Housing Humanity, Building Locality

Abstract

The effects of India’s shift towards economic liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation in the mid 1990’s has drastically altered the landscape of its cities. These powerful forces have imposed further spatial disjuncture on an unplanned city. More specifically, forces of contemporary urbanisation plague the developing fabric of Mumbai’s urban periphery. Nala Sopara lacks an adaptive, secure and inclusive physical identity, which is situated in, and modeled off the existing needs and practices of its locality. The colonisation of the area by newly established ‘handshake chawls’ has become a dominant condition which disrupts and destroys existing domestic practices and patterns of habitation. The transformative typological variation and morphological potential of typology present in Mumbai, from the city’s first settlement to present day developments, makes the impact of typology on domestic life clear. This process of typological renewal, termed typology genealogy by Atelier Bow Wow, questions what the various typological shifts or variations afford or disallow their inhabitants. This project aligns with their thinking, which poses the role of the architect as one who observes and applies the efficiencies of user appropriation in the creation of new typologies.
The prevailing response to rising density requirements in this area lacks severely in social sustainability. In combining ethnographic research with a typological approach, the project seeks to primarily address three core themes: [1] flexibility and growth; [2] the urban public/private space spectrum; [3] open space hierarchies. These three inter-related motives work towards creating an urban domestic fabric which is informed by and empowers endemic habitation practices.