters and editor of the Inventory of Industrial Heritage in India – a privately supported documentation initiative that has mapped 400+ industrial sites across the country. In a conversation, she discusses her association with Bhopal which commemorates 40 years to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in December 2024. The Journey We first visited Bhopal in 2005 as young architects with a day job to participate in the national competition to design a memorial for the victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. We were not formally ‘SpaceMatters’ then and had two more collaborators – SanjeetWahi and Uttiya Bhattacharya. The competition was organized by EPCO – Environmental Planning and Coordination Organization. Many of Bhopal’s avant-garde architecture such as Tribal Museum by Revathi & Vasant Kamath, Charles Correa, and Anant Raje’s Bhopal portfolio can be credited to the presence of an agency with EPCO’s mandate and vision. The competition was perhaps one of the last single-stage architectural competitions that had no entry barrier while dealing with a site of such significance. The competition brief was progressive too. It encouraged architects to develop their own propose of what must be built on the 67 acre site. It was equally bold for EPCO to publish the jury’s decision through newspapers and commissioned a young practice for a significant public project. Since then, having seen the architecture competition and tender ecosystem up close, I find that the space to compete without barriers and prejudice has been shrinking. 77 | 2024 landscape 61 city & culture | Over the next two decades, SpaceMatters built its own Bhopal portfolio with the site of the former Union Carbide factory being at its core while not managing to break ground at the site itself. The memorial is yet to be built but we were able ground many ideas and lessons that this important site contains. Bhopal 2011: Requiem and Revitalization The spatial legacy of Bhopal Gas Tragedy is remarkable. The site, the pollution, the dumping grounds, the factory structures taken over by trees, plants and reptiles. It’s very evocative. But it is also very problematic decades have passed since the disaster and we have not been able to remediate the site and commemorate the tragedy. We organized the Bhopal 2011 International Workshop and Symposium in response to government’s call to demolish the historic factory structures. As architects commissioned to design the memorial at ground zero, we felt we bore the responsibility to shift the discourse and practice. Bhopal2011 made a call to mobilize memory into action. What are the challenges in recognizing contemporary sites with a conflicting past as heritage? What are the challenges in interpreting and rehabilitating sites with conflicting narratives? What are the challenges in harnessing sites with contemporary and conflictingheritage for society building? What are the challenges in recognizing contemporary sites with a conflicting past as heritage? What are the challenges in interpreting and rehabilitating sites with conflicting narratives? What are the challenges in harnessing sites with contemporary and conflicting heritage for society building? These questions were never meant to be answered through an event, but the enquiry became a lighthouse of sorts, leading us into unchartered waters. Meanwhile what Bhopal2011 – which soon after the event was published as a book - achieved was more urgent. It managed to halt the demolition of the factory structures. In SpaceMatters’ 2005 proposal, central to the design of the memorial complex—spread across 67 acres of the abandoned and gated factory complex— are the remains of the former Union Carbide factory conserved as monuments to the tragedy. The old, rendering plants had a towering presence above the bastis, a retired icon of India’s Green Revolution. In its ruinous state, the factory was and is a testimony to the time that has passed since the night of 3rd December 1984- a period that the survivor groups have called the ‘second disaster’ and ‘the continuing disaster’ of Bhopal. The protection, stabilization, detoxification, and conservation of the factory structures were central to the memorial project. The factory was the memorial – leftover of an international disaster that now claims local, unaccounted lives. In 2005, the idea that the factory ‘responsible for the tragedy’ should be preserved as a memorial was a counterintuitive, almost bizarre idea. Only a few felt some sort of connection and sense of stewardship towards the ruins in Bhopal. In 2007, the Department of Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation floated a tender to decommission and dismantle the factory citing chemical contamination. It is not ironic that the custodians were the initiators of the factory’s destruction. Between 2007 and 2010, we campaigned for the protection of the factory. This included documenting and communicating the value of the site to community groups, heritage 62 landscape 77 | 2024 city & culture | professionals, bureaucrats and ministers, petitioning organizations such as mAAN (modern Asian Architecture Network), International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, TICCIH (The International Committee for Conservation of Industrial Heritage) and UNESCO to raise letters of support. Several universities found research merit in the ideas that underlined thisand supported us. The University of Göteborg, Tokyo University, NTNU Trondheim, and SPA Bhopal were the main partners of Bhopal 2011 (www.bhopal2011.in). Bhopal 2011 Workshop and Symposium followed by the publication of the book ‘Bhopal 2011: Landscapes of Memory’ ensured that the factory demolition was halted. In the context where the disaster discourse is dominated by techno-legal fixes, an acknowledgement of spatial and sensorial way of seeing was very rewarding. Understanding of the idea of Memorial Between 2005 to 2011, we were able to move from the design of the memorial to the victims of Bhopal Gas Tragedy to discuss how we remember and forget our pasts in democracy and how memory is organized and assembled spatially, through socio-cultural processes. This is a kind of geographical turn in the historical narration of The site holds meaning as the tragedy in public discourse…bringing the physicality of the abandoned the epicenter and evidence site with its persistent toxic legacy into focus and speaking about its potential of an ongoing event. Visible conservation, remediation, and reuse as an exercise that could help us think through other problematic sites and memories. and invisible remains at Between 2011 and 2014, we dropped anchor into two muddy waters. One the site archive an ongoing was in the field of heritage with a focus on how former industrial sites and saga and these industrial their material legacy could hold and transmit heritage values. The second remains offer an authentic was the field of post-industrial landscapes where contaminated land could be studied and rehabilitated. In themselves, both were and still are emerging space for storytelling while fields dealing with new and wicked problems that do not speak to each other. the ruinationcan offer a Memory studies, architecture and environmental remediation seldom intersect commemorative setting for but if they were to cooperate, it could potentially re-energise how we work healing and remembrance. with about pollution and past(s). This is the promise that the site of Bhopal The challenge what to adapt Gas Tragedy held for us in 2005. Between 2015-17, we translated site investigations about pollution at the theory and technology to a UCIL site conducted between 1989-2013 by various governmental and nonsite that was perceived as governmental organizations into geographical data. The idea was to bridge the unwanted and meaningless. impasse between scientific data (text) and spatial information (visual) enabling understanding and use, particularly by those responsible for managing the site. Bruno Latur would have called this quite ‘daring’ as it jumps from ‘words to worlds, maps to territory’. The map made ‘visible’ the nature of the contamination, its location, intensity, and movement over time. It needed us to collaborate across disciplines and enter new languages. More immediately, this would inform ecological decision-making about site for us where we could put nature-led solutions such as phytoremediation to work. During this time, we also developed plans for documentation, decontamination, and conservation of the industrial structures. The premise was that the site holds meaning as the epicenter and evidence of an ongoing event. Visible and invisible remains at the site archive an ongoing saga and these industrial remains offer an authentic space for storytelling while the ruinationcan offer a commemorative setting for healing and remembrance. The challenge what to adapt theory and technology to a site that was perceived as unwanted and meaningless. 77 | 2024 landscape 63 city & culture | THIS PAGE | Model of the factory site, 2017 PHOTO CREDIT | Dr Jan af Geijerstam FACING PAGE | Factory structures and industrial nature inside the former Union Carbide factory, 2017 PHOTO CREDIT | Dr Jan af Geijerstam 64 landscape 77 | 2024 city & culture | 77 | 2024 landscape 65 city & culture | Between 2014-17, in defense of the values of the former UCIL site, to bring together the experience gained across the world making connections with ‘sister sites’ and to demonstrate how Bhopal (a metaphor) could navigate the field of industrial heritage in India, we built the inventory of Industrial Heritage in India. In its first volume, the report brought together 100 sites from across 18 states and categories. There are 34 sites of production and manufacturing, 37 sites of infrastructure, 4 marking industrial disasters, and 10 sites that preserve and interpret industrial history as museums or educational institutions. The inventory made visible the sheer wealth of built heritage presenting a deep and continuous legacy of scientific and technological heritage that lay within the country. It did not exclude what William Logan refers to as ‘places of pain and shame’. Now the inventory has 4 volumes and documents 400 sites across India. We use it as a reference in the critical study of Industrial Heritage. BT Kemi factory located in the town of Teckomatorp, Malmö is the site of one of the largest toxic spills in Sweden. Like Union Carbide in Bhopal, the factory produced pesticides and its afterlife made a good reference for the cleanup in Bhopal. Bhopal can take heart from the fact that the discovery of 1970s, took decades for Sweden to partially cleanup the area around the factory. Today Swedish Environmental protection Agency identifies over 8000 toxic sites across the country that need remedial action. In 2019, SpaceMatters’ organized an exchange between Bhopal and BT Kemi At the site of the former Union project teams to share knowledge on the challenges in dealing with persistent Carbide factory, the pain, and chemical pollution, strategies to assess risk, and sustainable remediation. shame combined—in part Such connections are vital to respond to wicked environmental problems. —with this architecture of Bhopal Gas Tragedy Memorial is yet to be built but over the past 19 years, it has produced and sustained various ideas networks, and knowledge on modernity and now—with an India’s industrial heritage and its reuse. This is our tribute to the Bhopal almost complete erasure of Gas Tragedy. Past – Memory – Hope the factory—the unsupervised occupation by nature and reptiles with a round-the-clock surveillance by guards. There is a certain poignant (and perverse) storytelling that this decay can tell and architects can be of assistance. The past is not simply ‘there’, it must be made, remade, enacted, and produced into memory. In that sense, architecture—and I mean that in its most rudimentary, human endeavor—offers a spatial vocabulary to discuss pasts that we inhabit. It means that heritage-making is an intentional, political act. In sites of memory the physical experience can sometimes be very confronting. In former industrial sites too, the physical aspect of the architecture and decay can be quite awe-inspiring. At the site of the former Union Carbide factory, the pain, and shame combined—in part—with this architecture of modernity and now—with an almost complete erasure of the factory—the unsupervised occupation by nature and reptiles with a round-the-clock surveillance by guards. There is a certain poignant (and perverse) storytelling that this decay can tell and architects can be of assistance. Recent deliberations by UENSCO on how sites associated with recent conflict pertain to the world heritage convention are useful here. If you are willing to see, you do not need to enter the site to experience the trauma of the tragedy. The debris is all over the city. As you drive closer to the factory, particularly from the direction of Bhopal Smart or South City – the planned streets, an enviable per capita tree count and kitschy murals disappear. The gas-affected bastis that were once shanties are now pucca colonies of five or six floors. Solar Evaporation Ponds – a euphemism for 66 landscape 77 | 2024 city & culture | CHLORINATED BENZENE COMPOUNDS TEMIK PLANT SURFACE + SUB–SURFACE SURFACE + SUB–SURFACE SURFACE SURFACE SUB–SURFACE SUB–SURFACE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS ADMINISTRATION & FORMULATION PLANT SHED AND STORAGE STORAGE & WASTE MATERIAL FORMULATION UNIT ORGANOCHLORINE PESTICIDES & THEIR DERIVATIVES CARBAMATES HEAVY METALS SURFACE + SUB–SURFACE SURFACE + SUB–SURFACE SURFACE + SUB–SURFACE SURFACE SURFACE SURFACE SUB–SURFACE SUB–SURFACE SUB–SURFACE NOT TESTED SOAPSTONE SHED 2013 IITR, SOIL SAMPLE LOCATIONS FROM GPS COORDINATES SEVIN STRUCTURE STORAGE FOR WASTE MATERIAL [MIC STORAGE] NAPHTHOL PLANT 2010 NGRI, CONSTRUCTED BOREWELL LOCATIONS [AS PER IITR GPS] 2010 NEERI, SOIL SAMPLE LOCATIONS AS PER MAP 33 KV SUB STATION QUALITY CONTROL LAB SERVICE PLANT PERSONNEL BLOCK WATER TREATMENT CYCLE SHED MIC PLANT MIC STORAGE ADMINISTRATION OFFICE MATERIALS & SECURITY BLOCKS 2009 CSE, SOIL SAMPLE APPX. LOCATIONS AS PER DESCRIPTION 2002 GREENPEACE, STORED WASTE SAMPLE APPX. LOCATIONS AS PER DESCRIPTION [IT02023, 30, 31, 32 - SOIL SAMPLES FROM SEP] 2002 - SHRISHTI REPORT SOIL SAMPLE APPX., LOCATIONS [TAKEN AT 2 INCH (5 CM) DEPTH, NO SUBRAFACE SAMPLES] 1999 GREANPEACE, SAMPLE LOCATIONS [TAKEN AT 20-30 CM DEPTH, NO SURFACE SAMPLES TAKEN] DISPOSAL DG SHED DISPOSAL ENTRANCE TESTING LOCATIONS DISPOSAL DISPOSAL BHC STORE STORAGE TANKS DISPOSAL NEUTRALIZATION PITS COKE STORAGE SHED 0 25 50 CONTAMINATION MAP CONTAMINATION MAPPING OF SOIL/ WASTE SAMPLES INSIDE THE UCIL PLANT Converting site investigations conducted between 1989-2013 pertaining to pollution at UCIL site into visual data, SpaceMatters 2014 100 M the several illegal toxic dumps sites maintained by Union Carbide Company outside the factory complex are now residential neighborhoods. Chemical dumps have been colonized. Trauma has been flattened, plotted, sold, and settled over. Now the tragedy surfaces in the bodies of those who live around the site. It would be a proper ending if this site of pain and shame could become a site for resilience and hope. This was the premise of the original proposal for the memorial, a very architectural ‘before and after’ that conveys the power of our expertise as architects. Over the years we learned to look at this power more critically. This meant to de-focus from building buildings to building community and critique. The inventory of industrial heritage of India, the work to coalesce a community about industrial heritage (in ICOMOS India, with TICCIH International), to take the experience to design studios and create connections with other such sites across the world especially in the global south have been some ways to commemorate the tragedy without building a memorial. 77 | 2024 landscape 67 city & culture | Way Forward The forgetfulness in Bhopal is willful. Distant and abstract pasts are remembered passionately – Raja Bhoj, Shaurya Smarak, MIG21 Smarak, Rani Kamalapati, etc. – all have found public space while the tragedy of epic proportion has been tokenized. Outside Bhopal, conversations are opening about difficult histories – partition, famines, colonial loot, me too. There are sites across the world that are using their pasts to ‘trigger action’. Sites of memory along with their intangible dimensions have witnessed famines, slavery, conflict, forced displacement, and disappearance being recognized as heritage. For communities that have been able to achieve this, the process has been painstaking but empowering. Bhopal will be able to make this transition once it gathers the courage and constructs the language to talk about this. I learned my politics in Bhopal. For SpaceMatters, working with and around the Bhopal Gas Tragedy has shaped our worldview. In a place where resources are scarce and power is so unequally shared, working in Bhopal taught us to ask better questions and be unafraid to ask questions whose answers we may not know…to be comfortable with not knowing. And in trying to answer the difficult questions - we ended up building a small, steadily growing community of people interested in a critical study of post-industrial landscapes. It remains a unique achievement for an architectural practice that is first-generation and women-led. The journey of SpaceMatters, the story of our growing up, is anchored to the city of Bhopal and Bhopal Gas Tragedy Memorial project. In its moral and material dimensions, this project has been something of a Bildungsroman – growing up in the shadow of the Tragedy into a mature practice with an expansive worldview. 68 landscape 77 | 2024 THIS PAGE | LEFT | All faith prayer meeting during the State commemoration, 2017 PHOTO CREDIT | Dr Jan af Geijerstam RIGHT | Children playing outside the former Union Carbide factory, 2017 PHOTO CREDIT | Dr Jan af Geijerstam FACING PAGE | View of the former Union Carbide factory site in 2023 — 40 years since the disaster PHOTO CREDIT | Moulshri Joshi