revisiting a project _ 02, mumbai museum

4. Image  -  The city is a multifaceted entity with various interpretations brought along with its several inhabitants over time. Organization of these interpretations/ thoughts is instrumental of understanding dominant forces within the context. These conditions [popular constructs] are often responsible for muffling the finer notes and if successful formulate a specific thought process which coagulates into the singular entity that is the city. A selection of these definers includes a book — Bombay: The Cities Within by Rahul Mehrotra, Sharada Dwivedi, a publication — vox, and an event — the Mumbai festival.

5. Paths  -  The book organizes the city as a process of transition from a fishing village to that of a megalopolis. This transition is processed through the condition of dualities/parallels that has been instrumental in its growth and development.

6. Elements  -  The display of cultural and social icons is promoted through the publication. These elements because of their prominence become objects through which the city is being discussed. The placement of the propagated icons then becomes a task of the editorial team rather than a participatory undertaking.

7. Events -  Mumbai festival furthers the concept by organizing events around these elements. The events based approaches are capable of extending the presence and understanding of these various city components. As various gimmicks are employed, errors in translation could result in overshooting the cultural aspect that was the inherent ideology.

8. Combination  -  Thus a following assumption is considered: a documentation system for the city is a combination of a triangulation process between paths, elements and events [of histories, urban artifacts and activities].

9. Superimposition  -  The processes and duality of paths (living processes within the city), isolated contributions by cultural icons, and mass attractions in combination would overcome the isolated lacunae and produce a system with a possible escalated success rate.

10. Standards diagram  -  The museum program is based on the collection that an organizational body posses or creates.

The program is also equated to the cultural response that the museum propagates within a given society. Even due to its variance there are standards such that performance is not hindered.

The museum structures itself into collection and non-collection spaces. The collection spaces in this organization accounts for about 40%-45% of the spatial requirements.

Galleries as being central in this particular system harbor a set of support facilities alongside itself. These would vary based on the collection housed and the situation in which it is placed.

The non-collection spaces encompass the service oriented spaces along with other possible engagement and financially viable associations. These would be according to the contexts, auditorium facilities, shopping facilities, libraries and restaurants respectively.

All this positioned in an expanse of open-spaces (according to its availability).

The standards diagram displays the set of relationships shared by these possible set of components.

11. Program - An area of 10,000sqmts is assumed.
The museum program is organized into seven components, seminar facilities (27%), library (11%), shopping (10%), services (6%), administration (10%), galleries (35%) and open spaces (according to site variables) in relation with the assumption.

12. Form -  When the components of the standards diagram are replaced with a set of associative forms a possible visual aspect is related with this structure. This parametric arbitrary state could be re-positioned when the main diagram is reorganized for site based specifics.

13. Redistribution  - This identified structure is distributed into two categories of primary and secondary programs respectively. The primary program is composed of seminar facilities, library and shopping while the secondary program encompasses the rest. A combination is proposed revolving around the primary program. Secondary program acts as the common factors within this combination thus creating a sequence template.

14. Galleries -  Organization of rooms, nature of these rooms, spaces that connect the various parts of a gallery space; ways of viewing the desired content are some of the parameters considered in the formulation of a gallery space.

Information of any kind is projected on/from a vertical face/plane for its adequate consumption.

15. Walls -  Any program is made possible by the props it requires to sustain it. In other words, any activity would have some ‘things’ associated with it. These ‘things’ would be stored at close proximity to where the activity is scheduled to happen. As volume/space for the performance of the activity could be varied what would remain constant on how the needed things of an activity is stored.

Program is then contained in vertical faces.

The recognized template now divided in to eighty (25x5) frames that would in effect organize the storage of the needed facilitators of any program to process itself.

20. Museum1 - website

The website would organize itself as a collector for information on the city. Content from various formats would culminate finally into the cauldron in virtual space. The template is expanded into a linear sequence so as to enable the creation of a circular navigation space. Units on the template face formulate links or space for link extensions. A single module consist of three concentric rings composed of a) open-space — non-controlled environment, contributions from various sources, b) Local space — information on the positioned location of the city, c) Exhibition space — regulated expositions on the city either permanent or transitory exhibits in relation to those in context or on site. The central ring enables the contextual reading of common information as result influences the other sets superimposed on to it. This module is to be positioned in various locations on an identified mapping device of the city.

24. Museum2 - context

The space for context distribution is considered as the situation around vt station and azad maidan. This selection would be a part of a larger group of identified contexts that in some way or the other have/are contributing in defining the city. Distributed around in this context the programmatic frames try to create an interaction with the context. This interaction is made possible because of several information generating and collecting components have been composed on to the frames. These engagements are captured by the system is then projected on to video walls on the identified museum site.

33. Museum3 - site

The sites identified for sitting the museum components has been located on the western stretch of road network. This stretch of the network is composed largely of school and residential properties. The areas of translation are a collection of sites that are presently under development. The larger sites organized as such — the basement having car parking facilities, the ground level holding the museum components organized as display facilities, the first floor, service facilities, the second being the context specific program and finally the terrace floor composed of administrative and allied spaces for the museum organization. The context program chosen here would be those of office spaces on site 3 (as an extension to the existing commercial development at the entrance to Hill Road from S.V. Road) and condominium development on site 1 (Bandra known for its residential address). Site 2 would hold the library facility of the museum program.

Text has been edited and adapted from final year design project dated between 2005 — ‘07. A stage in drawing of the project is the point from which text is developed on. This work tries to address two aspects of a) what is architecture as building? and b) how is it can a city be documented.