Nomita Sawhney

The Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society Collaboration Project

The close involvement with the group in the development of the project was personally the best time of the class for me. Coming from India, and my first semester here at MIT, this was a tough semester and the group activity lent itself to a time to share ideas, thoughts and design perspectives within a real problem of creating an object. With a strong background in architecture, growing up in a house where both my parent's were struggling architect's , and the office was located at the house, as a child I have grown up, drawing and constructing models, most of the time not knowing what I was doing, but always being actively involved in the creation of objects, therefore the interest in this particular course.

Also, the understanding of cities and spaces which cannot be separated from community and understanding the whole realm of current media and artistic endeavors and experiments, as a mode of understanding the community is very essential at the moment. This class provided an excellent grounding in this aspect.

The presentation's at Harvard by the GSD, and the visits to the museum also created new avenues of momentum in my thinking and inspirations.

The close functioning of the class with the current contemporary nature's of our environments and the transitory nature of life has been involved in the creation of these kinds of activities and the building of these objects were of special interest to me. The simple activities which link the object to community like a building links to the community, has been in my thinking for a while and now this class has convinced me further. The idea that the built has to regulate a dialogue with the notion of its existence and creates a lasting memory in one's mind ,only if it has a direct relationship with the person, and the whole act of creation is closely linked with this idea. It is essential to build with this thought that the direction of knowledge today sometimes get's lost in building often misplaced ubiquitous buildings which have no relationship with the site or the locale, and the tragedy is that 90 percent of the architecture today is of this pattern. Also the object itself in meaning is simple and pure, constructing out of the situation (feral cats) and the idea of the representation in very direct ideas. This spontaneous creation of an object linked with the construct of a community improves the understanding of the community and the relationship of it.

The making of the object brings with it many new meanings, in the whole act of creation there is always a dynamic energy associated. This period in itself is very cool.