Mass Inhabitation

The housing question has been conventionally thought through as the problem of ‘house shortage’ and this is addressed by provisioning of new houses. Here house becomes a consumable, tradable commodity and not a home. Also, the housing produced for the poor through such provisioning is of extremely poor quality with high segregations and discriminations. Moreover, formally trained architects in India participate in building habitation for less than 10% people.  On the other hand, most habitations across the country are built through small contractors of all kinds involving various kinds of incremental developments. This habitation too has perpetuated discrimination and segregations consolidated through centuries of class, caste and gender differences. Also, these habitations often are poor due to low quality construction, planning and infrastructure that affect the dignity of life for its inhabitants. For the course the housing question is redefined as the ‘problem of professional architects and state mechanisms being unable to enter the house production processes’.  The course is aimed at training students to engage with a settlement with poor habitation conditions and develop strategies of improvement which can be implemented through the cultural logics that operate in the settlement. There is also a part of the course that trains students in mainstream housing production.