The Social Amalgamation Project

Mumbai

Lee Xiao Ling Lynn

Cheong Wan Ying

Atreyee Sandilya

Mayura Patil

Chen Jiahui

Li Jinmu

Yazid Ninsalam (Teaching Assistant)

Associate Professor Dr Jörg Rekittke

Mumbai exhibits a good deal more informal settlers than formal residents. The city has been built on an urban peninsula geographically constrained by the sea. One of the most interesting characteristics of Mumbai is its obvious and self confident acquiescence of a kind of architectural anti-image generation. Most likely there are not many places in the world where large-scale poverty, informal city growth, societal separation and heedless class mentality are more visible and forthright than in Mumbai. At daytime all these busy servants smartly move within decent neighbourhoods and living environments, at night they return to their customary housing type – the genuine slum. No private ‘employer’ in Mumbai would gaynsay or bemoan this – and we, on our part, deliberately abstain from any moralizing.

We work on a design study that we baptised the Social Amalgamation Experiment (Mumbai). We try to develop a vision for novel housing typologies that can accommodate those who are able to afford good quality housing and those who work for this propertied class. In our fieldwork and analysis we focussed on historical and modern mass housing types such as chawls from 19th century and recent buildings by the city’s Slum Rehabilitation Authority – as well as on the eye-catchingcontrastbetweenthefasthorizontalgrowthofinformalsettlements for the poor and the rapid vertical growth of housing types for high-income residents.