coexistance as survival_text

COEXISTENCE AS SURVIVAL
Enhancing informal synergies in the communities of Dharavi, Mumbai
"Parallel Cases" exhibition, International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, 2009

a project by:
First School of Architecture, Politecnico di Torino + HINDUSTRY urban research

Students:
Marco Boella, Alberto Bottero, Manuela Martorelli, Francesco Stassi, Francesco Strocchio

Tutors:
Michele Bonino, Pierre-Alain Croset (Politecnico di Torino)
Tomà Berlanda, Subhash Mukerjee (HINDUSTRY)

Acknowledgements:
Pukar – Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action & Research, Mumbai
Urbz – user-generated cities

Dharavi, one of the oldest and largest slums in Asia, might disappear.
The long-lasting indifference that allowed its uncontrolled growth came to an end, as the ever-expanding Mumbai swallowed it: from being a forgotten peripheral slum it became a potential real estate goldmine in the heart of the city, to be erased and redeveloped.
But Dharavi is resisting: the imperfect but deep-rooted Indian democracy manifested in a resistance of unexpected sturdiness. Dharavi is stating that any renewal is impossible without understanding.

It is easy to misunderstand, though.
Its extreme density, the striking poverty and the chaos, conceal the precision of the mechanisms that it managed to develop through the decades, in order to continue its existence. Some times informally, some times even illegally, Dharavi was able to create its own economy, a specific ecology, a somewhat turbulent but organized society. It works.
But observing such mechanisms is impossible if we don't find a way to look deeper. For our group, understanding Dharavi means trying to acquire neutral eyes, abandoning the inevitable exoticist gaze caused by the place's stunning “extremes”.

Our project seeks to build those neutral eyes, able to investigate and “unveil” the logics behind the slum's apparent confusion.
An intentionally narrow sectional model of Koliwada - the oldest settlement within Dharavi - is used to show how even the tiniest “slice” of the village hosts an impressive number of activities and functions, inextricably overlapped and tied together.
A series of thematic “masks” can be scrolled in front of the model, masking parts of the section and focusing specific events, activities or stories hidden in the generic urban intensity otherwise visible. Suddenly isolated, these stories can be observed in their synergic strength, they make sense.
They are for us the starting point for any reasonable urban design project, the next step that our group is currently working on.