Urban design workshop in Mumbai on January 7th to 10th, 2016
Presentation of the neighbourhood and the workshop:
Khotachiwadi is an East Indian and Maharashtrian enclave in Girgaum, South Mumbai. The neighbourhood combines old Bombay charm with all the demographic and architectural diversity the city is capable of representing. As part of an ongoing effort to produce a vision for Khotachiwadi that preserves it from being totally destroyed by real estate speculation, we are organizing a 4 day workshop, which will bring together young artists and residents of the area.
The aim of this workshop is to produce graphic material that will help us communicate about Khotachiwadi’s heritage and raise awareness about its ongoing destruction , hopefully providing a vision for the future that simultaneously combines preservation and upgradation.
The main guests for this event are four architects and designers from Berlin who just published a book on Ahmedabad’s urbanscape. We are organising an exhibition of their work at Studio X in Mumbai starting on January 16th, 2016.
Organisers
urbz and Urbanology co-founders Rahul Srivastava and Matias Echanove, have been involved for many years with the neighbourhood of Khotachiwadi, as anthropologists, educators, activists, urban designers, and residents. Over the years they have helped organise neighbourhood fairs, and set-up the Khotachiwadi Welfare and Heritage Trust. They have written and spoken about the neighbourhood in various media and at many forums (local and international). They have catalogued its heritage structures, created a website dedicated to its residents and their histories and conducted architecture and planning studios with students from universities and colleges such as TISS, Yale among others. Most recently their office mapped the entire area in 3D in order to document its present and help residents imagine its future. With the help of residents, architects and well-wishers, urbz is currently producing an urban design strategy for Khotachiwadi, which will include preservation and transformation. This is something that can only be done through participatory urban design and planning, and this workshop is a first step in that direction.