Decay as 'Aesthetic' and Alternative Negotiations

A conversation on resilience would be incomplete without a conversation on decay. Throughout urban spaces in the global south today, one witnesses decay, which is accepted and negotiated constantly. In certain instances, it invokes a sense of poverty and sensibilities of curiosity and exploration which the sanitized space sometimes fails to provoke. The challenge is a complex narrative which crosscuts architectural theory, practice, urban planning and culture. This paper offers a variety of contrasting examples of how decay takes an aesthetic form and offers room for alternative negotiations to be identified at the same time. As a conversation on new urbanism, this phenomenon can be tracked across a variety of urban cases. This paper presents two examples of such undertakings and attempts by meticulous documentation, comparative study and photographic representation to present a reasonable rationale. As a theoretical discussion, the paper also interrogates the need for bringing back the likes of Laurie Baker’s style in re-synthesizing objectivity in equitable architectural manifestations considering the large impact of impatient capital on these new landscapes

Becoming the Monsoon Forest – Emergence in the Breakdown of Categories

How do we understand more-than-human vegetal emergence in/with/under monsoonal transformation. I often like to introduce the monsoon to people by telling them that it is the change in the direction of the wind that carries the ocean to the sky, blanketing the geological spatio-temporality of the Indian subcontinent, transforming its air and everything in its temporal wake with the possibility of life. This paper thinks through the invasive vilayati kikar which has overwhelmed native monsoon forests and arid ecologies. Drawing from fieldwork in the Delhi region conducted during monsoon 2018, 2019 and the winter of 2018, and by thinking with literature and reports from ecology, biology, politics, anthropology and natural science—I attempt a brief situated narrative that explores the vegetal emergence of the plant, its natureculture spirits and embodiment in/with the monsoon—finally, closing this work with an argument and discussion on the monsoon and its ontological stickiness

Ways of Monsoon Air: Entanglements and Stories of Matter, Space, and Time

The air of the monsoon is a powerful force of matter that makes, co-constitutes and is made by its many worlds. Having emerged from the context of the Monsoon Assemblages project, this doctoral thesis asks how the air of the monsoon re-orients, informs, animates and confronts the way we view Delhi and how the city animates, opens up and assists in the distribution of its matter and politics through the monsoon. Through the process of the work, the thesis travels to a variety of locations, temporalities, matters and times to engage with the sticky complexity of the liveliness of (and living because of) monsoonal atmosphere. I develop something that I call A Monsoon Air Methodology which I propose is a way of meandering with and because of monsoonal capacities and forms – in inviting generosity of the way different knowledges view the monsoon, and letting monsoonal sway mediate those stories – in concluding that the monsoon is a knowledge system too. Enveloped between an introduction with notes for a methodology and a conclusion are three chapters. They are about the winter haze, an invasive plant species and the question of the death of monsoonal time – amidst a range of linkages and materials. The work is very interdisciplinary and gathers a variety of methods and approaches in engaging and deepening an understanding of the role of the monsoon and anthropogenic materiality as they agentially mingle in the co-production of narrative, writing, worlds, possibilities, pasts and the broader implication of monsoonal thought – investing in its opacity, survivability, uncertainity, multispecies ecology and permeation. Through this work, I ask how thinking and sensing through the monsoon and its ways – can open up, share, distribute and make insights of matters, places and times, for liveability, in these precarious troubles of the Anthropocene

Rolling contact fatigue life of chromium ion plated 440C bearing steel

Rolling contact fatigue (RCF) test specimens of heat treated 440C bearing steel were chromium ion plated in thicknesses from 0.1 to 8.0 micron and tested in RCF tester using 700 ksi maximum Hertzian stress. Heavy coatings, greater than about 5 micron in thickness, peeled off or spalled readily, whereas thin coatings, less than 3 micron thick, were tenacious and did not come off. Furthermore, significant improvement in RCF life was obtained with thin chromium ion plated test specimens. The average increase in B10 life was 75% compared with unplated 440C. These preliminary results indicate that ion plating is a promising way to improve bearing life