TEAM : Anoushka Kriti & Shruti Jagota
Keywords : Seclusion, Podliving, Social withdrawal, Upcycling, Hikikomori
This project is inspired from the Hikikomori syndrome that is people who are reclusive adolescents or adults who withdraw from society and seek isolation and confinement.
The affected individuals refuse to leave house, do not work or go to school and isolate themselves away from society and family in a single room for a period exceeding six months, mainly due to, social and cultural influence, work and family pressure, modern technology, etc.
There are always two sides that oppose one another. It is both modern and traditional, bustling and very lonely. Restaurants and bars in the city are always full, but if you pay close attention, most are packed with customers eating alone. And in the streets, no matter the hour, you find exhausted office employees. The situation is common in the urban cities and in the coming years, and hidden to the society. Thus, much needed in a place like Gurgaon, a bustling urban chaos, in the coming years. They prefer to stay inside, hidden in their solitary space, thus the name Penetralia for our project, providing them a safe place hidden inside, to the urban chaos outside. To provide work to these people, we are having an upcycling centre, that would also support the city. Differently from nature, city as a living organism do not reuse everything it produces. Materials enter the city on a daily basis as products and leave as waste. As they grow, CO2 emissions increase, but with the circular economy, where resources are reused, we can create growth and reduce CO2 emissions by well over 50%. Sustainability is about achieving more with the resources we already have.
Upcycling refers to an action where wasted material is given a new use or function of higher quality. It is a method of recycling which does not degrade its initial composition of material but re-invents it. The idea is of sustainable and ‘green’ living pursuing anti-consumerist approach.
The project is divided in two parts of building, one being a private building, providing residence, health facilities and leisure activities to the people living. We have divided the people in three stages on the basis of their mental state and social interaction level. The project idea was temporal and futuristic. We came up with a concept of specially designed portable pod homes for them, which can be contracted to become a self driven AI automated car, used for movement inside the building and to the other with the idea of isolation for stages 1 and 2.
The other, a completely public building providing upcycling workshops and galleries, shops and cafes. People can drop of their unwanted goods and browse for upcycled products in the same place in shops. The drop off centre is a drive thru, making it as easy as possible to donate items for upcycling. There are 6 categories of products- paper, plastic, furniture, glass, textile and metal.