CHT-AHM

Centre for Handcrafted Cotton Textiles

"The CHT-AHM is a new Centre in the old core of Ahmedabad, capital of ths Gujarat (top cotton producing sate). to visit, learn and buy the best quality cotton products, seeking to reactivate and embellish the area, creating new jobs for the Self Employed Woman Association and continuing with the traditional technique of the handcrafted cotton textiles."

After finishing my Bachelor’s Degree, before starting my Thesis project, I decided to go to Ahmedabad, India and participated in a workshop guided by YATIN PANDYA, one of India’s top sustainable architects.

The workshop was named “Humane, sustainable and affordable habitats” and here I gained important knowledge on social and sustainable architecture and urbanism. After this incredible experience, I decided my Final Thesis was going to be a continuation of it. I chose this neighbourhood in the old core because it had belonged to a textile cast in the past, and it need reactivation and rehabilitation.

Not long ago I decided to go to India in search of colours and elephants. Those I was tired to hear about when I was a child.

I landed in Ahmedabad, a city that was known as the Manchester of the East in the past, but that nowadays had nothing to do with this name. It was covered in dirt and fog, it was huge, contaminated and amongst all, it was a city in black and white.

Soul-less buildings emerged massively from the ground, big streets, pork flee, misery, starve…

This is the world's harsh reality.

Soon I managed to find calm and happiness surrounding myself by people who were there to live the experience with me. Something that catches your attention in India is the people. They shine bright and are filled with happiness and joy.

The two months I stayed there, we worked with the architect Yatin Pandya, analysing the old core neighbourhoods of the city, known as Pols. These are starting to be abandoned due to the rapid city growth, leaving hardly no generational continuity.

It was then when I realised that this experience could not end here. I needed to analyse, favour, embellish and give back the city the colours it was known for that now, had totally disappeared.

In my head, they will soon exist again.