The challenges of experimenting in Auroville

Rear/courtyard viewWe are fond of quoting Mother when she writes that Auroville will be a place for making experiments. But how easy is it to innovate in the Auroville of today? It’s not always easy, according to the experience of one Auroville architect. Mona, who has been living and practicing in Auroville for about 25 years, is trying to launch a project in the Industrial Zone called UTSAV (‘Celebration’). But in a new way. Usually, Auroville architects do not initiate projects. Normally they are approached by a project holder who already has funding and an idea about what they want. The architect then comes up with a concept that meets these needs in terms of the available budget, as well as satisfying the larger parameters of town planning in Auroville. However, UTSAV was Mona’s own initiative. “Other architects told me I was very brave to do it like this because I was risking putting in a lot of work without any guarantee of success, but it was an inner response, something...
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