Rashi Vijan Galhotra
Government of India – Smart Cities Movement
6 month
Architectural Design
Public Space
July 2019
Varanasi is the land where ritual and culture are embedded in the zeitgeist, but it is the Architecture that supports and enables this phenomenon within the city, primarily Ghats and Kunds.
I am interested in the conflicting relationship between the Use and the resulting Pollution that occurs in such public spaces in Varanasi – how people destroy the very thing they worship - Water from the Ganges, ‘Gangajal’ (found on the banks of the Ghats and Kunds). My main aim is to revitalise the existing typology of a Kund to become a symbol for the protection of ancient water bodies in the oldest inhabited city in the world.