reclamation of a quarry: sanksshep mahendra

This is about a few urban spaces too new to be re-told. And is unfortunately like this:
Blasted by the past and lacking the drive, the tainted sites create Urban spaces, which are quarried by their poisons and their past. Abused, abandoned, underused. With, heavy metals, lead, dynamites, RDX, and what not; traversed by plumes of oil, they stand in the wrong space; with the wrong past. But whatever their contents, their chief crime may be that they attract no architects SURPRISINGLY very few urban designers towards them.

So why would advocates and urbanites, developers and preservationists peruse such orphaned lots? reason being, these anonymous downcasts now have a name. That name is "Abandoned Space". Politicians, builders and environmentalists, private and public sector agents alike have to reclaim these hazardous Abandoned Spaces. Once the pharaohs of preservation and conservation, the stigma of urban existence, turn a blind eye towards them and name it an Abandoned Space the pre existing green land is lost, and that is because we abuse the land as we regard it as a property belonging to us. When we see land as a space to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect, we might give it the moral and ethical value it deserves, than running after the momentary gains it provides.

The word and the concept of restoring Abandoned Spaces can only be understood by considering their origin the green benchmarks that they were. These so-called green benchmarks were the untouched lands on the fringes preferred by sub dividers.

Preservationists have always dealt with bare landscapes, environmentalists always expressed concern, developers looked for ready parcels. But today's Abandoned spaces with their environmental hazards and impoverished neighborhoods look beyond what they stand for today. While we recycled and revived old buildings, and cleanups occurred, these abandoned urban addresses unraveled, eroding further their own self and resulting in an outward drift.

Enter the spaces which have been used and then disposed off for better deals. Overages, it seems, these poisonous places are far off from even being thought of revival.

This provides a challenge to a designer to restore these orphaned lots and get them running.

A Quarry site gives us an inspiring sense of place, the contours speak for the life on the edge, the standing boulders give us the sense of balance, confidence and strength. Hence making an abandoned quarry site in itself a place to create a community which can feel the dimensions of life. Its gradual improvement from an abandoned land to a land holding an urban mass would show its adaptability to surroundings when it is just left as, it is not found useful any more.

It is this insensitivity that robs a invaluable land / land form from a generation. Revitalizing this insensitivity to a sensitive one so that one gets to interact with these land forms understand and feel them is a challenge. People will realize the value when this abandoned land form which was supposed to be hazardous turns out to be the green "bench mark" for the urban society.

This brief sets out the physical requirements to the envisaged mixed use of development. This brief does not seek to apportion funding responsibilities. As context to the determination to the principles to be applied to the redevelopment of the site, the preference is given to the site itself under two sections, ie the site features – some that act as constraints, others that provide opportunities and also that both could be on the same platform. Then the other being, the overall development of the site with regards to the demands of the surroundings.