studio mumbai at venice architecture biennale 2016

studio mumbai seeks to improve quality of architecture at venice biennale with ‘immediate landscapes’
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venice architecture biennale 2016: the practice of studio mumbai is deeply rooted in testing materials and their possible applications in architecture. rather than being a conventional office filled with professionals sitting in front of computer screens, producing a set of building instructions in the form of plans and technical specifications, the firm is more something between a yard full of materials and handmade prototypes and full-scale design mock-ups where craftspeople and architects test ideas in an open workshop environment.

studio mumbai utilizes local knowledge and building techniques of india to construct their projects
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the mumbai-based practice have managed to integrate local knowledge and skills successfully into their creative process, not as purely intellectual rhetoric, but as a way of life. this approach and sensitive attitude sees the studio focusing on a scarcity of means, only admissible in a low-cost, humanitarian context, making no distinction between houses for built for wealthy or clients of a certain elite. with the middle-class always looking to the elite, and the lower classes looking to the middle, it is this bottom-up approach that encourages the upper classes to embrace local crafts and skills as a sign of quality, rather than insisting on global technologies and building innovations, paving a way to a more democratization of quality in an efficient top-bottom method.

‘immediate landscapes’ explores low-cost, humanitarian building techniques
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to demonstrate this, studio mumbai presents ‘immediate landscapes’ at the 15th international architecture exhibition: ‘we live in overlays of varied landscape — natural and cultural. our notion of the world is formed through continual engagements with these landscapes. we would like to constantly traverse these landscapes physically and metaphorically to continually expand our world,’ they say. through a continued research and documentation of these landscapes, they have discovered many phenomena that are discreetly present, but non-extant in the collective conscious.

‘civilization is built on an aqueous foundation. a world that is in constant flux, a culture continually in an ebb and flow.’ – bijoy jain, founder of studio mumbai

‘immediate landscapes’ is presented within the arsenale venue of the venice architecture biennale.

studio mumbai uses natural, local materials such as earth and fibre composites to construct their projects
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detail of the earth, fibre and wood construction
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