Title

Gold: Stories of a City

Author(s)/Creator(s)

Vivek Vijayan Njanappilly

Document Type

Thesis, Senior

Degree

M.ARCH I

Date

Spring 2017

Keywords

gold, narrative, India, urban, commodity, geo-politics, religion, story

Language

English

Disciplines

Architecture

Description/Abstract

The thesis explores the latent influences of gold and its value systems on the urban geo-politics of a South Indian city. It is an anthology of sporadic narrations recording the growth and transformation of a city over time. These narrative compositions contain traces of the past, the city of the present and speculative futures. They indicate change without erasure. Their values are embodied in gold; malleable, ductile and fungible in its different forms.

The intention of the thesis is not to merely speak of a specific commodity nor is it to narrate the history of a city. It is an attempt to overlay and map the synthetic geographies of the city and to perhaps articulate a method of engaging its future implications. The Thesis devalues the very precious and staid nature of the commodity in question, it instead employs it as an operative element; cutting through the most interesting sections of the city.

Additional Information

This thesis was nominated for the 2017 Thesis Prize Jury and ultimately received the Faculty Prize award, one of the three James Britton Memorial Awards given each year at Convocation.

Thesis Advisors: Gregory Corso with Lawrence Chua and Joseph Godlewski

Recommended Citation

Njanappilly, Vivek Vijayan, "Gold: Stories of a City" (2017). Architecture Senior Theses. 411.
https://surface.syr.edu/architecture_theses/411

Source

local input

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.