The question ‘What is a city?’ has always been something that has excited me. The quest is extremely real and naïve at the same time. One tries to establish this question in different ways. A scientist has his own ways of exploring what the city is, which is certainly different from what a painter or an economist, or a person from any other field would do. For an architect this exploration exists at different scales. For an architect, this exploration begins from the house and extends all the way up to the farthest extents of the city.
Any representation of the city is, necessarily, always going to be a reductive entity; the very size complexity and ever-changing nature of the city means that any attempt made to capture its essence is going to have to leave something out. But this does not mean that representations are incorrect. Representations of all kinds are means by which we come to know the city, by which we come to understand and control it, above all, the means by which we come to reveal in its possibilities and adventures.
No act of an individual is a singular entity within a city, meaning that if a person decides to sell clothes, or sell a food item in some corner of a city, the idea would run through several individuals within the city. And hence the thought would not be limited to one part or corner of a city and to one individual, but would be seen spread over the entire city. Thus, the thought, an idea and the very physical manifestation of it, can be seen as forming a layer of its own within the construct of a city.
Hence cities can be seen as overlays of layers. Layers, of all possible types. Layers of thoughts, ideas, aspirations. Layers of old and new, cultures, traditions, religions and many more.
That cities are made up of layers, forms the basic premise of this thesis.

Layer: single thickness of substance, as a stratum or coating on a surface.

A layer then is what contains, what holds. It can be called the skin, which protects the inner substance of matter. What is interesting is that in no condition this skin is a composed of one particular substance alone. In nature, for example, ‘skin’ is the outer most layer through which the final exchanges of substances take place. This means that there are several layers below the skin, which together form the skin.

Relationships explored :

Layering and growth

City and its growth

City Temporality Layering