"Mapping the transformation
shaped by gentrification."
⦾UI/UX
⦾ Research
Duration: 4 Weeks
Visualizing Assam’s transformation through architecture, culture, and evolving identities."
How it Started
Having lived in Assam all my life, with generations before me calling it home, I’ve witnessed its beautifully intertwined cultures firsthand.
Even in my small town, diverse communities blend seamlessly, shaping traditions uniquely distinct from their origins. This deep-rooted cultural fusion sparked my curiosity, leading me to research the shifting of communities and how it affects a place’s identity, culture, and landscape.
home
Tracing the Shifts: Assam Through Time
While researching Assam’s traditions, food, and festivals, I came across the term gentrification—the transformation of spaces over time.
One realization stood out—landscapes, both natural and architectural, continuously evolve, shaping Assam’s cultural identity and reflecting its ever-changing essence.
Finding Patterns
Talking to people back home gave me clarity on emerging themes and shifts in Assam’s architecture. Their insights shaped the affinities, helping me categorize key transformations.
Here’s what I discovered through these responses.
While Assamese architecture has modernized, certain elements of traditional design still persist in rural and semi-urban areas.
The community aspect of traditional Assamese housing has been affected, with reduced shared spaces and more emphasis on individual homes.
Identity of Assamese architecture remains strong, as many still recognize and appreciate traditional styles like Ahom palaces, Chang Ghars, and slanted roofs.
Assamese architecture has modernized, reducing community spaces, but traditional influences remain in identity and design.
Here are some of the affinities I found during the process.
Identifying Recurring Themes
As I delved deeper, I noticed recurring patterns in the responses—common threads that wove together Assam’s architectural evolution. These themes shaped my understanding of the forces driving change.
Key Takeaways:
⦁ Urbanization & Economy → Modernization prioritized functionality over tradition.
⦁ Material Shifts → Cost-effective materials like RCC replaced bamboo and mud.
⦁ Heritage Loss → Decline in craftsmanship and preservation efforts.
⦁ Cultural Influence → Colonial rule and migration reshaped architecture.
⦁ Societal Changes → Nuclear families favored compact, modern homes.
⦁ Environmental Impact → Climate change and floods pushed resilient materials.
To refine my findings, I then interviewed peers posing questions about urbanization, material shifts,
heritage loss, global influences, societal changes, and environmental impact.
Their insights helped me shape the direction of my research.
Refining the Affinities: Identifying Core Themes
After a second round of affinity mapping, I distilled the vast array of insights into four primary categories that encapsulate the transformation Assam has undergone.
These categories allowed me to structure my research more cohesively, helping to frame Assam’s architectural transformation as not just a design shift but a reflection of deeper societal, environmental, and economic changes.
Mapping the Stakeholders.
After refining my core affinities—Social Fragmentation, Urban Evolution, Cultural Flux, and Shifting Landscapes—I identified the key stakeholders on the basis of impact and influence over these transformations.
Stakeholder mapping showed power dynamics, revealing policymakers drive change while artisans and residents face displacement, balancing modernization and heritage.
Tracing Transformations: Mapping User Journeys
Gentrification unfolds through diverse experiences, shaped by time, impact, and stakeholder influence.
To visualize these changes, I structured user journeys around key themes:
⦁ Temporal Perspective → Experiences of residents, migrants, and policymakers across past, present, and future.
⦁ Impact Areas → Cultural loss, rising costs, environmental shifts, and design evolution.
⦁ Stakeholder Lifestyles → Contrasting struggles and benefits of key groups.
⦁ Decision-Making → Who drives change vs. who is displaced.
⦁ Emotional Responses → Resistance (protests, nostalgia) vs. adaptation (modernization).
Identifying Patterns and Common Themes
After mapping the ranked transformations, I compared changes across different eras to spot recurring trends.
Onto the Grunt Work:
I have cataloged key events across various eras of Assam’s architecture, aiming to uncover the links between them and identify the most transformative milestones.
Here’s a video of me working on clubbing related facts from different historical eras together.
Ta-Da!
(This took a solid three hours and I got pricked by almost every pin on there)
Ranking Transformations: Understanding the Scale of Change
After connecting user journeys, I ranked key events based on their scale of impact—whether they reshaped communities, altered cityscapes, or influenced governance.
This helped prioritize major shifts ensuring a structured approach to visualizing Assam’s evolving landscape.
For the Data Visualization
Mapping event impacts streamlined my content, providing clarity for data visualization and helping develop a cohesive narrative for my project’s storytelling.
Here's the entire file linked: