The Story

With the spiritual influence and dual philosophies from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Auroville was created in south India, mostly in the State of Tamil Nadu, a place was designed as a unique community where the individual and the collective meet in the search for a higher consciousness. It was envisioned as a universal township which could host up to 50,000 residents from all over the world. As one of the most remarkable plans was called “galaxy plan”, which upgrades the conventional concentric town planning for defense mechanism and unity, to enclose all human beings and leave out of flexibility for organic growth. 

To realize the concept of human unity, Roger Anger was invited to be the chief architect of the project. He envisioned a town he is creating, which would be “a totally unprecedented psychological, social, educational and architectural experiment,” and continue to evolve within “its physical body, life there, its society and also its genius.” In this manner, the town would be allowed to materialize or physically grow according to its own dynamism, like different demands from residents, so that a united vision between the designers and future residents could share. However, it is difficult to create an architectural design which left out flexibility to accommodate unprecedented demands, and not create arbitrary for the vision.

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The concept of collaborative living attracted young people from all over the world. The rapid population growth washed away a day-to-day experiment of organic growth. Many of these newcomers tended to arrive with professional backgrounds and lacked the hang-ups against urbanization which burdened some of the early residents, who planted many trees and envisioned to live in with nature. It was both existing residents and newcomers’ responsibility to figure out how to grow together. 

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After its founder passed away in 1973, Auroville plunged into a struggle around the collective organization and decision-making. Its pace of development slowed down and confronted with “conservative opposition that was unwilling to push forward to the future.” Of course, for the time being, human beings are simply continuing to perpetuate a hollow, comfortable, and uncreative system that has nothing to do with the future, nor with “The Mother’s” dream. Additionally, 1978 to 1984, Roger Anger resigned from the organizing committee, but later he made himself available again when conditions seemed to have become more favorable. Roger became the main person to carry out the vision of the Mother.

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By that time, to pursue the organic growth, resident architects had begun to develop gated communities on the scattered lands in their own individual styles in an attempt to solve the pressures of urbanization rather than succeeding in creating wider synthesis and unified urban development as in the case of the city plan. Although later on, the Auroville Foundation Act was passed, the establishment of humanity needs a central leader, or at least decentralize the leadership into a more stable group of leaders who share the same vision.

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Auroville is still thriving today, because its business models are practical enough to be able to generate enough import for the community, so residents here could keep different community system running through their contribution and receive what they need for their daily lives.