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.”

Art is crucial to what we do. Artists are an integral part of all our workshops, forge the most intimate links with communities and stimulate new ways of thinking about and imagining places. URBZ curates art exhibitions, organizes art events and works closely with artists in several of its activities.

The Urban Typhoon workshops in Tokyo and Mumbai had intense contributions by artists – visual, musical and other kinds. People let their guards down, connected to their lives through the space of the imagination and eventually contributed to the whole process most wholeheartedly because of their presence. In Dharavi, Mumbai based artist Himanshu S worked with children in developing a visual archive of homes and habitats through the images produced by them.The whole village was covered with images strung on every available space. He also invited the children to accompany him to paint over homes and walls in the village with their own ideas of what Koliwada was all about.

In the same vein, The MASHUP workshops are visualized as events that are energized by artists and those with a creative bent of mind. The idea that the world of urban engagement is as much about the imagination, about the ability to visualize, about dreams and aspirations is what convinced us that such exercises are intrinsic to what we do.

Essentially, the freedom of thought processes that is essential to art and creativity is the main ingredient of cities in which inhabitants lead the way ahead. This is testified repeatedly by the experinces that we have had in which individuals and communities responded wholesomely to the presence of art related events and activities in our workshops.

Besides, the exhibitions that we organize showcase the outputs of our own initiatives. The spirit of the Urban Typhoon, MASHUP and other workshops is relived through these exhibitions. They communicate the memory, ideas and images of those events at new venues.

Dates: August 2-7, 2010 JULY 26 – AUG 1

Which other city epitomizes the practice of mashups – the art and science of bringing together different systems to make them work in new contexts – better than Istanbul? The city has lived and breathed the idea of mixing, matching, and mashing two apparently distinct cultural histories all through its long existence, like few other places in the world. At once European and Asian and the contradictions that each of them embody, the original mashup city is historically located at a place in the story of cities that can potential teach urbanists and practitioners everywhere, about things that are genuinely new or unknown. About re-reading cosmopolitanism, re-making tradition, re-thinking the future – all of which are inscribed in thoughts, imprinted in images, resonated in sounds, felt in experiences and enshrined in the structures of each neighbourhood in this city. A city that lies at the edge of two worlds, in between several routes. A city that can make everyone feel at home – no matter where they come from. At the same time it is a city that rejects such clichés and confronts the issues it is faced with in an upfront way – issues generated as much by the waves of global events as by the intricacies of its streets and localities.

The URBZ MASHUP will learn afresh from this charismatic city. It will start by introducing the international and local participants through an orientation session on day one. This will comprise of making small teams, exploring neighbourhoods, having conversations, sharing, interacting and learning about the different strands that make up life in that neighbourhood through the eyes of the guests and the hosts, the visitors and the inhabitants – together. At the end of the day each team would have evolved its own visions and objectives based on the interests and skills of each member. Day two will continue with the fieldwork in teams, documenting and collecting all kinds of data and material. Days three and four will be spent in working on the material gathered and on the fifth day the material will be put on an online gallery as well as a physical exhibition place.

The exhibition will include designs, images, T-shorts, sound, installations, narratives, artwork, architectural drawings and much more and throw itself open to the city.

Organizing Partner: Istanbul Technical University.

Location: Taskisla Campus, ITU, Istanbul