The initiative taken by the youth of any country can ultimately define the near and far future of that country. The more aware the youth, the more the chances are that administration will take notice. The key to the development of any country, sections of society or factions will always be the policy adopted by the administration of that locale. Universities also work within their own silos creating a cosy world for them to operate in. What is required is to break through this apparent "Happy Situation" and engage peacefully, but firmly with elements of society which need integral change.

NASA has until now been operating entirely on its own steam, with regards to its agenda for Architecture. It has done a remarkable job of this. However, if effective structural changes have to take place, it can no longer remain in its comfort cocoon and hope that somehow the external world will change. That is definitely not going to happen. The THIRD WAVE must go beyond its limited beach and become a Tsunami if the landscape of society has to change for the better. Youth engagement is a central principle of youth development, so the design brief and the set of activities envisioned for the October 2017 event have been carefully thought out from this perspective. The theme of The THIRD WAVE in which Youth are encouraged to REALIZE their full potential is being taken forward into the "ACTION" phase by means of the program detailed below.

THE PROGRAM BRIEF

(This Trophy has been designed to work like an educational program with continuity)

SCHEDULE - The engagement program shall run for a period of 5 weeks in total with the final submission being at the ZNDC event space in Gwalior. The program is divided into 2 main parts. Part-1 is sub-divided into 3 different activities which need to run concurrently for a period of 3 weeks. Part-2 is an assimilation of the 3 components of Part-1 and evolving the final product shall be undertaken by the students by carefully presenting the results of Part-1 with the learnings from this being brought into Part-2.

PART -1: "GROWING OUR ENGAGEMENT" - 3 WEEKS

DOT-I SELECT YOUR COMMUNITY & ENGAGE: Future lies in the hands of our youth since young people are agents of their own development. Proper nurturing in positive directions will help improve the quality of our common future. For the purposes of this program, select a community (Marginalized communities, Slums etc.) easily approachable and well within comfortable distance from your college. The idea here is to connect with the community and share with them the idea of your activities. Select a set of interested youth to foster innovative out-of-school workshops which can be held at any public space near the community. The focus of these workshops should be to elicit from them the problems they face, their vision for a future and their place in society.

The program of any individual workshop is entirely to be drawn up by the participant students for the colleges. The key to a successful workshop will be its innovative mode in engaging the youth from the community. Their participation and sustained interest will be the gauge of the success of the workshop. These workshops will be thoroughly documented by video, and graph charts, as well as by Notes and program schedules. At the end of three wee,ks there must be a clear understanding of the result of this exercise. A presentation of this will be put up in the final stage.

DOT-II REACH THE MUNICIPAL COUNCILLOR: The design brief requires as a mandatory element, a strong engagement with local administration be that Panchayats, Municipal Councils, Local Body Governments, District Administration bodies, or any other administrative bodies with immediate power over space and the ability to govern people's future. Once the community in Part-I is selected, find out the Municipal authority that it belongs to (>Nard etc.) Enquire about the councilor who represents this community and approach him for a conversation (you may require an authority letter from the college for gaining access). The idea of approaching this authority is to find out from them the various programs the Government has outlined for the benefit and development of this particular community. Al,so find out the status of on-going programs already in process and go back to the community to check its validity. Engage the councilor in a conversation of how to innovatively develop the same program with your designer's insight to make it better at the same cost. Offer your help in this program and provide concrete solutions. These conversations and proceedings should be thoroughly documented by video, audio, graphs and presented in the final submission.

The Urban landscape today is largely dotted with urban waste. Waste of all kinds finds its way to illegal dumping grounds, thereby harming the overall environment and creating a series of unrecoverable damage to the overall ecology. Is there a way of looking at waste (especially construction waste) in a more constructive manner? Can students of architecture employ their innovation and come up with recycling of this waste into generative forms of material application? The idea here is to reconfigure existing waste and re-imagine structures out of Waste Materials like - Plastic waste, Plastic bottles waste, Construction waste, Wood waste, Stone waste, Bricks waste, Concrete block waste, etc.

Important Notes: For achieving the above tasks correctly it is recommended that a cocoordinator may be appointed who monitors the progress of each team and maintains the focus. A mechanism needs to be set up to manage the events. Students who go out to connect with the community and the councilor need to possess "people skills". It is also recommended that community outreach and councilor access can be eased by collaborating with 'an on-the-ground' NGO.

I would suggest and strongly recommend that the above work can be done by appointing 3 separate teams of students to manage and operate the 3 DOTs.

Consequently, these 3 teams can come together at the end of the 3 weeks and work together for the design program application for 2 weeks. Thus the whole program can be achieved by merely the engagement, intensive though it may be, of 12 students in the totality which I believe is not difficult at all. The crux of the program would be to efficiently manage the show.

PART-2: "JOINING THE DOTS" - 3 WEEKS

A very interesting exercise is to be undertaken in this section. An assimilation of all 3 parts of the Part-1 of the program needs to be done such that with the knowledge gained from the intensive study, research and engagement taken up till now should find culmination in the design of an intervention in a selected space in the community. The intervention should be based on the needs as perceived and culled from the exercise in Part-1.

Most importantly, the intervention necessarily has to use waste materials which have been researched in DOTIII. The participating college students can define their own use for such a structure. The space for such an intervention shall be limited to a plot of 20M X 20M. The design needs to be innovative, capable of replication, modular in nature and easy to build with a DIY (Do It Yoursel kind of a process.

Part I, II & Ill will run concurrently and the participants are encouraged to form separate teams to deal with each form of engagement.

FINAL SUBMISSION

  1. The drawings SHALL be presented in 2 nos AO single sheets which can be panelized easily.
  2. Video film to be produced narrating the entire story of this design exercise. Laptop to be provided with every presentation for screening maximum for 5mins.1
  3. Maximum weightage (70%) will be given to the quality of innovation and resourcefulness used in DOT-I, DOT-II & DOT-Ill.
  4. 25% marks will be for the design innovation and design brief of the intervention.
  5. 5% marks will be for presentation quality.2

MODERATORS COMMENTS: I recommend that these exercises should be carried forward even after the event. If NASA wants to become a force to reckon with, these kind of agendas should be a continuous stream of Out-Of School events being monitored by a specially appointed board, which has faculty members as well if the college permits.

  • 1. NOTESthe : Overall flow of documentation and design IDEAS needs to be clearly seen in the presentation. Its most important that the design should be seen emerging from joining the DOTs.
  • 2. (Since I do not want too much time and effort to be spent on presentation, only 5 days have been given for that. In this Trophy, attention will be paid mostly to the quality and innovativeness of the content only. Therefore, I strongly feel that no more than 5 days should be spent on presentation since students have a habit of making elaborate presentations and the essence of the program is then lost or watered down.)