urbz’s inception in 2008 is deeply rooted in the urban realities of Mumbai. What started as a 5-day workshop with the residents of Dharavi Koliwada eventually led us to establish our office in the neighbourhood. Since then we have been engaging with local residents, building contractors and artisans through action research, ethnographic studies, participatory urban planning, design and architecture.
Our innovative work in architecture and planning, which takes as the starting point the user, the resident and the locality has been exhibited in the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Istanbul Design Biennale, the Chicago Architectural Biennale and the Lille Design Festival, Lille. More recently we produced models that are a part of the permanent exhibition at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong.
While our work derives from a rootedness in locality, we also adapt this knowledge to other Indian cities. We have worked with Municipal Corporations, citizen groups and public institutions in Kochi, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Delhi. urbz practice relies on the savoir-faire of an international team with more than a decade of worldwide experience, and a strong network of offices in Mumbai, Bogotá, Goa and Paris.
Projects
We have spent the last fifteen years in the neighbourhood of Dharavi, actively participating in the user-driven evolution of its material and social life. This has given us the confidence to conceptualise and embark on a project called “The ABCD of Dharavi Koliwada”. This article outlines the vision for the project.
Remember the Urban Typhoon workshops in Kochi? These workshops were part of the EnteKochi citylab. We are now back with the Entekochi competition. This is a national level Urban Design Competition, aiming to jointly ‘design the future city’ of Kochi. It is envisaged to plan and then facilitate the implementation of an integrated civic project.
The Kochi Municipal Corporation calls all creative minds to participate!
Click here to know more
As part of the Future Architecture Platform, urbz was part of a series of exhibitions and lectures at the MAXXI in Rome, the House of Architecture in Graz, Oris House of Architecture in Zagreb and the Future of Architecture symposium in Ljubljana.
Dharavi has creativity and diversity deeply embedded into its landscape. It houses schools, hospitals, mosques, temples, pottery studios, craftsmen, leather industries, textile workshops, food production units, markets of all sorts, people from all over India and much more. This mix creates a unique urban settlement, facilitating interactions and arrangements just as unique.
Dharavi works is a series of projects designed in Mumbai by urbz in partnership with local inhabitants and contractors.
We at urbz researched the circumstances in Dharavi from April to November. We now present a collection of four pandemic-focused articles, fifteen Dharavi Weekly issues, and five Dharavi Fortnightly issues.
We are taking the Design Comes as We Build project to the next level - the Homegrown Street!
The exhibition Koliwada Charcha is an attempt at understanding the essence of Dharavi Koliwada's architectural and visual language.
This series of interviews portrays the economic life of Dharavi in Mumbai through the activities of its inhabitants.
We produced everyday-life objects based on the specific needs of residents and the skills available in the Shivaji Nagar area in Mumbai.
Who we
work with
Who we
work with
Crew
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