About 60 fourth year architecture students from Sir J.J. College of Architecture participated in the Affordable Housing workshop.

The 3-day long affordable housing workshop was conducted at the J.J. College of Architecture, Mumbai, on January 23^rd, 24^th and 25^th, 2012. It was a follow- up from 6 weeks of 9 groups of students documenting the work and processes of a contractor’s building methodology and construction techniques. This included a timeline tracking the life of the structures studied and activities that revolve around them. The sites they frequented were sprinkled all over the city – Shivaji Nagar, Nerul, Vashi, Bhandup, Charkop and Dharavi. The 4^th year students participating in the workshop, along with being guided by their teachers Profs. Mustansir Dalvi and Yashwant Pitkar and Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, had an array of resource people, each with their specific set of specializations, to help them out with different aspects of the design. This design was basically an insertion or mutation within the existing typology which was to emerge/evolve during the course of the workshop, through exchange of information with the resource people. These were Sameep Padora, Founder of  sP+a, Mumbai; Marco Ferrario, co-founder of MicroHome Solutions, New Delhi; Poonam Mulchandani, independent architect, Auroville; Alexis de Dulca, head of Affordable Housing at Lafarge, Chennai; Rajeev Kathpalia from the Vastu Shilpa Foundation, Ahmedabad; Thomas Demschner, senior structural engineer at Lafarge, Lyon and Ritu Mohanty, urban designer at Edifice, Mumbai.

Day 1 was a day of orientation and introduction. Prof. Dalvi brought the freshly arrived resource people  up to date with the events of the weeks gone by. He spoke about the seminar and workshop having which covered issues of housing in the city in a counter-intuitive manner unusual for the design curriculum in place. It stood beyond the realm of real estate and affordable housing envisioned by the state. Since most of this was built directly or indirectly by the users themselves, it was worth recognizing as an alternative explored in this studio. He proceeded with explaining the methodology adopted for the studio and its objective so far. This included re-looking at the houses documented and proposing changes to the contractors, who would be invited on the final day. These could be functional, aesthetic, procedural and much more and would be produced on the basis of the information and knowledge absorbed from the interactions with the contractor and the subsequent lessons inferred from the site visits added to the inputs from the resource people. (Photo: Sameep Padora of sP+a with students during the workshop).

Rahul and Matias spoke about the kind of approach they had tried to inculcate right through the workshop. According to them, practice and the production of knowledge is connected. But there exists a hierarchy in knowledge production. The point is to subvert this hierarchy and invert the notions regarding who really is the expert. Therefore, the students would absorb  knowledge from the contractors, in turn passing on this new acquisition to the resource people who would reflect ideas from these existing circumstances. They spoke about how the sites in question could not so easily be described as’ slums’. Urban practitioners and planners cannot work with certain terms and this was one of them. Thus, new terminology needs to be generated to define this phenomenon. Just like hundreds of different typologies cannot merely be grouped into being ‘suburban’. This understanding led to their insistence that students reconstruct existing narratives of these sites and look at them in a dynamic way-not just as they currently exist, not just purely as structures, but also the process through which they are built, on the basis of a timeline. The ‘field’ in fact, becomes the centre of the whole pedagogical process. To engage, instead of to observe is necessary. The space informs and the student listens and in the future, shares. This entire study would most importantly, involve forging a deep sense of connection with the place and the contractor. This relationship would be strengthened through mutual sharing where one would constantly learn from the other. Also, the student would try and address where the entry point for an architect would be in this situation. The role of the student would also be to take a lead in interactions with the resource people and sustain a dialogue. This would be an important subversion which would eventually dissolve the expert-non expert dynamics. Then the output will not remain purely academic and will be one that can be executed successfully on site..

The resource persons then took turns to introduce themselves and their work so the students could get an idea of what kind of questions they could bombard each one with.  The students then proceeded to explain, a group at a time, the sites, the documentation, introduce the contractors they had collaborated with, elaborate on the timeline, investigate into structure, materiality and costs with diagrams, technical drawings and physical models. The discussions were punctuated with small question and answer sessions till everyone was familiar with each site, the houses, the families, the contractors and the workers involved. Here are a few panels on display.

Marco Ferrario of Micro Homes Solutions (New Delhi) with some of the students.

Rajeev Kathpalia of the Vastu Shipla Foundation in Ahmadabad looking at students’ project.

After a short break the entire assemblage moved to the studio space where one on one interaction ensued and ideas were thrown back and forth. These were discussions about what could now be contributed by students for a better design once the process and structure was analyzed more deeply. To be kept in mind at all times was the context, the practicality and the ability to communicate these ideas to the contractor at the end of the workshop. This was carried over to the next day.

Day 2 had more resource people joining in as the exchange continued and students started generating models and drawings for their insertions while consulting the relevant sources of information. There was a small lecture by Alexis, Thomas and Jean-Michel on the efficient use of ready-mix concrete while Poonam provided an alternative viewpoint involving use of locally available material and appropriate technologies with low environmental impact. The students spent the beginning of the day absorbing from as many people as possible and the rest of it, processing this new-found data and applying to their respective subjects.

JURY: Contractor Chand Bhai responding to the students’ proposals.

Contractor Pankaj Gupta discussing construction techniques with students.

Day 3 was the final day when all the discussions of the previous days culminated into a set of breakthroughs on each group’s desk. This meant last minute consultations to allow for clear articulation because the day was to end at a special moment, when the contractors viewed the work of the students and critiqued their design suggestions. Pankaj Gupta, Chand bhai and Anwar ji arrived right on time and were taken around by the enthusiastic students. They looked slightly amused at the painstakingly detailed documentation of their self built houses and site, as well as that of the other contractors. One by one each project was discussed, though the focus was on the student’s new input. The contractors carefully listened and then countered the arguments with reasons why these would or would not work on site, taking all aspects of the existing situation into consideration. There followed a vibrant exchange with inserts and rebuttals from all the actors- the students, the contractors and the resource persons which continued well into the evening. Design suggestions varied from changes in materials to consistency to light, ventilation and circulation. Some were well received and some debated, eventually leading to everyone in the room having participated, reacted and resolved the issue in some capacity or the other.

What if neighbourhooods that have been dismissed as slums for decades, where 70% of Mumbai’s population reside, were in fact the city’s biggest stock of good quality affordable housing? This is the hypothesis being explored in a workshop currently been conducted at Sir JJ College of Architecture by the URBZ/Urbanology team.

This 3 days workshop follows a seminar at JJ, which was taught conjointly by JJ Prof. Mustansir Dalvi and Yashwant Pitkar and URBZ’s Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava. For 6 weeks 9 groups of students followed contractors in various parts of Mumbai: Shivaji Nagar in Deonar, New Transit Camp in Dharavi, Bandhup West and Nerul in Navi Mumbai. They studied construction techniques and methods, including their relationship to clients and laborers. They modeled houses costing between INR 3 lakhs and 10 lakhs (US $6,000 to 20,000) being built in these locations, focusing mainly on the construction process.

Left: Students interacting with contractor Chand Bhai in Shivaji Nagar, Deonar. Right: Detail of one of the students’ panel features the contractor.

Panel showing the timeline of a house construction in Dharavi. Click to enlarge.

Construction materials used in a site at Shivaji Nagar, Deonar.

During the 3-day workshop each group was asked to revisit the houses they studied and to suggest ways in which the construction process can be optimized or improved.

Resource people from top practices in India and abroad have been invited to help students fulfill a task that will not be as easy as it may first appear to be. This is because the contractors that have produced these houses are in fact experts at optimizing the construction process themselves. Many of them build up to 3 small houses a month - more than what any architect ever would. On the last day of the workshop students will present their ideas to a jury composed of the contractors they have followed. Successful projects will be those which catch the attention of the contractors to the point that they decide to include the students’ suggestion in their next projects!

Ritu Mohanty discussing with students on Monday afternoon.

Guest resource people include: Sameep Padora, Founder of  sP+a, Mumbai; Marco Ferrario, co-founder of MicroHome Solutions, New Delhi; Poonam Mulchandani, independent architect, Auroville; Alexis de Dulca, head of Affordable Housing at Lafarge, Chennai; Rajeev Kathpalia from the Vastu Shilpa Foundation, Ahmedabad; Thomas Demschner, senior structural engineer at Lafarge, Lyon and Ritu Mohanty, urban designer at Edifice, Mumbai.

The workshop will be followed by a studio and an international conference on Affordable Housing to be held at Sir JJ School of Architecture in end March.

Click here for more information on the program, seminar, workshop and conference.

And here for photos of the seminar and workshop.

(Photos and collage: Martina Mina)

Great article by Sonia Faleiro in the New York Times India Ink blog, about the work Pankaj Gupta does in Shivaji Nagar, Deonar, Mumbai.

Like Mumbai, the city where he lives, Pankaj Gupta’s success has been incremental.

Mr. Gupta started working at the age of 13, making paper bags out of old newspapers that he’d sell from house to house in his hometown of Saadpur in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. He graduated to running a tea stall before leaving for Mumbai at the age of 14. He wanted to lift himself out of poverty.

Mr. Gupta is now a mustached 30-year-old with a hint of a belly. He dresses modestly considering that he’s a successful building contractor, and owns three houses and two shops.

I heard about him shortly after I arrived in Mumbai from San Francisco for a research project. I‘d wanted to meet migrants who’d found success in the city. I was particularly interested in those who recognized the role the city had played in their success and were, in different ways, repaying the city by changing it.

Rahul Srivastava, a co-founder of URBZ, an organization that researches the development of cities around the world, told me Mr. Gupta is positively changing the lives of families that live in Shivaji Nagar, a vast suburban neighborhood best known for its proximity to a government slaughterhouse.

In less than four years, Mr. Gupta has built more than 200 houses and repaired countless others.

Mumbai is home to an estimated 18 million people. Nearly every vacant piece of land from the pavements to the traffic islands is, at night, occupied by sleeping bodies. Before moving to Shivaji Nagar, many of the people who now live there suffered a similarly precarious life. They had occupied government land that was later claimed for construction projects such as railway tracks. In exchange for moving, each family was given access to a 10-foot by 15-foot plot in Shivaji Nagar.

Some resettlement colonies never become pleasant places. But Shivaji Nagar bustles with life and potential. Small businesses sell everything from shoes to motor parts. Those that cannot own a business, work for others, often at the slaughterhouse. One of Mr. Gupta’s clients belongs to a caste that has traditionally grazed animals for a living. The man offloads hundreds of goats from trucks and herds them toward the slaughterhouse for 150 rupees (about $3) a day. Doing this over many years, he has saved 150,000 rupees. Of the many contractors in Shivaji Nagar, it was Mr. Gupta he entrusted with building what he knows will be his most precious possession: his first home.

The impact of Mr Gupta’s life experience is clear in his work.

After moving to Mumbai, he started working for his uncle, a shopkeeper. A couple of years later, he was forced to leave following a trivial argument. He was 16, and the only job he could find was carrying bricks at a construction site. “There’s nothing my workmen do that I haven’t done,” he says. “So I know the limitations, but also the possibilities of human labor.”

Those experiences lead him to become a contractor – of a particular sort.

Pankaj with workers at one of his sites in Shivaji Nagar.

In Shivaji Nagar, neither lot size nor budget merits an architect. Design is left largely to the ingenuity of the contractor.

Unusually for Mumbai, Mr. Gupta favors uniformity. He’s currently building three adjoining houses and has managed to persuade their owners to make them aesthetically similar. He buys locally produced material, and hires local workers. He says, “They understand the client’s needs, because their needs are the same.” Since he was keen to use new material in his work, URBZ introduced him to a provider of ready-mix concrete. Mr. Gupta is now one of a handful of contractors in Shivaji Nagar to use it.

Most importantly, because his clients cannot afford to live elsewhere for too long, he has to work swiftly. On average, Mr. Gupta builds a house in just two months.

He says falling out with his uncle influenced how he works. “If you want to work,” he says, “Build, don’t break relationships.” When a mosque was built locally and the contract went to someone else, Mr. Gupta still asked to provide some of the material. He did this at no profit. “I’m a Hindu,” he says, “but I wanted my hand in that mosque, because it is place of God.” After a pause he adds: “And consider how many people enter a mosque every day. If 10 people every day see my work, at least one will think of me when he needs something made.”

But the most important way Mr. Gupta is changing Shivaji Nagar is by working ethically.

Shivaji Nagar is constantly being improved upon. As incomes rise, “kachcha” houses, which are made of mud, are converted into “pucca” houses, those made of stone or brick, and “pucca” houses upgraded with fresh paintwork and tiled floors. Demand for construction is huge. Although competition is brisk and the contractors many, Mr. Gupta is never short of work because his clients recommend him to their friends and family.

In Mumbai, many contractors have been known to leave work unfinished or, as hidden expenses emerge, to raise prices as they go along. Not so Mr. Gupta.

Matias Sendoa Echanove, another co-founder of URBZ, describes Mr. Gupta’s work as “exemplary.” He is a man who, when he’s paid to build a house, does just that.

That may not seem like much — to do the job one is paid for — but for the residents of Shivaji Nagar it means the world.

And this is how the boy who was built by the city of Mumbai, is now a man helping to build it.

Sonia Faleiro’s “Beautiful Thing” is a Sunday Times, Guardian, Observer and Economist Book of the Year. She’ll be speaking at the Goa Arts and Literary Festival on Dec. 19 and 21.

Artist Natalia Rodriguez along with URBZ’s Shyam Kanle and the kids of the Dharavi Shelter have produced this photo novel, which is the first of a series. The story was entirely invented by the kids. This fiction says as much about their reality as about their creativity .

In this series, the kids speak about their neighbourhood and lives. They tell us how Dharavi is an ancient place that is surprisingly able to rethink and transform itself again and again

Giving a voice to the kids is urgent and inevitable. Whether it is to talk about communal tension, the arbitrariness of the state or the daily struggles of Mumbaikars. They are not only our future, but also our bright present!

Toronto born band LAL Forest will be playing at the Ambedkar Hall, on MG Road, Dharavi, Mumbai this evening at 7PM. All welcome! For directions see the map.