Footnotes on cities
- Kankana Choudhary
- Nov 26
- 5 min read
I kept jotting things down through the trip: quick notes, rough sketches, some visual notes, and photos taken before I forgot what I was looking at. This was the only way to retain what I was seeing, as Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Jaipur, and Chandigarh all flew by. At the time, there was no overarching goal, just attempting to comprehend spaces as I moved through them. When I looked back later, some concepts kept coming up. Some questions remained, and some details stuck. Instead of letting it all slip away, this blog is my way of gathering those disparate pieces so I can trace what I was thinking and what I actually noticed.
Scans of Fieldnotes
On Preservation and Use
During the trip, the contrast between preserved monuments and lived-in old cities kept pulling at the same question I’ve been sitting with in my thesis. Walking through Jaipur’s old streets, I kept noticing everyday modifications: shopfronts cut into older rooms, small structural additions, improvised materials, and circulation paths redirected to suit current needs. It immediately connected back to Bhopal, where I’ve been documenting similar forms of adaptation as part of the city’s ongoing life. My thesis argues that these are not signs of decline but evidence of how older structures stay relevant through continuous occupation and negotiation. But seeing it again in a different city made me test the idea in real time.
At the same time, visiting the well-preserved forts and palaces: Amber, Agra Fort, and Fatehpur Sikri, introduced a different weight. Those places depend entirely on preservation to continue existing in any readable form. Without that care, we would lose entire architectural languages, material systems, and spatial histories. Standing inside those controlled, maintained environments, I kept thinking: if everything were left to adaptation alone, what would survive for us to learn from? How much would be overwritten, and how much does that matter? That question stayed in the background every time I moved from a protected monument to a functioning, altered street in Jaipur.
The overlap with Bhopal became sharper. In Bhopal, most of the structures in my study are not preserved; they are lived in, altered, patched, and reworked. I’ve been calling these acts legitimate architecture. But after this trip, I kept asking myself whether I fully stand by that or whether I’m simplifying a more complicated relationship between preservation and everyday use. Maybe both are necessary. Maybe they contradict each other. Maybe I’m avoiding something by insisting adaptation is enough.
Moving through Jaipur, the hesitation kept returning: when does adaptation become loss, and who defines that threshold? How do I reconcile the need to protect certain structures with the reality that people will always reshape them to fit their lives? In Bhopal, these changes feel normal. In Jaipur, they felt both familiar and unsettled by the backdrop of heavily preserved monuments. I kept walking and thinking: where does my argument sit between these extremes, and what am I willing to revise, question, or hold loosely?
On Drainages, Gutters & Water Systems
At Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, and the Jaipur forts and palaces, I noticed how water was part of the architecture. Stepwells, sunken courtyards, sloped floors, and hidden drains guide water naturally without disrupting movement or space. Mandu felt the same; everything about drainage and water seemed carefully considered as part of the structure, not added later. In Chandigarh, Corbusier did the same thing on a city-wide scale with open drains and sloped streets that feel like part of the layout. Watching all this made me wonder how they planned it so well without modern tools. How much of that intelligence do we still notice today? Could modern cities manage water this effectively without it feeling like a separate system? Even the small details—the angle of a channel, the slope of a courtyard—seem intentional, both functional and visual. I kept asking myself whether everyday changes in old cities can work with the same thoughtfulness without losing coherence, or if this kind of integration is only possible in grand, planned designs.
On Windows
Windows in the palaces were never just openings. Their type changed every time the building’s purpose changed. In administrative halls, they were large and open, meant for light, air, and eyes watching movement outside. In private rooms, they shifted—screens, smaller apertures, controlled views. The most interesting ones appeared in the hammams. Small, precise cuts in stone bring in filtered light, controlling privacy and managing temperature and moisture. Every window was responding to a specific need.
It hit me that we still rely on windows for the same basic roles—ventilation, light, and view—but today most of them look and work the same regardless of where they are placed. Standard sizes, standard glass, standard frames. The palace windows weren’t standard; they were intentional. Function shaped their form completely. Different geometries, heights, thicknesses, and materials, all because each program demanded a different environment.
Seeing that made me think about how much design intelligence gets flattened in contemporary construction. How often do we draw one window type and copy it across a building? How much performance do we lose because everything is treated as repeatable? Here, every change in activity changed the architecture. Windows showed that clearly.
On Ceilings & Details
Ceilings and details captured attention. Heights shifted because functions shifted. Vaults in hammams managed steam; halls enhanced sound and scale. Nothing was random. Every bracket, joint, and pattern existed because it served a purpose.
I kept asking: when did we stop designing this way? When did efficiency take the place of intention? These places displayed careful thought in every corner. Details were performing real work, and that was reason enough to notice them.
On Vantages and Views
Spaces for women made visibility a one-way deal. In Hawa Mahal, the screens weren’t decoration; they were control. Women could watch every move on the street below, but no one could look back. Amer Fort repeated the same logic, separate corridors, higher balconies, and carefully angled openings. The architecture protected modesty by engineering sightlines. It wasn’t just “privacy”; it was surveillance with boundaries: they could see the world, but the world couldn’t see them.
On Markets & Shopping
In Agra’s Sadar Bazaar, food stalls hijacked every doorway and footpath until the street itself became the dining hall. Jaipur near Hawa Mahal was a different kind of chaos, Maniharon ka Raasta turned narrow lanes into vertical bangle warehouses, stacking colour until the walls barely remembered they were walls. Chandigarh tried to behave with its neat, planned shopping sectors, but even there, the rules gave up once vendors decided they needed just a bit more space.
Comments