Rahul Srivastava is a co-founder of urbz and The Institute of Urbanology. He studied social and urban anthropology in Mumbai, Delhi and Cambridge (UK). His previous publications include an ethnography of urbanized nomads around Mumbai, a novel published by Puffin, (Penguin, India) and 'The Slum Outside', a commentary on Dharavi, co-written with Matias Echanove and published by Strelka Press. He continues to write extensively on urban issues with Matias, with their next major publication signed up with Verso, London. He brings his background in anthropology and visual ethnography to urbanology, the practice that energises much of urbz's work in Mumbai and elsewhere.
Articles
Re-opening Party at The Shelter
The Dharavi Shelter reopened on Sunday with a new roof, new windows and back door, and an exhibition of the kids’ photos.
Goa: A threatened Ecosystem
The people of Goa are looking for ways to organize Goa’s growth and future in a manner that does justice to its special cultural and historical distinctiveness.
Unsettling Delhi
Micro homes which integrate spaces of work and are well connected to the street economy seem to be far more viable on the longer run at all levels.
Aranya: A story of incremental development
Lowcost housing by Architect B V Doshi, whose planned vision grew very incrementally.
Research and The Outer World
A trip to Auroville's Centre for Scientific Research shows a variety of possibilities for practices to place themselves in between research and on-site application.
Tool-House Case Study: The urbz Office
The urbz office located in a building on M.G. Road, Dharavi, demonstrates how the conviviality of the live-work dialectic actualizes itself in this particular case.
From the News stand
An architectural and design practice that works with local builders and residents to create projects embedded in neighbourhoods’ cultural and economic fabric.
Circulating Urbanism
The Konkan connection to Mumbai is only part of a larger universe in which the city’s force of gravity pulls together many other such regions.
Infusing and Confusing India's Urbanness
What began as a regular jostling and tugging of the idea in a brainstorm soon took off as an imaginative exercise that encouraged creative and personal readings of the concept and the making of its visual expressions.
Mumbai's Kinetic Exhaustion
What does the mutation of colonial Bombay into global Mumbai mean for architectural forms and public life?