Foregrounding Ahmedabad is a project of reuniting the Sabarmati River and the Ahmedabad old town through water and architecture. A Hindu mythological notion suggests the goddess Ganga fell on the Himalaya Mountains; she became rivers and other forms of water body to bring fertility to the land. The existing Sabarmati Riverfront has been segregated from the city by a sharp-edged concrete retaining wall, isolating folk from the Descent of Ganga.
The project proposes a series of civic architectures along the Sabarmati Riverfront on the old city bank, creating a range of open spaces and public facilities which the old city is currently lacking. Inspired by the fabric markets in the old town, the lushness and moments within these fabric markets are extracted as gestures and further developed into a new architectural language. The proposed architecture will be erected on the existing concrete retaining wall and recrafted as the Otla[1] of the new civic institutions.
The architecture of Foregrounding Ahmedabad is also the Otla of the city and the Otla of Ganga. Each building along the New Wall contains a mini water factory, which leads the river into the building as a part of the natural ventilation system, it also supplies the filtered river water into the old city to establish a city scaled irrigation system. Each architecture on this water network serves as the “foreground” of accessing river water and the “foreground” of collecting rainwater, conveying the journey of Ganga meeting Ganga.
[1] Otla is the name given to the slightly raised loggias of the Pol houses.
