The Rajasthan Cities Project

Genesis Rodgers // Fall 2020. The manufacturing sector is the second-largest employer for residents in Jaipur, Rasjasthan, India. MY research found that traditional handicraft manufacturers are challenged by long production supply chains. Simultaneously, Jaipur’s numerous historic landmarks and shopping bazaars attract an increasing number of seasonal tourists, which is the largest source of revenue for the city’s economy. Local manufacturers and tourists become key stakeholders here. The project serves to optimize handicraft commerce by centralizing production, market exchange, and housing in the same place for artisans and their families. An urban strategy with six outdoor spaces types creates a three-dimensional matrix of public and private layers. An activated ground floor, semi-public mid-floor work courts, and extra production areas on the roof compose this interactive + productive housing community. A pedestrian pathway guides tourists explore the site and shop for handicrafts displayed on large swing-doors, or peer in to ask a question, take a picture. In this way, the architecture celebrates a return to authentic traditions, cultural experiences, [micro]economic empowerment, and domestic stability for a densely urban Jaipur.

Alejandro Di Napoli + Emily Zekany // Fall 2020. Re-imagining the typological streetscapes of Jaipur through a series of small-scale interventions that aggregate to form a larger collective…In India, the city street can be considered an URBAN COMMONS—a place where people buy, sell, socialize, congregate, celebrate, and rest. Here the boundaries between work and home, public and private, formal and informal are blurred. How can we celebrate the natural vibrancy of Jaipur with a proposal for a new urban corridor that stitches together the urban fabric of the city while providing an informal hierarchical organization of space? This proposal establishes a series of low-tech interventions that can be prototyped & implemented to aggregate into a larger processional corridor experience, while capturing, amplifying, celebrating, & formalizing all the vibrant qualities of India’s streets. This project also establishes a collective sense of agency and ownership of the city at large.

Chenyang Xia // Fall 2020. The Connective Tissue for All projects aims at establishing prototypical bus station models for safer transit experience and integration between theslumneighborhoods alongAravali Hills in Jaipur. The synergies of sites would provide convenient access to basic amenity services, with a few serving as major community spaces. The design would feature steel framed structures with cross ventilation on the East-West side, and rain pipes for monsoon seasons along with on-site water collection systems. The transit area will feature a linear order with elevated waiting and seating area, covered by steel roofs duringboarding experiences, while other services are connected to it as wings, such as public toilets and market stalls,thatare primarily for local residents. Multiple trafficways and parking areas are designated for better mobility access. The bus stations would then serve as the connective tissue between local residents and transit users, as well as the slum neighborhood and the whole city of Jaipur.