Armed with sketch pens and sticky notes, a group of enthusiastic participants pored over a city map on Saturday afternoon. After a quick look, they tried to decipher the problems surrounding the city’s waterways and waterbodies. The activity was part of a workshop on ‘Mapping Water in Chennai’ held at Lalit Kala Akademi.
Hosted by Urban Design Collective (UDC), a non-profit organisation, the workshop was part of the DAMned Art festival organised by the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan. S.P. Sarveswaran, an architect, said “I understand that the major problems cannot be solved within a few hours. But it was a learning experience to get to know other participants’ views and was a platform to brainstorm possible solutions.”
Divided into teams, the participants also came up with interesting solutions such as building a more transparent online platform for obtaining building approval and prevent encroachments.
Abhinaya Rajavelu, senior associate urban designer, UDC, said the workshop was an exercise not only to sensitise people about the issues related to the city’s waterbodies but also build a database on crowd-sourced identification of problems and solutions.
