working in mumbai

by Rahul Mehrotra #

Contemporary Indian cities reflect two components occupying the same physical space. First is the formal or static city. Built of more permanent material such as concrete, steel and brick, it is comprehended as a two-dimensional entity on conventional city maps and is monumental in its presence. The second is the informal or kinetic city. Incomprehensible as a two-dimensional entity, it is perceived as a city in motion - a three-dimensional construct of incremental development. The kinetic city is temporary in nature and is often built with recycled material: plastic sheets, scrap metal, canvas and waste wood. It constantly modifies and reinvents itself. The kinetic city is usually not perceived as architecture, but instead in terms of spaces that hold associative values and support lives. Patterns of occupation determine its form and perception; it is a temporal articulation and occupation of space that, not only creates a richer sensibility of spatial occupation, but also suggests how spatial limits are expanded to include formally unimagined uses in dense urban conditions. The kinetic city presents a compelling vision that potentially allows us to better understand the blurred lines of contemporary urbanism and the changing roles of people and spaces in urban society. The increasing concentrations of global flows have exacerbated the inequalities and spatial divisions of social classes. As foreign investments find their way to India under the new liberalised economic policies of the government, the system by which the city form is evolved has transformed rather dramatically with private enterprise playing a much larger role in the delivery of housing and other public amenities. And so, as globalisation, ‘hits the ground’, it brings both glamour and displacement in its wake. In this context, an architecture of urbanism of equality in an increasingly inequitable economic condition requires looking deeper to find a range of places to mark and commemorate the cultures of those excluded from the spaces of global flows. These do not necessarily lie in the formal production of architecture, but often challenge it. Here the idea of a city is an elastic urban condition, not as a product of grand vision, but instead as one that might be characterised as a ‘grand adjustment’. _ Baig, A., & Mehrotra, R. (Eds.). (2008). Thinking Conservation, Contemporary Perspectives for India (pp.88-89). Mumbai: Jasubhai Media.