One Space Two Places
Based on a multi-year research with the Mobile Lives Forum on the linkages between Mumbai and Konkan villages this essay, first published in the magazine FuturArc, describes an Indian model of urbanization.
Homegrown Street
We are taking the Design Comes as We Build project to the next level - the Homegrown Street!
Habitat 100: A chawl redevelopment project
We are excited to be working on a new architectural project in Dharavi Koliwada. Our friend, collaborator, and contractor Joseph Koli, approached us to work on his latest project - the redevelopment of a chawl owned by brothers Vithal and Bhaskar Koli.
The Keny House
urbz is working on the design of a house for a joint family of 38 people, on a plot of 330 Sq.mts (3500 Sq.ft) in the dense urban settlement of Dharavi Koliwada, Mumbai.
Project Étoile
urbz has been mandated by the State of Geneva to develop a concept and program that integrates living, working and culture for a 60,000 m2 mixed used development in the city’s new downtown.
Beyond the informal
This essay looks at the theoretical and practical implications of a much used and abused notion in urban planning and development circles, that of ‘informal settlements’.
From Dharavi to Rome
Local contractors design their ideal Dharavi homes which are exhibited at Zaha Hadid's Maxxi in Rome.
Preserving Urban Transformation
Residents keep intervening and changing their homes in the process of living, and this contributes to conservation
Mumbai's Pavement Dwellers and Their Homes
When pavement dwellers are chased away, which happens often, they have no other option than making a new home on another the sidewalk.
To Make Housing Affordable, Keep it Local
The official target of producing millions of quality homes for all can be re-imagined, as one in which the process of construction itself becomes a transformative moment.
Cairo: User-Driven Housing Construction
Housing must be seen as a process rather than a product: its values lie in the relationship and inter-action between the actors, their activities and the produced house.
Morden Mumbai: Revisiting BDD Chawls.
Tracing the history of the BDD chawls and what its location and typology mean for future development of the city.
Occupancy versus Ownership
The competition for land, rather than the traditional competition for tenants, was especially exacerbated in sites of growing industrialization and development like Bombay.
Affordable Housing in Mumbai: 100 Years of Failed Experiments
How to provide housing for all classes of people who need it, taking their varied livelihoods into account, while balancing their relative abilities to invest in housing?
Homegrown Affordable Housing
The so-called slums of the city are in many ways attempts at increasing affordable housing units through a different construction and financial system.
