Quaid Doogerwala (DCOOP), Agata Jaworska (Droog), Rahul Srivastava (URBZ), Bas Princen, Francesco Galli (URBZ – Poli Milan), Erik, Jorge (Droog), Ishan Khosla at URBZ office

What happens when a bunch of committed avant-garde designers from Europe decide to spend two weeks in Dharavi, Mumbai, exploring the city’s streets that are dedicated to the production of goods and objects? These production processes use a combination of manual labour, dated industrial technologies and cutting edge digital systems. The providers of goods and services operate from compressed spaces – tool-houses mostly – to cut costs, and use skills that are ancient and modern, thanks to their artisanal histories, reinvented in a difficult, competitive and modern context.

There is a moment of frisson experienced by both parties, the visiting designers and the local service providers. When the metal worker or the digital photo-printer or the kite-maker tries to make sense of an abstract geometric figure that is shown to him, there is a sense of recognition, excitement, weariness and enthusiasm. The exchange is one of equals from different dimensions of the production chain, with very reasonable charges being levied and a matter-of-fact engagement with the process comprising each transaction.

The response is best when the local service providers are honestly told that the exercise with an abstract image is a meditative and reflective one, derived from some wiki-version of Indian geometry. Anything mildly patronizing and simplistic is ignored.

Photo of a photo collage made and printed in a local shop on Dharavi’s MG Road. The shape in the photo is an abstract geometrical theorem that the Droog team is attempting to translate into an object, using the skills and imagination of Dharavi’s artisans. This photo is used to explain the concept to other manufacturer.

After all, artists have walked these streets in the past as well, and have made even more outlandish demands, in terms of size, abstraction and complexity. Theorist Saskia Sassen had pointed out during her visit to Dharavi, Mumbai that this dimension of the neighbourhood’s economy, its ability to be flexible and responsive, – features that are intrinsic to its structure, form and function at every level – could easily translate into great partnerships between designers, and others interested in the production of high-end objects.

On the designer end – the story is pretty interesting too. Ever since mass-produced cheap objects flooded the modern universe, alternatively produced goods, – artisanal, man-made, or those using high-end technology – have had an equally premium place in the world of desire and consumption. Even mass-produced objects with a modernist veneer have had sneaky connections to unorganized human labour through deception and compulsion. The rich world of design has participated in this process by facilitating a sublimation of energy by infusing the industrial object with artisanal personality.

Brainstorming

No wonder a connection happened in the Droog-Dharavi encounter. Two distinct artisanal memories met. One, unsure of its creativity but confident of its productive abilities and the other, confident of its creativity but handicapped by economic fragmentation that characterises the global economy today.

The hundreds of commercial establishments, in the immediate vicinity of the URBZ office are part of the decentralized production system that constitutes Dharavi’s USP, now being seriously appreciated by many. Like weird fiction, this economy slides in between genres, categories and classification. To call it a sweat-shop or the informal sector is inaccurate. Such nomenclature denies the serious connections it has to a history of artisanal practice . It also denies the impact of the entrepreneurial energy that is unleashed here, thanks to the freedom and independence that its inhabitants value, in contrast to the feudal and caste inflected histories they come from. To see it as part of a linear trajectory of technological progress also does not work, since today, more than ever before, we know how technology and human investment are complex, inter related processes.

Lets see how this exercise progresses.

There is something important happening here which will lead us down interesting routes of understanding. Our hunch is that they will touch upon grand themes that dominate the worlds concerns today – financial meltdowns, economic potential, technological challenges, environmental concerns, but the answers are to be discovered in the smallest of by-lanes and streets, literally and rhetorically.

More photos here.

URBZ has developed a new website for PUKAR, a Mumbai-based urban research and action collective. Based on Wordpress, an open source content management system, this website has been entirely customized to suit the needs of PUKAR, of which its flagship project – the Youth Fellowship program – comprises about 400 youth researchers across the city. Besides this, PUKAR’s researchers work in various neighbourhoods all across the city through projects such as ‘Healthy City, Wealthy City’ and ‘Mythologies of Mumbai’.

The main purpose of the new website is to allow PUKAR’s researchers and staff to publish their research online and make it publicly available.  The site will also allow visitors to comment on pages and posts. Among various innovative features is a plugin allowing different Flickr photo albums to be displayed on every page. The admin section was also entirely customized and a series of plugins have been produced to suit PUKAR’s needs, including the main menu and the tag cloud. All these plugins will be made freely available to all Worpress users and developers on the URBZ site in the near future.

The site was developed by Wordpress and CSS master Ricardo Garcia Sanchez, who works with URBZ from Geneva, Switzerland. The design was produced by Jose “Cole” Abasolo, based in Santiago, Chile. Cole is also responsible for the design of the URBZ website and posters. The site was conceived by Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava who both have been working for PUKAR (Rahul as its first Director and initiator of the Youth Fellowship Program, and Matias as IT Advisor). The development of the site was coordinated by Matias Echanove.

The architecture of the site as well as its design are the product of a year-long dialogue with PUKAR’s staff and youth fellows, which included many IT training sessions. It was produced in a participatory way and conceived to maximize everyone’s involvement in the production of online knowledge and information.

www.pukar.org.in

This is the latest update to the New Transit Camp Social Club project in Dharavi. We have worked mainly on the interior space and on the exterior walls. The newly designed interior space now functions like a huge staircase, with different shelves (3×4 meters)  built with plywood, which goes up and up, creating many different  spaces in the same building.

It was really difficult to keep the existing structure so we decided to create  a “free” pallet racks structure. We added an “experimental cube”, which is a part of the building. It serves to investigate the use of different materials. This will help in finding new ways of using pallet racks system for houses construction. It’s like an independent cube, where each of the three floors has 24 sqm area. That’s a enough surface for housing units.

For the exterior walls we propose to recycle plastic sheets from street advertisements and trucks. That allows us to create a space open to daylight and air. It gives  the feeling of being outside even from inside  the building.

We are now working on bioclimatic issues by finding new solutions for keeping the interior as cool as possible.

Images of the improved design:

Buena Vista Tower seen from the Dharavi URBZ office. Click to enlarge.

When we moved to Dharavi, we hoped that some projects would come to us from its residents. There is nothing more exciting than the idea of doing architectural and planning projects in Dharavi and other improvised settlements in Mumbai (and the rest of the world). After all, if Mike Davis is right, this is the new urban condition for an increasing number of people everywhere. We never believed that wholesale clearing and redeveloping was the way ahead for improving the life of people living in so-called slums. Instead incremental development, informed by the way people live and relate to space seemed to be more sensible, less costly, sustainable and respectful of the neighborhoods and their history.

We didn’t have to wait for long before an architectural project came to us from within Dharavi. Paul Zacharia, our landlord and a local leader in New Transit Camp, where the office is located, was given management of a charitable trust which has a plot in need of development. The plot is 30 meters away from our office. He asked us to help with design, construction and financing and added that everything needs to be done really fast because if the land remained empty for too long, some sharks would just take it over. Paul wants to build a social club for street children and elderly residents that will be run by the trust.

The plot with the structure built by Paul in gray.

This happened just as Francesco Strocchio and Alberto Bottero, came to work with us for a month. They are final year architecture students at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy who started a research group called Hindustry. We immediately put them on the project. All construction you see here happened within the space of a week, but a week is a lot of time in Dharavi. Paul had already cleaned up the ground (sort of) and built a sturdy brick structure on it. He told us that if we find money to do better we can destroy it and do whatever we wanted. We thought it would be more practical to incorporate what is there into our design. We are still looking for financing, while the design is going on.

The structure was built by Paul in less than a week.

The building will be a symbol of how Dharavi could be redeveloped in a different way: no high-rise building, no masterplans coming from above our heads, but projects that can improve the quality of life in Dharavi. To us, developing Dharavi means taking into consideration what is already there. This must be done in a way that is economically sustainable. So the basic concept of the project is: 1) Develop don’t destroy, 2) make a small architectural landmark that will act as a statement showing that an alternative model of development in possible, 3) make it work within the economic dynamic of Dharavi.

Base map of the plot. Click here to download a large PDF version.

Dharavi is not a junkyard that can be bulldozed.  The tabula rasa approach is not an option. As we know people live here, they work and play like everywhere in Mumbai. This is a normal neighborhood confronted with special challenges. Several parts of Dharavi don’t look different from so many other areas of Mumbai, which are not referred as slums. Any (re)development project should start by evaluating the strength and the potential of Dharavi and consider the people living there as the main users and stakeholders.

Francesco and Alberto want to call the tower “Buena Vista.” The idea is to let people go up to see the view of Dharavi from above. The tower could also broadcast free wireless Internet for Dharavi residents.

The building we designed should be a new facility for the community. In the initial phase we are considering the use of  pallet racks system, which is a relatively cheap, fast, adaptable and modern way of building inside Dharavi.

The preliminary project proposes two different spaces: a large space on the ground floor for elderly residents (using the structure that has just been built) and  a space for street children on the first floor. A tower provides vertical circulation. It also functions as a landmark for the area.  The top of the tower is used to broadcast free internet wireless to New Transit Camp Nagar (and may be to the whole Dharavi), and diffuse Dharavi’s very own dharavi.organic wiki website.  Two open spaces are planned: a patio on the backside of the plot and an open terrace on the roof.

The pallet racks system allows us to build the tower and the first floor in a flexible and adaptable way. A second floor can be easily added in the future. For the ground floor we are simply keeping the existing brick structure.

The project moves quickly and many things keep changing. These are just preliminary ideas for the buildings. We will continue working on them. We also aim at using inputs from other architects and builders coming to the URBZ office. If you are interested in helping this project in any way, please contact URBZ. What we need the most at the moment is funding. Anything would help. We can already go a long way with $20,000 to 30,000.

Images of the site:

Images of the design:

Sites: JJ School of Art and Architecture, Wilson College Neighbourhood, Chowpatty, Khotachiwadi, Crawford Market.

The MASHUP is an opportunity to visualize Mumbai’s oldest neighbourhoods afresh. This is important not only because these constantly evolving spaces are changing at a fast pace, but also because a little bit of imagination can help them do so without disrupting their spirit and the lives of their old and new residents. Your photograph, photo-shopped image, graphic, painting, poem, rendering, essay or anything else that you choose to express yourself with, will go a long way in giving direction to the ongoing make over of this part of the city. The MASHUP will work with Mumbai’s student and resident population together with international participants. We will explore these neighbourhoods, archive ongoing transformations, introduce thoughts, ideas and images from elsewhere and help visualize the future in a manner that does justice to both, the history and aspirations of these spaces.

Why leave this important task to politicians and the development lobby? Come – join the fun and take charge!

The MASHUP activities cover the oldest neighbourhoods of the city. Girgaum, where Khotachiwadi  – the much threatened and celebrated trophy heritage habitat exists, just a stone’s throw away from Chowpatty beach, another historic space for demonstrating free expression. A fifteen minute walk takes you to Crawford Market – Mumbai’s oldest and favourite shopping destination, facing its own challenges. In between lies a maze of dense streets and bazaars that testify the ability of the city’s numerous communities to make the city what it is, a city of shops, markets, factories, docks, artisanship, dreams and collective aspirations.

In this maze lie opportunities that provide newer definitions of what it means to be a Mumbaikar, through the many languages the city speaks in, the many cultural practices it invents, its changing and evolving built forms, its bazaars and markets that are as vital and dense as the air Mumbai breathes – making the question of its identity richer than anything the city officially celebrates. Way richer than the imagination of its political leaders and deeper than the possibilities framed by its most conscientious citizens.

Register now!!!