Documenting the Passage of Time

Project: Atali Ganga, Rishikesh Architects: RLDA Design Studio, New Delhi

- Rahoul B Singh and Lakshmi Chand Singh

Atali Ganga is an adventure sports resort located on the banks of the river Ganga, about 30 kilometres away from Rishikesh. The resort consists of a storage facility and dormitory, a veranda with a tensile roof that frames the surrounding mountains, a cafe and 22 cottages for guests. Distinguished by its use of stone, reed and steel wire, the project abandons a commonplace aesthetic and other such iconographic elements to stand out as a building that draws its aesthetics from the means, methods and modes of its construction. The first building—made of stone, encased in galvanized gabion boxes and tied to each other with steel wire—was constructed predominantly out of material that was either found on site or excavated from it.