the INCREMENTAL house

Upon arrival to Dhaka, I called up a professor at BRAC University where he informed me that a group was heading to a village to build a demonstration project. He said it was only four hours, so it didn’t seem that bad. It ended up being about 9 hours, and I had quickly developed a killer chest cold. Regardless, we arrived in a very rural area to commence with a demonstration project that would rebuild the house of an “ultra poor household” to better withstand cyclones. Unfortunately, Bangladesh may be most famous for its natural disasters and the massive casualties they cost. One reason for this is that the homes in the most vulnerable areas are built using traditional ways, which often do not withstand heavy wind or rain damage. The introduction into village life was fascinating and a bit rough, considering my body was feeling worse and worse. Still, many found great interest in me, and I in them as well. We were working in one particular homestead with three house...

After trying numerous times to get in touch with the famous Indian architect, Charles Correa, my friend and I found out that he was going to be giving a lecture at our workshop, and we figured that was probably going to be good enough. Correa discussed housing and the importance of people to be involved in determining its design and use. He said that in housing, he cannot know how people are going to live, it is up to them to define and determine such environments. But, for a one-off building or a public building, he likened it to art, his art, saying that he wouldn’t tell Mozart how to write music. Additionally, he also emphasized incremental housing as a centerpiece to any solution that was proposed for a place like Dharavi. Buildings must be able to start small, and then grow over time. He cited his design for Belapur (Artist’s Village), in New Mumbai, a project that just happened on to be on my list to see. They were specifically designed to be added onto over time. The rul...

Every day is an assault on the senses. Every sense. Especially around the area were staying in, one of the densest on earth. It all fills out onto the streets and alleys. During Holi, Christians were celebrating Easter and Muslims were celebrating Eid. It was crazy. On Saturday, I suddenly noticed 10 or 15 goats as I walked down the street. I saw a man grab one, and turned my head as he put his knee on its neck and slashed its throat. This continued throughout the day, as the goat hides piled up and the guys were pulling out the entrails in the shop next door. The blood and inside just got washed into the street and from there….???? The air smelled of dead animals, but it was festive. Music blared, people hollered, the sun baked, the dust kicked up. Upon leaving Mumbai, I was maxed out. After my roommate left, I moved to a cheaper room. But it was on the top floor, and had small amounts of pigeon feathers and droppings filtering through the ceiling when the ...

The workshop culminated with the incredible Hindu celebration of Holi. This celebration of color glorifies the end of the winter and the dry season with the expectation of rain and the summer. Bonfires are lit the night before and the following day people throw colors all over each other, in hopes of keeping away the fevers and cold that come with the changing weather. We were very fortunate to be able to celebrate with a community especially known for its Holi celebrations. As we were waiting outside our guest house to meet up everyone, we were quickly drawn to a large group of men shouting and dancing to Sean Paul’s ‘Temperature’. Somehow, they had found a 20-foot long tree trunk about three feet in diameter and were moving it to an open lot where they were going to burn it. I have no idea where it came from. There were no trees to be found anywhere near this area. Amazingly, they were moving it just with a terra cotta pipe, picking it up, moving the pipe forward ...

Moving through the city, it unfolds itself as the complexity, contrasts, and confusions. Old colonial architecture, deteriorating and taken over by clothing, plants, rain, time, and people sits above the bustling markets but below the towering new residential high rises. The very essence of the city seems to remain in these spaces closer to the ground, and seems to evaporate as the buildings get newer and higher. Yet, they are the symbol of development, and the aspirations to which many in the city aspire, and may eventually achieve. After time in Koliwada as well as rural Bangladesh , the complexities of hopes, aspirations, dreams, and development came to the forefront and began to become much clearer to me. Part of the whole reason of the workshop in Koliwada was that development was going to be taking place, but there needed to be a better way to activate and have the plan come from the people themselves. At one point in the workshop, I was actually asking what was t...

Much of the time in Mumbia was spent participating in the Urban Typhoon Workshop which took place in Dharavi, which has often been coined “ Asia ’s largest slum.” I doubt this is true, but the scale of it is truly something to behold, and it is certainly one of the most famous parts of Mumbai. I also think it might be one of the world’s most popular thesis sites, as I ran into a new person each day who was studying the area for his architectural thesis. Little wonder as the entire area is set to be redeveloped sometime in the near future. The plans have been circulating wildly (although hardly ever to the residents themselves), the most ambitious and likely one to move forward being floated by a Non-Resident India (NRI) living in the US . Basically, the plan of the redevelopment scheme is to take the entire area of Dharavi, which is about 530 acres. Within this space, approximately 500,000-1,000,000 people live giving it a density of around 315,000 people per square kil...

One of more pertinent projects I was planning on looking at India is BV Doshi’s Aranya housing scheme. It was very well published and researched as a generally successful and responsive solution to housing relocated poor people from the central part of Indore . I was able to meet with an architect in Doshi’s office, pick up some relevant literature and was assured it would be fine for me to go there. It was going to be a bear of a trip. It required on overnight train to get there, and I was anxious to get onto Mumbai, so I was going to take another overnight train to get onto Mumbai the next day. I arrived after sleeping a few hours in my non air conditioned sleeping car and 5 foot long bunk. Yes, the toilets empty directly onto the tracks, and trash just goes out the windows. A nice family shared their dinner with me. I tried to find some breakfast at 6am. Not much luck, had to go to a street stall and find an abandoned building to do my business. I then tried t...