BOUNDARY WALL AS PRODUCTIVE ARCHITECTURE IN HUSSAINABAD

An award-winning design project “Hussainabad Park” was a competition for the redevelopment of an existing park into a “ladies” park. Rather than designing a highly secured “cage” for the ladies of the neighbourhood, we decided to re-think the concept of the boundary-wall. We proposed to integrate the existing hawkers, who were mostly catering to women in the thickness of the wall so that they could cater to both sides of the wall. And the expense of maintenance could also be catered by those small stalls along the boundary wall, in our practice, we have been pushing this idea as “Alive Boundary Walls” vs. “Blank – Social Dividers”. And the design aimed to be socially responsive by bringing the community into the process and give them a sense of ownership. And as a professional group, we used this opportunity to develop and push a sustainable model for Small Park designs which can be put up for future replications by communities, corporate CSR and other institutions and fundraising in front of other donors.