Doctoral Project: Akshar Gajjar
This dissertation investigates how brick production in Gujarat, India both shapes and is shaped by territorial transformations through reorganization of construction, labor, land and life. As one of the most used construction materials in India, brick sits at the intersection of agrarian production, land use conversion, rapid construction and internal migration patterns. Starting from Gujarat’s Anand district, the dissertation examines how environmental processes and labor regimes are co-constituted and spatially organized through the making of brick. Approaching the territorial transformations as relational reveals the ecological, social, and economic entanglements of brick production. It foregrounds the spatial relations and consequences of material production and emphasizes the need for architectural research to attend to these interdependent conditions.
In Anand district, brick production engages in multiple territorial transformations. Over 1,200 kilns consume fertile alluvial soil, moving it faster than it can be replenished. Firing the bricks demands lignite from Kutch, where fuel extraction has dispossessed land and unsettled pastoral systems. Tied to national development projects, kilns emerge as agents of urban expansion rather than passive material suppliers. Their dependence on migrant labor from flood- and drought-prone villages in Uttar Pradesh further links Gujarat’s brick economy to distant ecological disruptions. Studying brick across sites of production, circulation, and use, the project employs a method of tracing — not to chart a linear commodity chain, but to delve into the messy, fragmented, recursive, and relational assemblages through which territorial transformation is produced.