We, the students of A21, had visited Ratnagiri on settlement study work. Upon reaching the site, we were divided into groups that would be looking at 5 aspects of how life works at the site and how there is a relationship between work, economic activity, and building form. Broadly, the ‘Physicality of Habitation’. The 5 groups were Village, Economy, Construction, Houses, and Cultural. The site chosen for the study was in the village of Sadamiriya, along the White Sea.
MAP OF THE SADAMIRIYA VILLAGE STITCHED WITH JETTY AND MARKETPLACE.
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I was in Village group.
We were asked to study and measure a piece of land, with the sea on one edge and the backwaters on the other, where the local deity of Mahapurush was situated. This stretch of land saw a variety of contrasts between people, spaces, and their lifestyles. We started with measuring the village site with a standard stride (approximately 1 meter) and started measuring the dimensions of the village. We took 2 anchoring points, the main road where the temple of Mahapurush sat and the road which ran by the coast. We marked the roads in between them. They ran into homes and backyards and front yards and again merged with each other.
We saw the houses there were transformed, according to the needs of the families and as the years passed by more rooms got added there, so that the whole family could live close to each other. That’s the reason the houses constructed there weren’t planned. After locating the roads, we moved to locating the houses and measuring them in strides. Followed by the trees there. All the houses are interconnected, and anyone could pass through them, talk, sit and eavesdrop. The conversations flew from one veranda to another. That’s when something occurred to us. There were no roads there. They were just empty spaces between the houses.
A major plot, named “Kaumudi”, almost as big as one-fourth of the whole site, had these well-defined boundary walls and a clear sense of separation. But the rest of the settlement didn’t.
There were invisible boundaries that existed between them, only the inhabitants were aware of. Even a tree had its owner and there was a mutual sense of understanding among them. Unlike what we experience in the cities, these houses and spaces were more organically spaced, had grown over the years and had fallen into place.
MAP OF THE SADAMIRIYA VILLAGE WHICH OUR GROUP DREW.
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