The ongoing Istanbul Design Biennial (October 13th 2012 – December 12th 2012) builds on two complementary ideas – Imperfection and Adhocracy.

Adhocracy, a term coined by seventies sociological futurist Alvin Toffler, critiques the idea of Bureaucracy by posing as its counter-point. It becomes  a set of processes functioning without the mediation of heavy handed rules and regulations.

Curator Joseph Grima, who invited us to be part of his Adhocracy section of the exhibition, took over this concept.

‘If design is no longer the domain of a select few creating products of consumption for “the many”, according to the top-down model of bureaucratic industrialism, what is it? This exhibition argues that rather than the closed object, the maximum expression of design today is the process—the activation of open systems, tools that shape society by enabling self-organisation, platforms of collaboration independent of the capitalist model of competition, and empowering networks of production. Design is on the move: it is migrating from the rigid domain of bureaucracy towards the rhizomatic realm of adhocracy’.

As we used this concept to reflect on our work, drawing from a range of experiences based largely in Mumbai, Adhocracy became an increasingly useful concept.

For long we have questioned the idea of using euphemisms like ‘informal’ to understand so-called ’slum’ settlements in the city. Or to refer to its economy with the same label. Over the years we realised that bureaucratic and conceptual confusion was at the heart of the matter. In fact the overwhelming overlap of processes between the apparently formal and the supposedly informal became  something difficult to ignore.

When urban planning gets taken over by bureaucratic procedures they get expressed most strongly in zonal, spatial, temporal and structural regulations. Consequently, it is easy to label anything that slips in between them as ‘informal’.

Yet, unplanned urban regimes in cities such as Mumbai, remain functional, economically productive, domesticated or industrial and contribute substantially to the city. What makes them so? What are the adhocratic processes and structures that they rely on to exist and persist?

The tool-house for us represents one such process-structure.

It is a concrete manifestation of adhocracy in the realm of urban living. It combines working and living conditions, it plays around with time and space, is domestic and work-centered and in many homegrown neighbourhoods in Mumbai, is ubiquitous.  It also emerges from a history connected to artisanship. However, as part of contemporary urban life, it takes the idea of artisanship and craftsmanship into a realm that combines new technologies and economic needs, labour and energy systems to become a firm part of the future of uses, needs and objects.

It allows us to see through the exaggerated claims of capitalism in the world of production and its relations with technology and labour. It forces us instead to look more carefully at what constitutes these processes.  If for a moment, the tool-house is idealized, just so that we can get a glimpse of its possibilities in a world run by adhocratic principles, we step into another kind of a city.

Where regulations are not imposed through a bureaucracy but emerge through practice. And a practice that somehow addresses modern values more effectively rather than merely through rhetoric.

For one part of our installation at the Istanbul Design Biennial, we asked Mumbai’s wood carvers to make tool-houses in an idealized form. The suggestions to them were on purpose vague and unclear. This was done in order to find out a moment in their discourse, which would let them reflect on and play with their skills in a freer way. Their responses were a combination of enthusiasm and irony.

‘If only tool-houses existed like this – as dignified spaces’ was their wistful, common refrain.

Everyone knew that what was being produced was a fantasy. At the same time, in their conception of the object, there were traces of both memory and contemporary perception. One carpenter wanted us to film the process of making a model of the tool-house in two hours flat. This became part of the video that accompanies the installation.

The little wooden structures made by wood-carvers framed the larger story of the 5 narratives that make up our installation. The tool house is the context in which all the different stories of artisanship unfold and acts as a common element linking people to the urban form. The first 4 protagonists include a furniture maker, shrine maker, artificial jewellery maker and leather-product maker. The many layers of meaning that involve social history, caste, spatial politics and productivity have to be read and re-read in their simple narratives that encompass the movement of goods, specialization of skills, the presence of the tool-house and so many other factors that make up their lives.

Multiply these a hundred thousand times and you see Mumbai in a more accurate way. What struck us was that the process of designing itself was adhocratic – emerging through conversations, references, oral exchanges and gestures. This was a frequent observation we made when dealing with our fifth artisan in the installation – the ‘Contractor’ or the maker of tool-houses.

The contractor shapes neighbourhoods brick by brick quite literally. Each peculiar desire of a client gets a concrete form. The leather using artisan may want a slightly different kind of a workshop over his residence compared to a furniture maker.  The adhocratic processes that make up clusters of tool-houses in a Mumbai neighbourhood run on their own rules and regulations. Their design emerges in a similar way. A hurried sketch, an activation of common memory through a gesture and a word are some components of unmediated design.

When we find ourselves mediating between professional architects and contractors – during the course of our work in Mumbai, it is often about figuring out ways of incorporating such ‘unmediation’. We have to blend into a process where designs get projected into each others, where they are transformed with words and gestures, and are constantly improvised through the making of objects. The user, the client, the maker and the seller become part of a shared creative world that deals constantly with the materiality of the objects produced.

The installation on display involves a graphic representation of a tool-house cluster, focusing on the Waghmare family’s leather product making and living in unit. That spawns out into the stories of the  artisans and the objects they produce. Each object is part of a world wide web of operations through exchange of components and goods, which are mapped out. At the epicentre of each web is the artisans tool-house. Their idealized versions are displayed and a short six minute video explores the unmediated theme through conversations. Unmediated design became a spontaneous expression of adhocracy, the tool-house became the symbol of it and the stories of the artisans fleshed it out.

(This blog entry includes the graphics, designs and images made by Giacomo Ardesio and are  displayed in the ongoing exhibition. The text was written by him along with Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava who conceived the installation. Rahul and Matias will be attending the Biennial on Nov. 22nd to 25th).

Editorial by Joseph Grima: Crowdsourcing the City

Editorial by Matias & Rahul: Homegrown Homes

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Editorial by Matias Echanove & Rahul Srivastava

Editorial by Joseph Grima

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Nice article on Dharavi in Motherland featuring an interview of Rahul & Matias of URBZ.

Last week, we followed the trail of incremental development as hard-wired into BV Doshi’s little publicized Aranya project, which was started in the early 1980s in the city of Indore (Madhya Pradesh, India). The Indore Development Authority had commissioned a low-cost housing initiative for economically weaker sections of the city. This “site and services” project was supported by the World Bank, which in those days believed that incremental development and users’ involvement was key to providing shelter to the economically weaker sections of society. Also involved in the study that lead to Doshi’s plan was the very interesting Minimal Cost Housing Group at McGill University. Doshi’s Vastu Shilpa Foundation has published studies that lead to the project along with Aranya’s master plans. These are very important documents for people in the field of affordable housing, as they show an alternative path to urban development.

On the left, one of the 60 model houses designed by Doshi in Aranya. On the right a plot in construction. Construction is ongoing in Aranya propelled as everywhere else in India by the housing market boom.

Locally known as sector 78, the Aranya project has yielded a rich harvest of affordable housing in habitats that continue to evolve and grow thirty years after its launch. Aranya features some really attractive parts shaped by individual footprints of homes that people invested with their savings and passion. These footprints are framed by the street layouts and boundaries originally conceived by Doshi. What families have done individually in them is quite impressive. A small 32 x 12 square foot base has evolved into an impressive 900 square feet house that reaches into the third floor. The economically poorer parts reveal layers of economic activities all along the narrow streets.

Small plot, big house. This house is owned by retired civil servant who finds that Aranya is one of the best place to live in Indore. He likes the calm and local scale of the neighbourhood.

Many of Doshi’s initial intentions and ingenious innovations have not survived the implementation of the project, yet Aranya has become a lively neighbourhood, providing an attractive environment to its residents, mixing housing with economic activities. The population initially targeted by the project was a rather tightly audited, flat and abstract notion of the poor and needy. They were in many ways already pushed aside by the government agencies coordinating the project from its very inception and they participated intensely in speculating on the plots. Subsequently, many plots ended-up in the hands of people different than those they were initially intended for, but still, the ease with which Aranya mixes typologies and demographics is striking.

Interestingly, the development was to be cross subsidized by the sale of larger plots, many of which were bought by investors who had no intention of building anything on them, seeing them instead as long-term speculative investments. The town’s center was also left undeveloped as money ran short. Keeping these spaces empty has dragged down the development of the entire neighbourhood. In contrast smaller plots have been very intensively built on. A part of the neighbourhood where Doshi has built model houses has largely been taken over by government servants, who have often entirely rebuilt the original houses. Other parts have developed slowly over time, at the pace at which their owners could save and reinvest. Today, the low income population of Aranya is a minority, partly because they have been short-changed in the earlier phase when the plots were being attributed and partly because many have sold out since they were allocated the plot through a lottery process.

Commercial streets and activities spontaneously emerged in parts of Aranya that were originally intended to be residential.

Aranya is in many ways an affirmation of the ideals of incremental growth in the area of urban development. It is an encouragement to all those involved in the business of affordable housing to work with the possibilities of self-development and infrastructural support rather than the conventions of state (or private sector provided) mass housing projects. We are now going to do a post-occupancy survey of Aranya together with the Vastu Shilpa Foundation. We hope that this will help us understand better the challenges and potential of incremental development schemes.

More photos here.

Khushboo chawl, Khotachiwadi

We recently organized a week-long studio on Khotachiwadi, a heritage precinct in Girgaum, Mumbai, with students from the School of Habitat Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). This was part of a course taught by URBZ members Rahul and Matias on the politics of urban space. The studio took place at Studio X near CST, with fieldwork in Khotachiwadi every day. In Khotachiwadi we often met at James Ferreira’s house who generously hosted us.

The studio focused on the chawls of Khotachiwadi. While Khotachiwadi is well known for its Konkan-Portuguese-style bungalows, its chawls and their residents have often been left out of the picture. This is a shame because, as most visitors and residents acknowledge, the diversity of habitats, architectures and cultures is one of the most interesting aspects of this much loved neighbourhood.

TISS-SoHS students brainstorming at Studio X

Throughout the studio, we discussed the history and culture of Khotachiwadi, the meaning of heritage in a rapidly changing city, the importance of having diverse habitats, rent control and how it allowed people across classes to stay in places like Khotachiwadi. We talked about architectural styles and urban typologies and the role of local economic activities in preserving neighbourhood life. We discussed mixed-use patterns in old neighborhoods of Mumbai and how urban plans and zoning codes are typically based on segregating functions. We also talked about urban villages, political identity, East Indians and their origins, the role of the Shiv Sena in local politics and a few other things.

The students visited the chawls, interviewed residents and published their texts and photos on http://khotachiwadi.urbz.net. They asked residents about their personal histories and stories and their current situation; the way they perceive the possibility of edevelopment; their relationship with bungalow residents; their aspirations; the possibility of envisioning a common future with other residents of Khotachiwadi belonging to different castes and histories.

Residents of Khotachiwadi celebrate the Diwali in front of the 150 years old Khanderao chawl. The Diwali Sammelan festival was started over 75 years ago by Mangesh Rane ji who is the oldest resident of Khotachiwadi.

Chawls are a very typical architectural typology in Mumbai, dating from the city’s industrial days, derived from the structure of army barracks, evolving into residential sites for industrial workers and finally being reshaped in use by the in-coming families of migrant workers to eventually become bustling middle-class neighbourhoods The chawls can be anything between 1 to 5 stories high and are typically organized around a large veranda connecting single rooms, with the whole floor sharing a common bathroom. Many of them have been converted or destroyed in the past decade or so. Some of the chawls of Khotachiwadi are more than 150 years old, a few families have roots there going back more than four generations and some have individual toilets in each home.

The neighbourhood of Girgaum, to which Khotachiwadi belongs, is well known for its historical chawls. Thanks to the Maharashtra Rent Act, which has frozen rents in South Mumbai at their 1947 level, many families have been able to stay in this part of the city where rent for a new 50 sq.m flat can easily reach Rs 50,000/month or higher. Often accused to be the root cause of all urban problems in Mumbai because it never allowed owners to maintain their buildings properly, the rent control act has also been instrumental in maintaining people from all socio-economic background in South Mumbai.

These and other themes were explored and discussed by the participants of the studio, the output of which is available on http://khotachiwadi.urbz.net