Bombay Post Apocalypse 001 : The Community Towers

#1 BOMBAY

POST

APOCALYPSE

“This year, we had a lot of hopes for the Gudi Padwa season but with the outbreak of Coronavirus, walk-ins, as well as sales, have gone down by 75 percent from the previous week.�

Arvind Sharma, Terraform Realty, Bombay

“Everybody’s diaries are now pretty empty for viewings and that became apparent in the course of last week. I don’t think there’s anybody in our business expecting to be opening a lot of doors.”

Roarie Scarisbrick, Property Vision, UK

With the massive economic slowdown and subsequent collapse of Bombay’s luxury realty market, many premium properties were auctioned to be repurposed into Community Housing.

In a remarkably progressive ruling, the state allowed co-living and shared economies to take root, and co-operative housing societies to replace solely owned properties.

With the Coronavirus scare scare shutting down Luxury purchases, developers started looking for different, more resilient models than the now defunct paradigm of high-value ownership.

Many luxury properties were recast as community skyscrapers.

The idea was to create vertical communities that became self-sufficient, farming and working on the large floor-plates and retrofitting the bones of the building for their own purposes.

Iconic developments in the South of Bombay were quickly retrofitted, their non-functional glass facades replaced by Productive solar panels and Green urban gardens.

The Altamount Community Tower Schematic 2035

Page 09 from Residents Manual : Salient features of Community Tower

Page 21 from Residents Manual : Salient features of Community Tower

The expansive single-use floors were then retrofitted by the community to create shared living, working and production formats, with redundant spaces becoming venues for new activities.

In the Post Apocalyptic city, livelihood, health and minimal exposure to the toxic city environment took precedence over large open floor-plates.

Page 77 from Residents Manual : Salient features of Community Tower

The Altamount Community Tower Productive Skin : Work in progress 2027

The Altamount Community Tower Productive Skin : Urban Garden progress 2030

The Altamount Community Tower Productive Skin : Completed skin 2035

With the success of these Community towers in Bombay other bankrupted property developers are taking note around other Megapolises.

Co-owned, communally maintained and highly productive hubs for urban production, these new Towers are symbols of the city’s resurgence and communities choosing to live more sustainable lifestyles.

The Hudson Bay Community Tower Productive Skin 2035

The Taiwan Community Tower Proposal 2042

“It should be the main purpose of buildings to keep us healthy and safe. But our status quo does the opposite: undefined boxes with cheap materials and a high carbon footprint adds to the physical and mental toxicity of our environment. Buildings, houses and apartments need to be more than an investment.

They need to provide a certain amount of selfindependence, vitality and access to nature.

They need to provide the freedom to care for ourselves and others in difficult times.�

Chris Precht, Architect