CHENNAI : In a world where the sight of a bird delicately dipping its beak into freshwater has become a rarity, one cannot help but ponder the reasons behind this shift. The answer, it seems, lies in the undeniable reality of our times — pollution and negligence of our ecosystem. The relentless assault on our waterbodies has not only become a curse for humanity but also a nightmare for countless other beings sharing this planet.
Amid the chaos of environmental degradation, Eromitha Ramesh, a 23-year-old architecture student with a vision has emerged as a beacon of hope, leading the charge to save the Cooum River through her project titled ‘The Cooum Conundrum’. Her dedication and innovative approach have earned her recognition on a national scale, culminating in a prestigious gold medal for architecture at the AYDA Awards, hosted by Nippon Paint India. Bengaluru-based Chennai-bred Eromitha sheds light on her vision behind the mission.
Excerpts follow
Detail your project ‘The Cooum Conundrum’ and its significance.
The Cooum Conundrum is an idea, an experiment into understanding how we build ecologically sensitive areas in rapidly urbanising cities like Chennai, and it aims to establish the river Cooum back in the memory of the collective. The way we perceive rivers has a major impact on how we treat them, and that’s what the project aims to do: change the perception of the river by creating a culturescape along its edge in Egmore.
It is inspired by Urban Wild Ecology and endeavours to reconnect the river with the city through what can be described as “controlled localised interventions”. These interventions are thoughtfully placed at strategic trigger points along the river’s course. It provides an opportunity for people to experience and manage river edges through a series of six different interventions. Some of these interventions include a cultural centre, pedestrian bridges, and event streets.
The architectural realisation of the idea happens through a series of interventions, both built and landscape. Within the architectural framework itself, spaces are designed to be adaptable to changing climate conditions over time. These spaces are strategically configured to create zones that facilitate interactions with various species, emphasising the architecture’s role in fostering a harmonious relationship with nature. In select areas, architectural interventions serve as mediators between pre-existing structures and the natural environment. It looks at how the idea of boundaries can be negotiated to change the way we look at the backyards of institutions that sit against the river; they have the potential to be public spaces.
Tell us about the inception of this project, and how did you navigate it?
My project started with an understanding of the current state of the Cooum River. As an extrapolation from here, I began thinking about the associations the river would have had with the city decades ago, and what has changed over the years? The reason for this shift in approach towards the river is the loss of significance for Cooum. The way we perceived the river changed, and hence the way we treated it.
I was interested in how we have been building along rivers in the recent past, and should we humans have to be granted access to every part of the river? Or if we can share these spaces with other species, thereby creating biodiversity zones. Can the river edges that sit as inaccessible backyards of buildings be returned to the city as ‘commons’? I looked at the ongoing initiatives taken by the government, like the Cooum River Restoration Trust, and understood the multiple fronts along which the organisation is working to understand how the current intervention could fit into this framework.
The Maduravoyal Chennai Port Expressway was also taken into consideration along the stretch along the river, and I thought about how we could build it with infrastructure without compromising on ecology. The idea was to see if the ‘antispace’ underneath the flyover could be leveraged as public spaces and returned to the people as commons, and architecture would be the mediator.
I was inspired by the concept of urban wild ecology, which encouraged me to examine the project on a smaller scale at various points. This involved analysing and designing better associations between buildings and the river, as well as understanding socio-cultural ties with the river, rather than adopting a top-down approach that views the river in long stretches. So the idea of the project was to look at these nested complexities and create a synthesis that responds to them as an intervention.
What inspired you to focus on the Cooum River for this project?
The Cooum that runs through the heart of the city is considered synonymous with sewage. Important buildings that once dotted the river slowly turned their backs against it. A river that once was the loci of the city has now lost its significance and has been declared dead recently. The city has no perception of Cooum. The reason I felt for this is that we don’t understand their significance, since the way we treat the rivers is influenced by how we perceive them.
There is a much-needed paradigm shift in the approach to building along the rivers in order to keep the river alive even after revitalisation and to make it a sustainable process. Until the perception of the river doesn’t change, the river cannot probably be truly revived. And I understood that it is important to acknowledge that river edges are ecologically sensitive zones shared between multiple species and be mindful of them when we design for these areas.
Chennai also sways between floods and droughts, so it was important to understand the importance of sponge landscapes in the project and to further see how they could sit with an existing system of sponge scapes, drawing inspiration from ‘The Sponge Handbook’. There is also a much-needed shift in the paradigm of building from ‘humans vs. nature’ to ‘humans in nature’.
What were the obstacles you faced, and how did you employ to overcome them?
One of the major challenges of the project was its scale and its multiple facets, since rivers are connected ecosystems. The impact created in one part of the river would affect the other, so it was important that I had an understanding of these ecosystems. The cleaning of the river is not in the scope of the project, as this should happen systematically along the river for it to have an impact. So I tried to understand the various methods, processes, and strategies that are used to clean rivers and see how the interventions can complement them.
What are your aspirations ?
I’m excited to make changes in the design based on the inputs given by the jury in AYDA 2023-24. They emphasised some important nuances regarding stakeholders and ecological aspects that I was really interested in adding to the project and making it more coherent.