DEFINING CHAAL.CHAAL.AGENCY
We are a design-research collaborative project founded by Kruti Shah and Sebastián Trujillo-Torres, working between Ahmedabad (India) and Bogotá (Colombia). We specialize in experimental infrastructures, transformative design, and transdisciplinary pedagogy, locating our area of investigation in the intersection between equality and space. Working between India and Colombia has allowed us to enquire into issues and potentialities particular to the Global South, in the prospect of triggering larger transformations through evolving micro-operations, which usually involves students, allied organizations, and proactive communities. A practice envisioned towards more self-sufficient, equitable, and cohesive cultural environments.
A MANIFESTO
Our practice is based upon what we have loosely termed as a “Light Infrastructures Manifesto”. Through it, we explore a series of principles that are applicable to the practice of design-research in the built environment of the Global South. A game-plan to reflect and act upon urban infrastructures whilst contributing to disciplinary agendas in order to cover broader fields of intervention. For this, we investigate the political and poetic conditions embedded in infrastructures, framing them as a series of social, political and technological means to be re-appropriated and potentiated, in view of solidarity and social justice agendas. In itself, it constitutes a practical manifesto to “change the world without taking power” in contexts of informality.
