The ‘Dreamweaving the Crown’ exercise began recently with a three day workshop in which Aurovilians and those linked with Auroville with expertise in various fields presented information relevant to the focus of the exercise – designing the Crown – to the participating architects. Topics covered included the Auroville Master Plan, the regional context, mobility, water studies, the electrical infrastructure, economy, urban forestry, Auroville’s forestation experience, ecological planning, land suitability analysis, development priorities, International Zone planning, and the Green Belt land use plan. The Line of Goodwill team also outlined their concept, ATDC presented their work and the requirements of a Detailed Development Plan, and Rajeev Kathpalia from Vastu Shilpa Consultants (Dr. Balkrishna Doshi’s organization) – which have been approached to develop such a plan for Auroville – presented a few of their projects.

The workshop, which was attended by the Secretary, demonstrated the huge expertise and practical experience the community possesses in many areas. It was much appreciated, not only by the architects, but also by many community members and even friends overseas who followed the presentations online (see below for links).

Omar and David have requested the Working Committee for a time-slot to present the concept and what has happened so far to the Governing Board in their meeting on 18th of January.

Meanwhile, the Dreamweaving architects are working on their individual designs and concepts for different aspects or for the whole of the Crown drawing from the presentations and technical resources. The next step, which will happen on 21st and 22nd of January, will involve them presenting their initial designs to other participating architects and offering feedback on each other’s designs. Importantly, their feedback will concentrate upon what they like and are inspired by from other’s designs. We will share details with the community later this week on how they can watch this session online.

The Dreamweaving architects will then go away and work further on their original concepts – with encouragement to ‘steal’ the best ideas of others – and they may also consider ideas generated within the larger community. Subsequently, they will present them to the other participants, their peers, and randomly selected Aurovilians to receive feedback, before again ‘weaving’ their ideas into their concepts, to try and illustrate the poetry and essence of the Crown.

The architects will present their final designs to each other and the different technical and representative groups for their evaluation on 18/19th February. This will then be presented to the larger community for their evaluation, before being forwarded, along with all the final designs, to the Vastu Shilpa Consultants as suggestions to inspire the DDP preparation.

The Dreamweaving team wants to help keep the positive energy, ideas and conversations flowing within the community and to find more spaces for this. A small programme is emerging from the call for collaboration and will be shared soon. Any outputs and offers will be made available to the architects, but the focus here is on a wider sharing and exploration in the community and to avoid overloading the dreamweavers.

The Dreamweaving exercise is being organizationally supported by the Citizens’ Assembly team, as well as some other residents. The Citizens’ Assembly team is using the experience it has acquired in previous Citizens’ Assembly sessions to provide help with session design, facilitation, logistics, communication, budgeting, report writing, and other aspects of the overall organization.

by Allan