The Homegrown Street project showcases the ideas and design imagination of artisans and local contractors. It is a tribute to the unrecognised talent of local contractors and artisans in Dharavi, Mumbai. It spotlights the self–taught process of designing and building affordable and beautiful houses for themselves and their clients from marginal communities. It is a product of our decade-long immersion in Dharavi, a homegrown neighbourhood, that is both a result and target of social exclusion. The project attempts to validate the architectural typology embedded in this process through which residents and contractors in high–density, mixed–use settlements create and maintain their neighbourhoods. 

It is the second phase of the “Design Comes As We Build” initiative, in which the models, plans and photographs produced were exhibited at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad City Museum (Mumbai), MAXXI (Rome), House of Architecture (Graz) and Spring House (Amsterdam). The “Design Comes As We Build” is also a part of the permanent exhibition of the M+ Museum of Visual Culture in Hong Kong, which opened in 2020.

Homegrown Street has produced 17 hand-crafted multimedia models of tool-houses from Dharavi, made using leather, glass, steel, wood, brass, cane, embroidery and clay. 

Come see the exhibition!

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TIMING:

Opening - Wed. 23rd Sept.  

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm  

Thur 24th Sept - Sun 27th Sept 

10:00 - 7:00 pm

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VENUE:

Dharavi Koli Jamat Preprimary School, Off Bandra Sion Link Road, Dharavi Koliwada

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Photo of Model by Ishan Tankha