CHILDREN'S GEOGRAPHIES
About
I am currently reading the Master's degree of Philosophy in Architecture and Urban Design, RIBA Part II, at the University of Cambridge.
My design research and thesis project look at architectural interventions that would influence strategies to integrate and subsume street children, ignored and vilified as feral, social residuum, into the enclosure of enfranchised and formally recognised urban citizens.
The project, conditioned by an evolving lexicon and knowledge based on a body of theoretical work, literature, conceptual speculations and fieldwork research, is approached, based on the premise, that the deep human understanding of self, and locating this redefined self, in the broader fabric of society and city, will institute the fundamental psychological conditions that may transform, the existing state of phantasmal being or bare existence to a fully fledged membership of society. These psychological nostrums may be further empowered by strategies of reconciling estranged perceptions of education and its merits. It is against these premises that the project focusses on three inter-linked mediations of:
(a) a family-based system of care, where under the love and affection of a primary mother and siblings, in an intimate sphere, sheltered from the ephemeral chaos of the outside world, a child’s rediscovery of self may take place.
(b) these intimate spheres (children’s homes), rather than clustering in secluded coteries, gated from city and society, to unfurl in the urban context, entrench themselves in city’s fabric, defining new thresholds of private, public and between, so that the child may truly position his/hers new understanding of self in the larger order of the city and its people. This will only be effective if the children are allowed a certain degree of autonomy to maintain some of the same networks of relationships, they built in their former street life.
(c) a new genus of primary education, that mediates the gulf between street existence and formal education, while acknowledging and building on the nature of cognitive learning that occur in street life.
This project attempts to encompass the complexities of this distinct area of study and the intricate socio-economic qualities of Colombo, Sri Lanka, where the project is located. The resulting culmination is to encapsulate the accumulation of theoretical and empirical research and discernments of the distinct political and cultural scene of Colombo, in a design proposal.
This Blog
As such this blog will act as a platform of documentary, used to record my thoughts on childcare, interactions with street children and experience in Colombo, during a nine month Fieldwork Period. The aim is to record and understand the socio-political conditions, cultural traditions and religious rituals that envelop life as an abandoned, homeless, street child. It is also to uncover the experiences and stories of former street children, who have received various forms of care.
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