FORENSIC WATERS, or Ask the River
Bachelor of Architecture Thesis
Carnegie Mellon University
School of Architecture
(2022)
This project ties two parallel moments in colonial history: the project of water management and the project of the archaeological record. Such histories begin in the same period, but have not been spatially related. Under the imposition of the first modern project of water management, ancient cities were flooded, relics were airlifted to higher ground, and excavation sites were rendered unworkable.
As a result, it is precisely when ancient artifacts begin to enter the archaeological record that they come under conquest of the dam building project. Thus, the construction of infrastructure in this era began the erasure of an ancient heritage and the production of a modern new in a single sweep. The thesis situates these concurrent tales in a single territory: the ancient city of Mohenjo Daro. Its waters, now saline and silty, are material records of the colonial project. By looking closely at the river as the residue of conquest, the project traces these colonial erasures to contemporary practices of repair. It asks the river to narrate the past, for a reparative future.