What happens between the taq and the Old City of Srinagar in Kashmir?

Abstract

This thesis explores the importance of the traditional building crafts as integral and inextricable parts of traditional architecture, known as the 'taq', in the Old City of Srinagar and delves into the question, 'How does architecture become a platform for the different building crafts and a medium to facilitate their development, and vice versa?' The study shows the interrelation of Architecture and Craft through five scales of spatial configuration in the old city: 1) the urban context of the city; 2) the streetscapes in it; 3) the Dargahs amidst neighbourhoods; 4) traditional houses in the city; and 5) finally the crafts as they have been practiced individually in incorporated within interior architecture. This approach seeks to understand the relation of Architecture and Craft in Srinagar at different levels and to explore in detail, where the two meet and where they diverge. It is important to explore the intricate interdependency of these systems of spatial expressions and building functions to study their growth and diversification that we see in the old city of Srinagar today. There is ample research on both Traditional Crafts and Architecture in Kashmir as individual and separate topics of study, but this thesis study helps to look at them as cohesive and mutually supportive elements of the traditional built environment in the urban context of the Old City of Srinagar. It explores those relationship through fieldwork and visual methods of studying and enquiring at different spatial scales (e.g. maps at the urban scale and photography and drawing at the architectural scale). The results of the study encourage a new and different way of looking at, and studying, the relationship between architecture and craft in the old city of Srinagar. It synthesizes a framework that can have a broader application to study areas with similar circumstances in other regions of India.