PURIFication . Understanding the visible
Publication . USAP, GGSIPU
Mentors Archana Gupta & Shaleen Sharma
Location Jagannath Puri, Orissa, India
Team Batch of 2015 & Batch of 2016
The book authored by selected students was a documentation and analytical study of the temple city of Jagannath Puri by the students of 2nd year batches 2010-2015 and 2011-16, University School of Architecture and Planning, Kashmere gate.
The aim of this documentation was to help us to understand how the city grew, driven by its context and history. On zooming in, it narrated to us how streets interacted, maths transformed and sahis integrated them forming the city of Puri. It helped us to learn how the city of Puri grew culturally and morphologically as a direct result of a myth associated with the temple.
The choice of the city was a conscious decision as the previous semester had been invested in understanding various settlements around a religious core in Delhi and this learning was carried forward to Puri.
It is vital to understand how this city is not a cluster of houses but an amalgamation of factors, like the streets, nodes, landmarks and the districts explaining how well the city works.
Puri as a city itself has undergone radical transformations and urbanization from what it originally was and despite that, it has distinct layers, which makes the city easier to understand.
