Stuti Pandya

“It seems as if my house grew along with me. As my needs changed my house changed accordingly.” These are my thoughts growing up as a resident of LIC housing.

Designed by Pritzker-winning architect Balakrishna V Doshi in 1973 located in the city of Ahmedabad in India, LIC housing the topic of my thesis and master project is a turbulent yet pragmatic social housing. It is an experiment of incrementalism in the form of amorphous houses that cater to the aspirations, challenges and growth of the resident family. Due to the multiple alterations made by the residents, it seems like each dwelling is in a continuous dialogue with its residents, which makes it a work in movement. Also, certain common facilities shared between six or twelve dwellings make each alteration in some way dependent on the other dwellings, creating a sense of empathy and mutual understanding, and leading to the formation of a community with a strong sense of belonging. This research is an attempt to conserve the intention behind the design through learning from the changes made by the residents in relation to the role of an architect now and then and by proposing possibilities of more alterations to the existing situation. This has been done by looking at the adaptations as a part of a metabolic process of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division concentric to the changing family structure of the residents.

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