looking within an urban conservation regeneration plan for ranwar in bandra w mumbai by shethvivek from india

LOOKING WITHIN
An Urban Conservation & Regeneration Plan for Ranwar in Bandra (W), Mumbai

With time environment changes, which makes as a necessary for any city to evolve. But it becomes important for people to know their roots and where they belong, as it has already etched a certain sense of being in them. This is the kind of impact cities have on its people and its people on the cities.

It is evident that cities today have become an expression of economic and social forces. Ranwar, a small quaint hamlet in Bandra (the ‘queen of suburbs’) speaks of 400 years of heritage. Ranwar is one of the five surviving pakhadis (hamlets), which define Bandra and its character. Ranwar and the rest of these villages have defined or rather etched a character in Bandra’s being to what it is today. The aim of the project was to understand this character and create references for the common man to understand the same. Today a conflict has emerged in between conserving these hamlets against unchecked development to meet the demands of the ever-growing population of Mumbai.

Ranwar and other similar hamlets are made of century old cottages, which belong to the local vernacular style of architecture inspired by the various rulers and invaders over time. Portuguese influence is dominant in these built forms. The hamlet has evolved through the East Indian Catholic community that were converted to Christianity by the Portuguese in between 1575-1600 AD. They belonged to the agrarian paddy cultivators who have their lineage still living in these houses in a certain lifestyle that is unmatched by the rest of Mumbai.
The project involved understanding this lifestyle through the spaces they live in. A detailed qualitative spatial analysis of the environment was carried out explaining the importance of what I wanted to communicate. A detailed in depth study of culture, lifestyle and history was undertaken to understand the heritage value of the precinct. The study translated to some sort of reference visuals for communication to the next group who was to work on the same project. The issues of the hamlet were identified and placed against heritage features for resultant solutions. These lead to trend analysis and forecasting for conservation directions in the form of scenarios. Apart from the physical understanding of the space, the metaphysical state of the residents of a community of this nature with respect to their environment was also investigated.

Various tools and methodologies were employed to achieve and analyse data of this scale of information.
Finally, a design direction for The Busride Design Studio to carry on the project was charted.

The project aimed at a larger understanding pertaining to the design theories in one’s immediate environment. More, so it was also to understand and look at results for an area of sorts that would be forgotten in time, unless a memory was created for it, unless it was documented and newer design methodologies were deployed to create design systems.

While working on the project one premise that I always looked upto were these lines from Aldo Rossi in Architecture of the Cities;
“One can say that the city itself is a collective memory of its people, and like memory, it is associated with objects and planes. The city is the locus of collective memory. This relationship between locus and citizenry then becomes the city’s predominant image, both architecture and of landscapes, and as certain artifacts become past of its memory, new ones emerge.”

Blogging was one of the tools to get opinions of the larger base of people and helped a lot documenting the project while it madness of running around topped the daily schedules.
You could look at the blog here : http://bandraforyou.blogspot.in

I would definitely like to thank Ayaz Basrai, the mentor for the project and all the inmates of The Busride Design Studio, for helping me give this project such a strong grounding!

Also the results through one exhibition of the projects called ‘BLOWUP-Street Exhibition’ can be viewed here: http://bandraforyou.blogspot.in/2010/05/blowup.html