Crossing Barriers in Rural India: opportunities and challenges in engaging marginalized divided publics

Home to the majority of the country’s population, rural India is a land of acute scarcity and socio-cultural complexity. Issues with water and waste management abound and public spaces are limited while complex hierarchies dictate exclusive use and access to resources and amenities. To explore possible contributions of designers in this context, an interdisciplinary design team undertook an experimental action research project in Dharmori village in central India. The project was unique not only because of the underexplored context, and the critical issues it sought to address, but also because of the participatory methods employed in the design process. Public participation in architectural practice is not a common place in India. Through the documentation of community engagement in Dhamori, this paper describes the many opportunities and challenges embedded in such work and argues that the defining aspect of stakeholder engagement in such contexts is the constant endeavor to test design limitations in bridging various kinds of socio-cultural divides.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.110.76

Volume Editors
Robert Gonzalez, Milton Curry & Monica Ponce de Leon

ISBN
978-1-944214-40-1