Aspires to establish the river Cooum back in the memory of the collective by creating ‘Realms of reconnection, a culturescape.

The Cooum River, once revered as the lifeblood of Chennai, as its loci and a catalyst for its growth, has fallen victim to pollution and neglect over the years.

Under the rule of the Southern kings of India, the Cooum was considered to be a holy river, The river was managed by the local communities surrounding it and was looked as shared spaces,’the commons’ of the people, colloquially called ‘poramboke’

With the passage of time under British rule Madras(present day Chennai) thrived along its banks. Many important buildings and structures were strategically located along its banks, showcasing a deep connection and reliance on the river.

However, as the city grew and urbanization took hold, the river suffered from increasing pollution and encroachment as a result of which the city was stripped of these commons. The huge compound walls separated the city, its people and the river. The ‘indiscriminate commons’ turned into the backyards of the city.

Presently Chennai, one of the wettest rivers in India sways between floods and water scarcity bearing a strained relationship with its polluted rivers, one of them being Cooum. But urbanization does not cease. There is an upcoming flyover along the river Cooum in Chennai. Urban infrastructure like flyovers, and expressways create fractures in the urban fabric by creating ‘anti space’. In the case of the Cooum River, if the expressway is built, it could potentially distance the river from the fabric of the city and disrupt the relationship between the river, its surroundings, and its people.

The project aspires to refamiliarize the people of Chennai with its river by stitching it back to the city by changing and creating a new culturescape along the bank of the river thereby giving the commons back to the city, and restoring the poramboke and integrating the potential of the void of the expressway to create public spaces along the river edge thereby attempting to embrace urbanization.

The project’s location in Egmore, one of the key city centers of Chennai, adds another layer of significance to the exploration of the social and cultural relationship between the locality and the Cooum River. As the river played a crucial role in the development of Madras under British rule, Ezhumbur, a small hamlet, transformed into the vibrant urban center of Egmore.

The intervention aspires to look at the river edge from a bottom up approach rather than a top down one. It looks at the associations that the river has with its immediate context, the building it flows across. Egmore is a heterogeneous neighborhood with administrative, institutional and residential areas with some of the strong landmarks of the city that once shared strong associations with the river and hence each transect of the river along Egmore is varied.

To understand the bottom up approach to context better the project is inspired by Urban Wild Ecology and endeavors to reconnect the river with the city through what can be described as “controlled localized interventions.” These interventions are thoughtfully placed at strategic trigger points along the river’s course keeping in mind the built and community.It provides an opportunity to people to experience and manage river edge through a series of six different interventions. Some of these interventions include a cultural center, pedestrian bridges and event streets.The architectural realization of the idea happens through a series of interventions of both built and landscape (as spongescapes to manage water better). Within the architectural framework itself, spaces are designed to be adaptable to changing climate conditions over time. These spaces are strategically configured to create zones that facilitate interactions with various species, emphasizing the architecture’s role in fostering a harmonious relationship with nature.In select areas, architectural interventions serve as mediators between pre-existing structures and the natural environment. It looks at how the idea boundaries can be negotiated to change the way we look at backyards of institutions that sit against the river; they have the potential to be public spaces. The presence of the flyover provides a unique opportunity for the project, as it transforms the void underneath the structure from a potential threat to a catalyst for the creation of these public spaces. By leveraging the space beneath the flyover, the thesis aims to utilize this under utilized area to establish vibrant, inclusive, and engaging public spaces that reconnect Egmore with the Cooum River.

The stretch of Cooum in Egmore is only a microcosm so is every stretch, the intervention aspires to integrate the river back to the daily life of the people of Chennai and help them treat it better.