Jaaga Proposal: Phase 1
Project: Jaaga a flexible, incremental, and portable office and living space for up to 100 people. This project was mandated by Freeman Murray, a Web guru who moved to India after making a killing in Silicon Valley as a dotcom programmer and entrepreneur. He now runs the iAccelerator initiative at IIM Ahmedabad. He now wants to move iAccelerator to where the talent is, i.e.: everywhere. For this purpose he asked URBZ to design a structure based on pallet racks. He has experimented with pallet racks structure in California and most recently in Bangalore. URBZ is proposing possible extensions to the Jaaga space. This is the first phase of this study. In the spirit of open source/open access, Freeman has asked URBZ to publish this work in progress online. Suggestions and contributions are welcome.
Concept: The space is composed of cells that can be incrementally built and connected to each other, following the project’s own logic. The cells are connected to each other on the horizontal plan by walkways and vertically by stairs. Various patterns can emerge over time in response to the needs and means of the project. The conceptual influences of the project include the simply rules and complex outcomes of cellular automata models, the organic poetics of mathematics as represented in the movieπ, the go game and its strategical use of “void” and spatial relationships, and the architectural philosophy of Christopher Alexander, which evolved out of his observations of nature’s pattern language.
In the words of Freeman, Jaaga should be a mashup between “the Solitude farm at Auroville, the dreams of Paolo Soleri and his experiments at Arcosanti, the Silicon Valley and Dharavi.” The Dharavi part is what makes this utopia realizable. Jaaga must work on low budget and produce high quality output.
• High-density living conditions minimize the footprint of the structure and its cost.
• Low-height simplifies its construction and allows for an optimal exploitation of the ground space.
• Total programmatic flexibility means that each part of the Jaaga can in a matter of minutes be converted from a workspace to a living space.
• Modular structure of Jaaga means that it can be assembled incremental without following a predefined plan.
URBZ, which is based in Dharavi sharing physical and mental space with the Dharavi Institute of Urbanology, believes much can be learned from the innovative architectural solutions and user-generated logic of Dharavi. Injected with some resources, imagination, technology and humanity, the extreme living and working conditions of Indian slums, depicted in Charles Correa’s image below (right) can serve as inspiration for the production of creative and stimulating living and working environments.
Strategy: Pallet racks are never thought of as possible elements for building large structure. Yet they are one of the cheapest and most commonly available material in the market. They are solid enough and easily replaceable. They also offer an infinity of possibilities. URBZ has explored various ways in which they could be assembled to produce different spaces. Here are different examples of simple structural elements that can be made with commercially available pallet racks.
The complete modularity of structures made of pallet rack means that they can be inserted in the most densely built urbanscape such as improvised settlements in Lima or Mumbai (below). They are good architectural solutions for emergency shelters and temporary structures. The shell formed with pallet racks can also easily be converted into permanent structures if consolidated with steel, wood, concrete, or other locally available material.
Modules
For more details on each module, visit our flickr set. http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbzoo/sets/72157622386627766/
Stucture for 100 people
Ground Floor
First Floor
Second Floor
