Contemporary Architecture

Relevance of Chawls in Contemporary Architecture

Rutuja Yemul IV Yr rutuja883@gmail.com

The city of Mumbai is currently undergoing a rapid metamorphosis. The process of transformation from a postindustrial city to a city of commerce, entertainment and glittering infrastructure is being evident with every passing day. The chawls of Mumbai are very old typology of housing. Mumbai’s chawls: a ubiquitous yet misunderstood, housing typology often compared to tenements and clumped with slums. This ambiguity has generated a plethora of questions surrounding their form, history and culture: What do they look like? How do they feel inside? Is it true that such buildings saturated as they are by the changing urban form, are often viewed with a sense of nostalgia of what once was and what now can never be? Are these features of these chawls useful in today’s modern world of housing? Do they contribute to the spatial planning? In Mumbai, there is a vast array of unconventional living conditions that arrive out of necessity. Chawls are striking examples of such unconventional housing arrangements, being products and producers of flexible living within the city. Overcrowded living conditions in these dense neighborhoods promote social habits like public sleeping in communal areas, people bathing in the open, storing one’s belongings in common spaces, and even the sharing of civic amenities such as water taps and toilets. Chawls were essentially 2-3 storied structures under a particular owner, in order to provide a tenant based housing to the mill-workers of the city. These mill-workers came from various villages and small towns of Western Maharashtra. Gradually, as the industry started booming in the city, these workers started settling there, having their own families and set-ups. This infused the community sense of living further, in terms of living and celebrating together. The common corridors of the chawls are like an extended living room to the houses while the doors hardly remain closed. Also, the way they are built, with the earthen roof tiles and common service areas makes these units a self sustainable unit in themselves. The common courtyard is their public space where they celebrate all kinds of festivals throughout the year, have agenda meetings, play cricket and football, make house-hold items, etc. And all this happening right in the common space with all the ‘eyes’ of the houses oriented here. The life here, is beyond just being enclosed in the gated communities and individualistic set-ups. In contemporary times, the paradigm of nuclear living set-ups has been reflected in the way new housing typologies have cropped up across the city. For such an emerging condition of the elderly city and a new culture-based economy, the chawl housing type seems to regain its relevance. Here small compact rooms, with shared facilities, and an active community life, seems to be the model for the future. Can this older building stock be modernised with toilets inside, elevators for the elderly and multipurpose furniture to update this housing stock? The future lies in our midst.