Hydrocommunes – A spatial response to water crisis
Team
Name: Ananya Nevatia
Nationality: Indian
Institution: M.Arch and RIBA Part 2 from Architectural Association, London (2020)
-HONOURABLE MENTION of Waterless World Competition
Water is a huge crisis in India, whether it’s the melting of the Himalayan glaciers or the devastating impact of many consecutive years of drought. A core reason for water related issues is the management of the resource across regional, geographical and political boundaries.
The project is a proposal for the creation of hydro-communes throughout rural India in response to the crisis in water management.
The project critiques the centralised management of large-scale infrastructure projects and proposes a shift in water management, its source, supply and distribution– by advocating the hydro-commune as a common realm for the local people.
Because it is a common, it requires a new local establishment to exist to maintain and monitor it. It will be run by a group of women of the community breaking the barriers in water gendered spaces and envisions a cultural shift in gendered roles in rural Indian communities.
This new small-scaled and decentralised water infrastructure is a light and sustainable intervention to respond to the short timescale of water scarcity in relation to climate change.
The primary objective of this catchment system is to harvest rainwater as an alternate source of water. At the territorial scale it responds to geographic and climatic conditions and is built using local materials, both for logistic and symbolic reasons.
The hydro-commune embodies a shift in the imagination of water infrastructure in India and strives to alter the socio-political organization of citizens while promoting community resilience.
#WaterShortage #LargeWaterInfrastructureandAccessibility #FreshwaterAvailability #ClimateChange #GenderedRoles
