Rethinking Mass Housing
The module started by analyzing the site which was a co-operative housing society situated in the Borivali suburb of Mumbai. The Bhaktiyog society was developed under the 'Paranjpe' scheme in the 1960s for middle income group people. The society majorly houses marathi brahmins who are old and retired and are living with their children or on their own, having a strength of 208 tenants. The process started by interviewing these households and analyzing the collected data. It is speculated that in a few years' time this society will turn into a society of old people who depend on each other for living.
​
​
Design Intent
Future speculation of it being a society for old people, led to the design intent. The idea was to only redevelop 30 percent area of the society keeping the rest of the typology intact and upgrading the existing homes. The people there were familiar with the 'C' type configuration and changing it would have made their lifestyles difficult to adapt to the newer configurations and hence was kept intact. The program design a commercial space which can become a perennial source of income for the residents giving them financial security when they grow old.
The design process started with experimenting with the nature of co-working spaces based on the logic of opening the space to the public and the city such that it can become an active node of transaction forming newer relationships of care, interdependency and living. The structure was seen as a 'porous wall' to the city that the people and the residents both can permeate through.
Reimagining community spaces
The larger idea was to create nodes of interactions at different levels and scales catering to all the people, starting right from opening up the space to the city to the interaction spaces between the commercial and residential units, to the interaction between all the residential people and scaling it down to the individual tenement level. This scape of transactional spaces sets up the premise for my design.
The residential space is imagined through the idea of community where emphasis is laid on the open, common spaces that get facilitate the idea of sharing and interdependency. The mixing up of age groups initiates different forms of relationships such that the old people can look after the children and vice versa. Through a series of transactional spaces, a hierarchy of open spaces is setup starting from the corridor which is widened as a private space to accommodate a front porch, to a railing seating, to the semi-open corridor spaces to finally the central open ground.
The overarching idea was to break up the commons into smaller, humanized scale that are easily accessible and where actual conversations take place. This was done through the strategy of locating these spaces in a society such as the corridors, balconies and facade windows forming the skin. An inclusion of balcony is done on each floor which is shared between two houses and becomes the node of everyday interactions. It also becomes an outdoor room where they can pursue their hobbies and spend time outside. The corridor is widened to accommodate a railing with a seating which can activate the corridors further. The ground floor is extended into a backyard space where people can interact. The space opens up to the bar type building and hence also doesnt lead to the segregation of the commercial and residential space.
Zoom ins of residential spaces
Zoom ins of commercial spaces
