Today as I begin this monthly column, I’d like to share with you my experiences and influences with Goa’s ecology that have had a strong influence on the way I think, work and live!
I was recently invited to a dialogue with Padma Shri B V Doshi (Architect/ Professor) and Prof Neelkant Chayya (Ex-Dean, Faculty of Architecture-CEPT Ahmedabad) along with young professors from across India to share new ways that each was experimenting with, while initiating young students into architecture. Before I can share with you my tryst with teaching I’d like to share the key experiences that have influenced me in ways that I have never acknowledged earlier. I spent a lot of my time outdoors as a child. And in both my home city Panjim, as well as my ancestral villages of Mashem-Canacona and Velim-Salcette, the mangroves, river, beach and salt pans were my backyards.
Here I would tag along with my Papa or colony friends or simply venture alone and watch the tides change exposing the mud flats along the bunds/dykes or the river bank. The fiddler crabs, mud skippers, telescopic snails and small blue kingfishers would tell me their stories and when I was tired I would nap under the shade of the round leaves of the mangrove trees. The bunds were my favourite paths to explore and the whiff of the salt in the air made me feel at home! Every beach visit with my Papa would not be complete without having found a cowrie shell to add to my treasure.
When I graduated from architecture school and began my design and build practice, what excited me the most besides the process of design was the fact that I could experiment with local materials, discover traditional construction materials and technologies from the local master builders/ craftsmen and collaboratively work with the masons and carpenters on site. While I had no experience my tryst with teaching began when I started taking kids from my colony out to the nearby fields and wetlands to sight birds, butterflies, insects, etc.
Soon we had explored nearby wetlands in the villages of Merces, Taleigao, St Cruz, Neura, Pilerne, etc. And in 6 months the so-called academically weak students were rattling off bird names that baffled one of my friends who is a bird expert. Following this I also had the opportunity to coordinate the Kids for Tigers Programme in schools of Goa, thanks to Bittu Saghal. During the sessions in schools I discovered that students were being taught EVS via books explain concepts like germination and I was horrified when many students shared that they hadn’t seen a real seed germinate outdoors! This led to another series of outdoor learning sessions titled ‘Trailing Biodiversity’ where along with a few friends we conducted nature trails to ‘see’ local species of flora and fauna. This encouraged me to try out similar outdoor modules when I was first invited to teach Environmental Management to the Dempo BBA students.
I had no idea how to teach and simply relied on my skills and knowledge of on-ground issues and my experience with the learning outdoor module! So finally when I was selected as Adjunct Professor at the Goa College of Architecture a couple of years ago, I was thrilled that I could experiment further. So over the years these are some of the interesting modules I have experimented with. On the first day when the young students join the architecture course as part of the orientation programme, I do a full day walk where the students are introduced to the intrinsic connection between architecture and water.
The Khazans of Goa make the perfect backdrop to introduce this interaction between humans and water. The walk begins at Patto-Ribandar at one end of the causeway where we explore the mangrove edge and mud flats at low tide. From there on we walk to the salt pans and shallow troughs where local fishers catch seasonal fish like ‘mutri’. We walk then traverses along the old Patto Bridge, Ourem Creek, Mala lake and finally the sluice gate at Mansher. We also visit the fresh water spring at Fonte Phoenix and have often had to walk inside the tunnel with human faeces carelessly dumped on one of the screened edges of the spring! What is the outcome of this exercise? Students begin to connect with the natural world and see how man-made systems were earlier used by the community. They also begin to understand the veracity of the issues and an understanding of what can be done to mitigate these.
One of the fun exercises that my colleagues and I have conducted is the Emergency pontoon boat making exercise led by a good friend Vishal Rawley, who ideated the Hauz-i-Shamsi (in Delhi) art installation and community initiative. As part of the design exercise where the students have to build temporary structures to rehabilitate a hinterland community affected by flashfloods, we take the students to Mansher which is at the tail end of the Ourem Creek in Panjim where they design and execute the making of an emergency boat using found or waste material. We discovered that 90 % of the students didn’t know swimming. But with the inflatable tubes as safety devices, at the end of this exercise, all the students manage to get into their pontoon boats and spend the day rowing and navigating around the waters of the large shallow trough of the Ourem Creek! They apply the learning from this exercise into their design studio project and the results are extremely good as they are constantly using nature and their live experience as a reference. Join me as I continue to experiment and learn.
(Tallulah D’Silva is a practicing architect in Goa)
