MV
M.W. Vas
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1
Matter is physical substance.
Material is matter given a role.
Value is assigned by the systems around it.
Architecture is one of the systems through which matter acquires that role.
When does matter become material?
What happens when architecture enters before that role has settled?
This thesis occupies that interval. Value remains contingent, relational and open to negotiation. No substance is inherently waste, resource, evidence or cultural material. These identities emerge through the technical, economic, ecological and social systems that receive it. Architecture participates in the production of value. Space is one of the means through which matter is recognised, organised and brought into public life. This project enters before meaning has been resolved, giving spatial form to the conditions through which value is assigned, contested and transformed.
This argument is situated in Six Bells, a former coal village in South Wales where the value of matter has undergone a profound territorial reversal. Coal organised the valley as an economic, spatial and civic system. When mining ceased, that system collapsed, yet its consequences remained in the ground, in the movement of water and in the ongoing work required to manage what extraction left behind.
Ochre is one of those remains. Separated from coal’s former economy, the residue can enter new practices, acquire new meanings and become part of public life. For a village largely understood through industrial decline, it offers another way for the community to encounter its material history through knowledge, making and exchange. Its economic value remains modest. Its cultural and civic significance lies in how people understand, use and represent what remains.
The same residue can be read as environmental burden, cultural material and ecological substrate. Its value shifts according to the system through which it is encountered. This is the Six Bells paradox.
Architecture mediates between environmental maintenance, material transformation and civic life. It gives public presence to a material afterlife that would otherwise remain concealed, and considers what becomes of that architecture when the process it accommodates eventually changes or ends.
...
Material is matter given a role.
Value is assigned by the systems around it.
Architecture is one of the systems through which matter acquires that role.
When does matter become material?
What happens when architecture enters before that role has settled?
This thesis occupies that interval. Value remains contingent, relational and open to negotiation. No substance is inherently waste, resource, evidence or cultural material. These identities emerge through the technical, economic, ecological and social systems that receive it. Architecture participates in the production of value. Space is one of the means through which matter is recognised, organised and brought into public life. This project enters before meaning has been resolved, giving spatial form to the conditions through which value is assigned, contested and transformed.
This argument is situated in Six Bells, a former coal village in South Wales where the value of matter has undergone a profound territorial reversal. Coal organised the valley as an economic, spatial and civic system. When mining ceased, that system collapsed, yet its consequences remained in the ground, in the movement of water and in the ongoing work required to manage what extraction left behind.
Ochre is one of those remains. Separated from coal’s former economy, the residue can enter new practices, acquire new meanings and become part of public life. For a village largely understood through industrial decline, it offers another way for the community to encounter its material history through knowledge, making and exchange. Its economic value remains modest. Its cultural and civic significance lies in how people understand, use and represent what remains.
The same residue can be read as environmental burden, cultural material and ecological substrate. Its value shifts according to the system through which it is encountered. This is the Six Bells paradox.
Architecture mediates between environmental maintenance, material transformation and civic life. It gives public presence to a material afterlife that would otherwise remain concealed, and considers what becomes of that architecture when the process it accommodates eventually changes or ends.
...
Matter is physical substance.
Material is matter given a role.
Value is assigned by the systems around it.
Architecture is one of the systems through which matter acquires that role.
When does matter become material?
What happens when architecture enters before that role has settled?
This thesis occupies that interval. Value remains contingent, relational and open to negotiation. No substance is inherently waste, resource, evidence or cultural material. These identities emerge through the technical, economic, ecological and social systems that receive it. Architecture participates in the production of value. Space is one of the means through which matter is recognised, organised and brought into public life. This project enters before meaning has been resolved, giving spatial form to the conditions through which value is assigned, contested and transformed.
This argument is situated in Six Bells, a former coal village in South Wales where the value of matter has undergone a profound territorial reversal. Coal organised the valley as an economic, spatial and civic system. When mining ceased, that system collapsed, yet its consequences remained in the ground, in the movement of water and in the ongoing work required to manage what extraction left behind.
Ochre is one of those remains. Separated from coal’s former economy, the residue can enter new practices, acquire new meanings and become part of public life. For a village largely understood through industrial decline, it offers another way for the community to encounter its material history through knowledge, making and exchange. Its economic value remains modest. Its cultural and civic significance lies in how people understand, use and represent what remains.
The same residue can be read as environmental burden, cultural material and ecological substrate. Its value shifts according to the system through which it is encountered. This is the Six Bells paradox.
Architecture mediates between environmental maintenance, material transformation and civic life. It gives public presence to a material afterlife that would otherwise remain concealed, and considers what becomes of that architecture when the process it accommodates eventually changes or ends.
Material is matter given a role.
Value is assigned by the systems around it.
Architecture is one of the systems through which matter acquires that role.
When does matter become material?
What happens when architecture enters before that role has settled?
This thesis occupies that interval. Value remains contingent, relational and open to negotiation. No substance is inherently waste, resource, evidence or cultural material. These identities emerge through the technical, economic, ecological and social systems that receive it. Architecture participates in the production of value. Space is one of the means through which matter is recognised, organised and brought into public life. This project enters before meaning has been resolved, giving spatial form to the conditions through which value is assigned, contested and transformed.
This argument is situated in Six Bells, a former coal village in South Wales where the value of matter has undergone a profound territorial reversal. Coal organised the valley as an economic, spatial and civic system. When mining ceased, that system collapsed, yet its consequences remained in the ground, in the movement of water and in the ongoing work required to manage what extraction left behind.
Ochre is one of those remains. Separated from coal’s former economy, the residue can enter new practices, acquire new meanings and become part of public life. For a village largely understood through industrial decline, it offers another way for the community to encounter its material history through knowledge, making and exchange. Its economic value remains modest. Its cultural and civic significance lies in how people understand, use and represent what remains.
The same residue can be read as environmental burden, cultural material and ecological substrate. Its value shifts according to the system through which it is encountered. This is the Six Bells paradox.
Architecture mediates between environmental maintenance, material transformation and civic life. It gives public presence to a material afterlife that would otherwise remain concealed, and considers what becomes of that architecture when the process it accommodates eventually changes or ends.
Colonial Imprints and Local Adaptations
Architectural Evolution of Rua Abade Faria, Goa, in dialogue with Urban and Domestic Forms of Portugal
Colonial architecture stands as a visible testament to the dominance of imperial powers, symbolizing not only political control but also an imposition of spatial ideologies in distant lands (Boxer, 1969). However, the architectural forms introduced by colonial powers were not static replicas of European designs. Over time, they evolved in response to the unique cultural, social, economic, and environmental conditions of the colonies (Freire & Meneses, 2009). The urban settlements established by the Portuguese in Goa, India, offer a compelling case study of such architectural transformations. In these settlements, particularly those with layered histories and heritage value, architecture became a site of negotiation between imported forms and local traditions. As cities grow, there is an inherent tension between urbanization and the conservation of heritage, which embodies the identity and roots of a place (Hamzah, 2020).
Rua Abade Faria in Margao, Goa, a historically significant road exemplifies this tension. The settlement's architectural fabric, once predominantly residential and rich with heritage value, has undergone significant transformations, influenced by urban pressures and changing social needs. As cities like Margao grow and modernize, the challenge becomes how to retain the heritage values embedded in historical settlements while accommodating the pressures of urbanisation, commercialisation, and infrastructural change which have redefined its identity, eroding many of the spatial and material qualities that once defined its character. However, these changes are not merely losses; they are also adaptations, negotiations between heritage, function, and modernity and the nuances of everyday life.
This research builds upon my undergraduate dissertation titled In Between Heritage and Progress: Urban Morphology of a Historical Urban Settlement - A Case of Abade Faria Road, Margao, completed in 2021 at Goa College of Architecture, Goa, India. That study aimed to trace the physical transformation of Rua Abade Faria, a historically significant street in Goa’s commercial capital across time. As a street once lined with Indo-Portuguese residential buildings, Abade Faria Road has increasingly been subjected to commercialisation, infrastructural pressure, and unsystematic redevelopment. The earlier work focused on documenting these shifts through a morphological lens, tracing changes in street patterns, building typologies, and urban character. The current research extends that inquiry by shifting its focus, from observing what has changed, to asking why those changes happened, how they were shaped by local and colonial conditions, and what they mean in the broader context of Goan architectural identity and heritage today.
...
Rua Abade Faria in Margao, Goa, a historically significant road exemplifies this tension. The settlement's architectural fabric, once predominantly residential and rich with heritage value, has undergone significant transformations, influenced by urban pressures and changing social needs. As cities like Margao grow and modernize, the challenge becomes how to retain the heritage values embedded in historical settlements while accommodating the pressures of urbanisation, commercialisation, and infrastructural change which have redefined its identity, eroding many of the spatial and material qualities that once defined its character. However, these changes are not merely losses; they are also adaptations, negotiations between heritage, function, and modernity and the nuances of everyday life.
This research builds upon my undergraduate dissertation titled In Between Heritage and Progress: Urban Morphology of a Historical Urban Settlement - A Case of Abade Faria Road, Margao, completed in 2021 at Goa College of Architecture, Goa, India. That study aimed to trace the physical transformation of Rua Abade Faria, a historically significant street in Goa’s commercial capital across time. As a street once lined with Indo-Portuguese residential buildings, Abade Faria Road has increasingly been subjected to commercialisation, infrastructural pressure, and unsystematic redevelopment. The earlier work focused on documenting these shifts through a morphological lens, tracing changes in street patterns, building typologies, and urban character. The current research extends that inquiry by shifting its focus, from observing what has changed, to asking why those changes happened, how they were shaped by local and colonial conditions, and what they mean in the broader context of Goan architectural identity and heritage today.
...
Colonial architecture stands as a visible testament to the dominance of imperial powers, symbolizing not only political control but also an imposition of spatial ideologies in distant lands (Boxer, 1969). However, the architectural forms introduced by colonial powers were not static replicas of European designs. Over time, they evolved in response to the unique cultural, social, economic, and environmental conditions of the colonies (Freire & Meneses, 2009). The urban settlements established by the Portuguese in Goa, India, offer a compelling case study of such architectural transformations. In these settlements, particularly those with layered histories and heritage value, architecture became a site of negotiation between imported forms and local traditions. As cities grow, there is an inherent tension between urbanization and the conservation of heritage, which embodies the identity and roots of a place (Hamzah, 2020).
Rua Abade Faria in Margao, Goa, a historically significant road exemplifies this tension. The settlement's architectural fabric, once predominantly residential and rich with heritage value, has undergone significant transformations, influenced by urban pressures and changing social needs. As cities like Margao grow and modernize, the challenge becomes how to retain the heritage values embedded in historical settlements while accommodating the pressures of urbanisation, commercialisation, and infrastructural change which have redefined its identity, eroding many of the spatial and material qualities that once defined its character. However, these changes are not merely losses; they are also adaptations, negotiations between heritage, function, and modernity and the nuances of everyday life.
This research builds upon my undergraduate dissertation titled In Between Heritage and Progress: Urban Morphology of a Historical Urban Settlement - A Case of Abade Faria Road, Margao, completed in 2021 at Goa College of Architecture, Goa, India. That study aimed to trace the physical transformation of Rua Abade Faria, a historically significant street in Goa’s commercial capital across time. As a street once lined with Indo-Portuguese residential buildings, Abade Faria Road has increasingly been subjected to commercialisation, infrastructural pressure, and unsystematic redevelopment. The earlier work focused on documenting these shifts through a morphological lens, tracing changes in street patterns, building typologies, and urban character. The current research extends that inquiry by shifting its focus, from observing what has changed, to asking why those changes happened, how they were shaped by local and colonial conditions, and what they mean in the broader context of Goan architectural identity and heritage today.
Rua Abade Faria in Margao, Goa, a historically significant road exemplifies this tension. The settlement's architectural fabric, once predominantly residential and rich with heritage value, has undergone significant transformations, influenced by urban pressures and changing social needs. As cities like Margao grow and modernize, the challenge becomes how to retain the heritage values embedded in historical settlements while accommodating the pressures of urbanisation, commercialisation, and infrastructural change which have redefined its identity, eroding many of the spatial and material qualities that once defined its character. However, these changes are not merely losses; they are also adaptations, negotiations between heritage, function, and modernity and the nuances of everyday life.
This research builds upon my undergraduate dissertation titled In Between Heritage and Progress: Urban Morphology of a Historical Urban Settlement - A Case of Abade Faria Road, Margao, completed in 2021 at Goa College of Architecture, Goa, India. That study aimed to trace the physical transformation of Rua Abade Faria, a historically significant street in Goa’s commercial capital across time. As a street once lined with Indo-Portuguese residential buildings, Abade Faria Road has increasingly been subjected to commercialisation, infrastructural pressure, and unsystematic redevelopment. The earlier work focused on documenting these shifts through a morphological lens, tracing changes in street patterns, building typologies, and urban character. The current research extends that inquiry by shifting its focus, from observing what has changed, to asking why those changes happened, how they were shaped by local and colonial conditions, and what they mean in the broader context of Goan architectural identity and heritage today.