MAZA'AR, URS, MELA.

Abstract

Shrines. or Mazaar'at. are an organic process in architecture that are built up aver a period of time in the Asiatic Subcontinent - starting with the marked or unmarked graves of bona fide members of siety and growing in stature and complexity with the passing of time. As such. the journey and path from the grave ta the eventual. and ever evolving shrine with its wealth of situational and narrative frameworks. like those □f the llrs and the Mela. remains unmapped in the formal architectural profession: as does its existence as a formal typology. The aim of the thesis will be ta establish a formalized foothold far the typology within the scape of the profession through a very specific lens. In doing so. it would be hoped that the many unrecorded processes in the vernacular are brought int□ formal discourse as areas of serious study. and attempted within the scape of design and intervention. as a thesis undertaking. In architectural practice. eastern sacred typologies are often left unstudied. the various other minutiae offered by the wealth and diversity of their associated fringe architectural phenomenon ignored with few attempts at formal study or recognition. [he shrine, being the largest of these is a natural choice into the lens of a frame of study still virgin within formal study - with little extant understanding behind the inherent processes, cultures, r Situational, narrative and architectural phenomenon involved.