Studio Co-ordinator:- Prasad Shetty and Rohit Majumdar
Gargi Somani
This module continued the repair and retrofit work undertaken last year by the students of SEA. They studied the Thakkar Bappa Colony, analysing clusters of six houses to assess their habitability, sanitation, and other key parameters. Based on their findings, they developed various strategies to improve these conditions. This year, we took a closer look at the houses, with each pair of students focusing in detail on a single house.
KVGF, a non-profit organisation based in Kaamgaar Nagar, Kurla, works to improve health in slums, emphasising the empowerment of women and children. They discovered that the living conditions in the colony have significant health implications for the residents. Twenty students were assigned to study ten houses (which may contain multiple households) and propose two design solutions for each house, aimed at enhancing livability and dignifying the lives of the people living there.The methodology of studying each house started out by talking to the members of the house as well as the neighbours. A vital way of collecting information was observing household items and learning about their jobs/business to devise their expenditure and other things. As observed in many houses in the colony, light, ventilation, sanitation are major issues which were not dealt with during the construction. We started looking at how light and ventilation happens in the house without artificial lighting and ventilation i.e. tube lights and fans and tried to show it diagrammatically.
To know the house better, we started looking at how the house has grown incrementally over the years and how it has evolved structurally as well.
By conducting an analysis of everyone living in the house, we devised speculations of the near future of what will happen economically, structurally and spatially in the next 5-10-20 years.
Interviews with the contractors helped us understand how houses are built in the colony and how it is made incrementally with the help of different materials such as steel sections, GI sheets and some houses using wooden members. It helped us to find out different possibilities in which a house can be built and what socio-economic factors affect the built form and its spatiality.
The module required us to work closely with the community to know their needs and suggestions. We took inputs from the family members between the design process to get their take on how they would want their house to be, this was an important step to undertake as it made us understand what would/wouldn’t work in their house.
The proposed designs and methodology was presented to the community after 7 weeks in a presentation format which was followed by a session where each house engaged with the students to know more about how their house can be.
This module helped us understand what differentiates a home from a mass produced commodity and what socio-economic factors influence it overtime and how these factors help in building a design for a ‘home’.
The in-depth analytical process helped in developing designs which dignify the lives of the people living there. The participatory approach of designing helped in understanding the needs of the household better and what kind of negotiations were possible.
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