Lines of Force

Prashant Hedao was the Regional Planning Coordinator of L’Avenir d’Auroville, Auroville’s Town Planning Department, from 2007-2010. In those years he worked closely together with then Governing Board member Dr BV Doshi on the Auroville Master Plan.

The RA-Working Committee and the RA-Town Development Committee sent a joint note to the community advising to disregard notices sent by the GB-FAMC with the request to vacate at the earliest the Auroville assets they are stewarding to make way for roads or ‘lines of force’.

In August last year, Omar, Mona and David made a presentation to the community about the next steps they envisaged after the Dreamweaving on the Crown experiment [see AV Today no.

This interview with Anupama Kundoo is the third article in the series ‘city perspectives’. Anupama Kundoo graduated from Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Mumbai in 1989 and received her doctoral degree from TU Berlin in 2008.

The following is the first in what may become a series of articles featuring Aurovilians who hold the city deeply in their hearts, even though they may disagree about the details of its manifestation

For six days in early January there was a collaborative planning workshop or charrette involving over 60 Aurovilians and visiting experts. The stated aim of Auroville - A Way Forward was to “bring the purpose of Auroville into our life, built environment and organization’.

In late December, the team which is planning the Line of Goodwill, a megastructure that will stretch from Matrimandir to close by the Visitors’ Center, made their second presentation to the community.

Sunship is a new housing complex of thirty nine apartments, and was conceived as the next step after the Citadines experiment in pioneering a different kind of collective housing in Auroville.

Auroville’s Galaxy Plan is marked by so-called ‘Lines of Force’, long building structures. The Line of Goodwill is a project to build the longest Line of Force of the Galaxy Plan, which extends from the outer ring road near the Visitors Centre parking to the edge of the planned Matrimandir Lake.

Louis Cohen, who first came to Auroville in 1971, is one of the original pioneers. He continues to be very active in the development of the town.

Luis Feduchi is a Spanish architect and town planner. He was Professor of Urban Design at the Berlin Technical University, Germany before moving back to Spain to work as Dean of Architecture of the University of Madrid.