The URBZ MASHUP Mumbai was automated by an enthusiastic bunch of creative urbanists from Mumbai and around the world. They mixed and matched their experiences to re-locate these old neighbourhoods within a contemporary context through their own histories and experiences.

They decoded the by-lanes of Chor Bazaar and re-arranged them in an alternative map that respected the flea-market’s self-made rules. They connected its grammar to markets from Goa and elsewhere.

They  suggested signposts and made new maps that gave legitimacy to the informality of Abdul Rehman Street.

They made toys inspired by roadside knick-knack sellers and hawked them for older images, photographs and memories.

They cast creative projections beneath the JJ Flyover that snakes through the neighbourhood like a gigantic beast and opened up possibilities inspired from New York – possibilities that included performance and alternative uses.

They transformed the walls of Khotachiwadi into canvases for painting dreamscapes inflected by Byzantine, Mexican and popular art.

They walked through the labyrinthine Bhuleshwar  and coined words, phrases and narratives to describe the experience that coalesced into new meanings by different users.

They documented the existential crisis of Crawford market that is trying to reinvent itself and suggested alternative ways of doing so – by mashing up the internal logic of the market with its new aspirations.

They figured out that ‘Bazaarchitecure’ was the main motif of the formal-informal market-dense neighbourhood such as the Municipal C and D wards which incorporates the ‘Mashup Area’ and suggested new policy frameworks for their future.

They were invited to walk into a living heritage of ‘Old Bombaye’ – Edward Talkies and managed to capture a World-War II-style cinematic experience that co-exists in a perfect Mashup moment with a contemporary multiplex down the road.

They focused on the patterns made by the shadows of the thousand odd users of the lanes and captured the busy street-life through a refracted photographic gaze.

Some of the output was exhibited at the Girgaum Catholic Club in Khotachiwadi on November 1st – the final day of the Mashup.

We are grateful to Art India Magazine for having sponsored the printing of the output for the exhibition.

The press covered the event with pithy one-liners. ‘Whose City is it anyway?’, ‘Heritage Hunt’, ‘The Great Mumbai Mashup’, ‘How to Make your own Mumbai’ and ‘Mumbai – Tailor Made’.

A full report of the workshop will soon be available on the site. Meanwhile, you can start browsing the mashup’s output here. More images on the URBZOO Flickr page.

Toy Bazaar: Toys in exchange of memories in the old bazaar style

Team: Himanshu S, Monica Nanjunga,  Guru S., Varsha Deshikar, Yashmi  Kantak  and  Namita  Thakur.

The workshop started at the JJ College of Architecture and by the end of a long day the groups coalesced into the following themes:

(Note: The titles are tentative and may change from day to day till the final Mashup emerges on November 1, 2009 at 6:00p.m. at the Girgaum Catholic Club, Khotachiwadi.)

1. Toy Bazaar

Toys in exchange of memories in the old bazaar style

Himanshu S, Monica Nanjunga,  Guru S., Varsha Deshikar

2. Carousel – words from worlds

Kaiwan Mehta, Oskar Edstorm, Beata Hemer, Suleiman Merchant , Girish Menon

3. Chaotic Patterns

Cecil Pinto, Edson Dias

4.  Null Bazaar – Trust Buildings. Everyday life of Null Bazaar through trust buildings.

Ranjit Kandangaonkar,  Amit  Rai, Ekta,

5. Path Finder – Mapping of abdul reheman street with signs and symbols.

6. From dawn to dust – A/V of the way of life of A.R Street.

7. No. 1 – Urination – Sanitation.

Kunal Ghevaria, Rajitha Vripparthi, Cheshta Papneja, Renny Verghese, Shruti Gaokar, Sanobar Girap, Mustansir Dalvi.

8. Under the flyover – Making public space under the street.

Ankit Savla, Stephanie Carlisle, Sourav Biswas, Himanshu & Monica, Guru, Varsha.

9. The Palm Project: Telling the story of places through the stories of people.

Pratishta Durga , Niral Parekh and Tarun Durga

10. Bazaarchitecture

Chor Bazaar

Geeta Mehta, Ally Reeves, Dipti Higorani, Asmita Bandekar, Yoji Toriumi

Crawford Market

Geeta Mehta, Harshvardhan Jakkar, Apporva Jalindre, Neva Pedczzini, Vyasdev Yenglchom, Mayuri Straub, Juiichi Iida

11. Khotachiwadi Wall Project – Painting the Neighbourhood

James Ferreira, Isa, Himanshu S and others

Bijal Vachharajani writes about the URBZ MASHUP Mumbai in this week’s edition of Time Out Mumbai

Politicians and the media have been debating the plan to build a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji off Marine Drive. The municipality has been busy considering proposals for towering hotels across the city. Matias Echanove, Rahul Srivastava and Geeta Mehta, on the other hand, have a different vision for Mumbai. They believe that the city should develop more organically, as a user-generated city. “When you are developing an urban design, you should incorporate systems that allow people to intervene in the planning,” said Echanove , who has started the research outfit urbanology.com with Srivastava. “Residents are the city experts. They are the ones who have the most pertinent and accurate data about their city.”

This fortnight, Echanove, Srivastava and Mehta, who is an associate professor of architecture and urban studies at Temple University, Japan, are organising a workshop that will help city residents put some of their visions down on paper. Urbz Mashup will give artists, designers, architects, activists, writers, photographers and just about anyone interested in cities and urban planning the opportunity to present their ideas about Mumbai in any form they want – music, videos, photo-collages, even short stories. “They can speculate about the future architecture, create a dream scenario or a nightmarish one,” said Echanove. “It could be a vision inspired by any place – a neighbourhood, another city or country.” The work will be exhibited online on the Urbz website, while selected plans will be displayed at an exhibition at the Sir JJ School of Art.

Over four days, the group will cover some of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, including Crawford Market, Bhuleshwar and Chor Bazaar, documenting their history, archiving the changes taking place and using their imagination and skills to re-interpret the area. “The workshop is an opportunity for urban practitioners to collectively explore localities, streets and neighbourhood,” said Srivastava. “They can bring in their own experiences to produce new ways of looking at, visualising and imagining the city.”

The Mashup idea emerged from the Urban Typhoon workshop that had been organised in Dharavi in 2008. “We felt this time we should focus on the creative element of urban practice,” said Srivastava. “Development laws are going to change the landscape of Mumbai. So we thought we’d have a small exercise that will find new ways of looking at a street.” He explained that the Mashup aims to transform the city in a creative manner “that does not destroy the spirit of the neighbourhood, its residents, their thoughts and feelings” .

Echanove added that the workshop would also concentrate on specific pockets such as the nineteenth-century Khotachiwadi village in Girgaum. “This historic site is threatened by real estate developers,” said Echanove. “There’s a lot of pressure to sell and once these bungalows are sold, they will be destroyed. However, we can use design strategies to preserve the neighbourhood.” He cites fashion designer James Ferreira’s house in Khotachiwadi as an example. Ferreira has restored his family home in a way that the ground floor functions as a living space and the first floor as an office. Another bungalow has rented out the ground floor to a gym. “It’s almost like a village economy operating in an urban space,” Echanove said. “This way, at least the income generated goes towards conserving the locality. At the Mashup we will work with the residents and try to find similar solutions.”

Dates: Oct 29 – Nov 1, 2009

Workshop Starts: Thursday Oct 29 at 10AM at JJ-School of Architecture

Exhibition & Party: Sunday Nov 1, 6-10PM at the Girgaum Catholic Club in Khotachiwadi

Sites: Girgaum (Khotachiwadi, Chowpatty Beach, Wilson College neighbourhood), Crawford Market and Chor Bazaar.

Objective: URBZ MASHUP Mumbai explores, challenges, subverts, questions and celebrates Mumbai’s ideas and practices of heritage enshrined in its colonial (pre and post included) architecture, arts, culture and politics.

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, one of  the city’s most popular for social dissent and free expression. A fifteen minute walk from there takes you to Crawford Market – Mumbai’s oldest and favourite shopping destination. In between lies a maze of dense streets and bazaars that testify to the city’s numerous communities who made the city what it is, a city of shops, markets, dreams and collective aspirations.

In this maze lie stories, images and ideas of a city 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 the city breathes – making the question of its identity richer than anything the city officially celebrates. Way richer than the imagination of its political leaders and much deeper than the possibilities framed by its most conscientious citizens.

The URBZ MASHUP welcomes participants from Mumbai, India and the rest of the world to use their skills and imaginations and dive into streets, walk into homes, converse, make images, play, then reinterpret, examine, and recreate newer imaginative frameworks that do justice to the city’s layered, dense and complex life.

Anyone is welcome to register. High motivation, initiative and creative mindset are essential qualities for all participants. The registration fee are Rs 300 for Indian students, Rs 500 for other Indian participants. $150 for international students, $300 for other international participants. Fees can be reduced or waved under special circumstances. Please do let us know if you would like to participate but cannot afford the fee.

Invited Team Advisers and Proposed Topics:

Art India Magazine (Abhay Sardesai & crew)
Topic: The art and craft of everyday life: JSS Road to the world

Stephanie Carlisle,  graduate student in Architecture and Urban Ecology at Yale University
Topic: Under the Flyover: a sectional exploration of contested spaces hidden beneath the map

Mustansir Dalvi, Poet, Architect, Teacher at the JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai
Topic: Taking the Inner-City Out of the Box – Girgaum, Nana Chowk and other areas.

James Ferreira, Fashion Designer, Khotachiwadi activist and life-long resident.
Topic: Preservation through change: Design strategies for an ever-young Khotachiwadi

Ranjit Kandangoankar: Visual Artist & Research Fellow-Urban Design Research Institute, Studying buildings owned by Charitable Trusts
Topic: Re-imagining collages through inner-city perspectives: Null Bazaar and other sites.

Geeta Mehta: Urban designer and faculty at Columbia University
Topic: Bazaarchitecture & historical preservation in Crawford Market & Chor Bazaar. How do you preserve a bazaar?

Kaiwan Mehta: Architect and writer (author of the book “Alice in Bhuleshwar“)
Topic: Real-time history of Bhuleshwar

Amit S. Rai: Professor of English Literature at Florida State University
Topic: Contemporary Movie going in an ancient Movie Theatre: Edward Cinema, Dhobhi Talao

Alison Reeves: Artist, Fullbright Scholar
Topic: Street-vendors of Girgaum: Portraits and stories of Mumbai’s most perennial population: the itinerants

Himanshu S.: Artist & crew
Topic: Dreamality and playful interventions: Girgaum seen from kids eyes

Yehuda Safran: Professor of philosophy of architecture at Columbia University & Harvard
Topic: Poetics of street life & moving habitats. 12 Scenarios for the mashed-up city

Sachin Yardi: Screenplay Writer and Film Director. (Wrote the screenplay of the movie “Traffic Signal“)
Topic: Street-life as fiction. Collective screen-play writing

Schedule:

Thursday 29: Workshop starts at 10AM at JJ-School of Architecture, close to Crawford Market (Entrance in front of JJ flyover). All the participants meet and form small teams of 2 to 5 people max. They decide on a location and an approach they want to pursue, with the help of the organizers if needed. After lunch the teams go to their chosen location(s) and start gathering data in the form of photos, videos, interviews, sketches, etc.

Friday 30: Data hunting-gathering in different locations.

Saturday 31: Participants gather at the workshop site and decide what they want to produce with their data and how it should be presented. Final output could be anything ranging from in situ interventions to design proposals and manifestos to video clips and art works. This day work until the output is ready (may mean an all-nighter). From Saturday 12-noon to Sunday 12-noon all the material produced is uploaded on the URBZ website (with the help of URBZ staff).

Sunday 1: The MASHUP Exhibition starts at 6PM. From 12-noon to 6PM, Participants prepare stalls with print-outs, models, performances, videos to showcase their creative production. Locally cooked food will be available. Party follows. This will take place at the Girgaum Catholic Club in Khotachiwadi. All are welcome.

Locations:

MUMBAI MASHUP View in a larger map