The Design of Urban Open Spaces for Sustainability: A Case Study of Balkrishna Doshi's Aranya Housing

By:
Krystina Kaza
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Balkrishna Doshi's Aranya housing project in Indore, India was begun in 1985 as a sites and services project for mixed-income housing. One of the key elements in Doshi's design was a hierarchy of open spaces - from small courtyards to be shared by 3-4 families, to larger open green spaces for each sector of the project, to the central commercial space intended to serve the entire development. Each scale of space has either succeeded or failed with respect to issues of sustainability for different reasons. My paper will focus on these spaces at Aranya as specific examples, but will place them in a wider urban context and draw conclusions for urban open space in general (as opposed to focusing on urban residential space). One of the key aspects of Doshi's Aranya is that it was intended to develop over a long period of time - indeed, 20 years after its inception it is still far from achieving its intended density. I would like to discuss urban open space in terms of an evolution over time, and in terms of how flexibility of such spaces over time relates to sustainability.


Keywords: urban open space, flexibility, economic sustainability, cultural sustainability, social sustainability, environmental sustainability
Stream: Economic Sustainability
Presentation Type: 30 minute Paper Presentation in English
Paper: Design of Urban Open Spaces for Sustainability, The

Krystina Kaza

Lecturer, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Unitech, New Zealand
Auckland, NEW ZEALAND

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. First degree is a Bachelor of Social Sciences with majors in International Relations, French, and Japanese from James Madison College at Michigan State University. Special interest in developing nations and decision making processes. Attended Harvard University Graduate School of Design summer program in 1997, then began BArch at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art & Science in New York City from 1998-2003, where I graduated with honors. My design thesis focused on regenerating a blighted neighborhood in downtown Detroit by reversing the process of architectural deterioration and creating an architecture that would develop slowly, over an extended period of time. In summer of 2003, was awarded a Fulbright grant for 9 months of independent research in India. My research focused on Balkrishna Doshi's Aranya housing in Indore - specifically on issues of design, community, and context. I was based in Ahmedabad at the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, but travelled to Indore often to conduct field work. Very generally, I am interested in the way that cities grow, and in the way that this growth affects existing architecture over extended periods of them.

Ref: S07P0032