dronagiri

across the harbor on the mainland the southernmost node of new bombay stands on the threshold of development. older villages whose land had been acquired by the state for the city stand surrounded by special economic zones. the land acquired by the state has been handed over to reliance to develop an information technology hub and the same expands further south as another future city called maha mumbai eats into pen (see an earlier post). another special economic zone is emerging around the jnpt. even more new ports emerge further along the coast and are connected by high speed roads. one being a road from mumbai to uran which would cut down the drive from the heart of the city to here by 2 hours. the proposed airport at ulwe is also 20 minutes away.

i was documenting this land almost 10 years back for a publication on new bombay that never saw the light of day. the landscape hasn’t changed much in that time in spite of all he speculations and proposals that haunt it. the only visible changes seen are large fields of container yards with red, brown boxes piled on top of one another. the hills have been mined indiscriminately and in the special economic zone grey precast concrete walls separate the public from the private.

within the walls nothing much is different though. land is being consolidated for construction, tractors lie waiting, in one place low lying lands are filled in, while in others mangroves take over what was once agricultural land. meanwhile the villages watch dumbfounded at the ghosts of development that surround them. speculations are rife about the future and how villagers can capitalize on it. there are brokers hired from the locals to strike deals with villagers whose land is being bought. 12.5% of the land that cidco acquired was to be given back to the villagers fro development. this land is about to be released. so it has been said. while some villagers want to consolidate this land and create a company for themselves, others see short term profits and sell the land off as soon as they can. this sudden windfall is squandered away on lavish weddings and enormous houses.trained by a idealistic vision of simpler villagers who have almost an umbilical cord attaching them to the land, we find it difficult to understand this.

some of the villagers try to convince those looking at this material gain on a short term with other dreams of a more profitable and brighter future. isn't this is the way cities grow? automatically the new has a dynamism and a drive which the older and the settled suspect. trained by centuries of sedentary living they have no tools by which they can deal with the complexity of urbanism. the city will exploit them. but in many ways they will also grow because of the encounter. the possible consequences that might result from this meeting must be carefully understood before we step in with our romanticism about an underdog (because he is not really quite as naive as we might want him to be) or worship for a development which can erase everything that currently exists (including the people we claim to be developing)

the river. suspect . thesis juries. birthdays of the week. thane belapur road

the only film i need to add to the relentless film list is tsai ming liang’s ‘the river’. here again as in ‘the hole’ water permeates into the hollow lives of a family each of whose members are living in a vacuum reaching out for warmth to strangers- the keeper of a porn video store or the shadows of a sauna where bodies find each other in complete darkness. all communication is broken down until the water invades the body of the young man and creates a debilitating neck injury or it pours down thorugh a leak in the roof until at the end in the heat of the sauna the boy and his father find each other.

last night mukul and me went to see shumona’s show in town called ‘suspect’. i loved the residual spaces that the exhibition found itself in. this one was behind a coffee shop in kala ghoda. the work was a series of photographs and films found at street corners around the world.
there can be nothing as depressing as a thesis jury. this time it was in new bombay and when i got there were no students at all. slowly they trickled in one by one until we got tired of waiting. those who came had no interest at all in their work, some of them had blatantly copied stuff and had no understanding of what they had done. the dance academies and cultural centers on plots in bandra kurla complex or kharghar. even when the issues were reduced down to services and loading unloading platforms we were left disappointed. as against that i can only be extremely happy about at least three of the thesis shown at krvia. pooja’s skillfully executed mediation between the institutions associated with a church and the city, mayur’s intense and beautifully detailed boys hostel and neelima’s clever redensification of a bandra village.



earlier in the week. aparna celebrated her birthday at sea view and on the same evening we surprised madhu on the eve of her birthday at her place.



here are some photographs taken on the way back from new bombay. thane belapur road with its new railway stations and the old industrial lands being transformed into glass towers courtesy reliance.

new bombay housing typologies

some of the experiments in housing in new bombay- like a catalog of housing typologies- some successful some horrific. first the sites and services schemes in kopar khairane where the basic units have all but disappeared under gradually assembled buildings;


pankaj and pranoti modi's young architects project directly opposite vaguely mimicking correa's hierarchy of courtyards along a main spine. the bridges cut across the main spine but the buildings seem in dire need of repair.

then the original- artists village where the houses have grown incrementally madder than anywhere else i have seen.it feels like a designed gaothan. i don't know any one who understands scale like he does.



raj rewals horrific red monstrosity was the last stop on the trip. the red gritty exteriors collecting dust and grime as the rooms gather cobwebs and thewindows crack. the only way to make these habitable seems to be by first completely erasing all the 'architectural' details and replacing them with the paraphernalia of domestic messiness.

charles correa in navi mumbai

the artists village at its most intimate public scale and kapas bhavan at the most public scale

solving the rural / urban debate through architecture

mall

ashram

ashram and mall in distance

at a jury today all the way in new bombay. architecture corners itself. if its rural it must be an ashram… and if its urban.. naturally- a mall! hmm...

photo post: the way back from pune (last saturday)

dronagiri

its been a long time since i went to dronagiri, the node being designed to cater to the jnpt. nothing much seems to have changed as far as housing goes, but there are far more container yards and the toll road is piled high with rumbling trucks. so much infrastructure with no one around except for a w sleepy villages.
the last time i was in this part of new bombay was at least 5 years back when the huge monstrous kanvinde building was standing alone in empty barren plots with two other high rises. completely incongruous they were then and still are now. at that time all the buildings were completely empty and derelict. this time at least two of them looked inhabited while the kanvinde building was either being demolished or was undergoing some serious reconstruction.