Tom Benson: The Pallikanarai Marsh
DS18 is the MArch design studio at the University of Westminster taught by Lindsay Bremner and Roberto Bottazzi associated with Monsoon Assemblages for the next three years. This year the studio is working on Chennai.
In the first brief of this studio, students were asked to research the complex and architecturally fertile phenomenon of monsoon rain. They began by identifying an aspect of the behaviour of rain (such as percolating, splashing, pooling, flowing, evaporating etc.) and an attitude towards it (such as absorb, channel, dam, disperse, drain, filter, harvest, retain etc.). They modeled these attributes and produced a series of simulations and analyses which at the same time as performing hydrologically, accentuated rain’s aesthetic properties (such as sound, smell, sight, colour, reflectivity etc.). The outcomes of the research were a series of A2 posters, videos and a rapid prototyped model. More examples of student responses to this brief can be found here.