Tents: Cities on the Move

Edited by Naman P. Ahuja

MARG Magazine

English

Softcover

Fascinating documentation of the Kumbh Mela, the largest human habitational space erected every 12 years, is provided alongside those of grand qanats and shamianas of the Mughals, Deccani sultans and Rajputs. Moving from traditions of tented dwellings and their history, this volume explores its application to imagine urbanism in the contemporary context as something flexible and yet resilient— offering a response to the big transitions that confront us with self-built settlements, such as climate change and migration. This volume of Marg presents India’s rich history of tents within a global context. How did the tensile construction of Central Asian Mongol tents work? Can we compare the tented township of the Kumbh with the ones made for Hajj? How do the temporary temples made for Durga Puja make us rethink our fixed notions of what constitutes the tradition of a Hindu temple or architecture more broadly? In fact, the characteristics of tents—their lightness, agility, adjustability, reversibility and ephemerality—can inspire designers, academics, planners and policy-makers to visualise an urban future more adaptable to negotiate the immense flux we face on the planet.