IAAC BLOG

IAAC 2010 India Research Trip

IaaC continues its research agenda and research trips with MAA 2009-10 research trip to India. Visiting 2 major but different cities of India-Mumbai and Chandigarh- the objective was to discover the opportunities of a territory in a context of urban growth with poverty and congestion and rural potential.

IAAC at Gateway of India, Mumbai

Mumbai: 24 million people inhabiting a linear city in which 55% of its population inhabiting slums, large areas made of rudimentary self fabricated houses and limited access to precarious services. A continuously growing city, accepting around 120 new families per week that enters the territory searching for minimum survival conditions. The ‘maximum city’, driven as much by global economics as it is driven by indigenous structure of commerce and struggle.

IAAC at Chandigarh College of Architecture

A city suffering terrible living conditions of almost half its population inhabiting only 5% of the urban territory, but at the same time developing innovating residential projects, new self-sufficient neighbourhoods, projecting new metro lines elevated over the city, and a new entrepreneurial social class that imposes new strategies to generate a vibrant economy.

Bombay is also capable of being recognized worldwide for its cultural and economic phenomena. Bollywood, an industry with incredible growth potential, based on a strong internal demand that has being able to be exported as a world-class product.

This study about a chaotic, incredible, anarchic and friendly city, continues a series of studies at IAAC about the phenomenon of contemporary megapolis, its potentials and possible future projections.

DAY 1

Key words: visiting typical housing, interaction with local people, Holly festival

The first interaction with the Indian territory came through an amazing interaction with local people. 1^st of March, the celebration of Holly Festival brought us the opportunity to enter typical residence communities of local people, observe housing typologies and inner distributions, understand relations of built and unbuilt space as well as urban behaviors and occupations.
Holi Celebration at Worli Village, Mumbai

A direct interaction with locals helped us realize the hospitality and the warmness of the people that opened their houses, offered us food and drinks and celebrated with us proud of their traditions and customs.

Holi Celebration at Lower Parel, Mumbai

Post lunch, the afternoon was spent at Chowpatty (most popular Mumbai beach), an evening visit to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (earlier known as Victoria Terminus) the largest and oldest train station, followed by a walk across D N Road through Mumbai’s colonial Fort Area and current downtown to explore how important public spaces are used throughout the city.

DAY 2

Key words: education, architectural school, forth coming elevated Mumbai metro project

The second day of IAAC research trip brought us to the BSSA College, a recently established architectural private college in Mumbai Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, an IaaC  partner for the research trip and possible future common programs. IaaC Students and faculty had the opportunity to interact with Indian young architects, visit an extended exhibition of their projects and share a presentation of the common workshop made between IaaC and BSSA during the month of February 2010 as part of the student curriculums.

IAAC students presenting their work of the Joint workshop at BSSA

BSSA hosted conferences about Mumbai city and the particular slum reality, given by the dean of the school and by a prominent professor of Humanities, Mrs. Vilma Fernandes.

Professor Trilochan M. Chhaya, Dean of BSSA College, welcomed the visitors and introduced IAAC to students, faculty and collaborators, and finally invited IAAC faculty to a meal at the school direction. Willy Muller explained to professors and students the activities carried out by IaaC.

Willy Muller presenting at the BSSA lecture series

The same day we had a meeting with the director in charged of the Metro project for the city of Mumbai, Mr. G. R. Madan, General Manager Indian Railways welcomed IaaC in his office to explain the mobility strategy until the year 2031 for Mombai. The huge and complex forth coming project of elevated metro network to be implemented in the Mumbai city it’s an effort of creating a currently inexistent East-West connection in the city, as well as reinforcing the North-South existing train connection with 3 more lines of elevated metro.

Meeting with Mr. Madan (Chief Engineer Mumbai Metro from MMRDA) on upcoming Metro project in Mumbai.

Meeting with Mr. P C Sehgal (Managing Director Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation) on Mumbai local trains.

The train representative – Mr. P C Sehgal also received Iaac students for a detailed presentation about the present organization and future strategy on the local train system.

Attendance to evening reception hosted by the Balwant Sheth School of Architecture at the Sun n Sand Hotel.

DAY 3

Key words: film city industry, new construction development

A film shooting in progress at Film City

Bollywood or else Film City, the Hindi-language film industry was our next stop during the trip. An effort to understand the scale of the industry, its repercussions in migration and in the country’s identity were some of the main objectives of the visit at the Film City installations. A meeting with the Manager of the Film City gave us the necessary information and statistics in order to realize that, although Bollywood is the largest film producer in India, and one of the largest centers of film production in the world, the installations are limited in a small hill side and the number of people occupied is only 17, since the majority of the film producers are just renting the space and not any other services. Mr. Omveer S. Saini, Public Relation Officer, welcomes to explain the territory dedicated to this industry.

IAAC at Film City

The area surrounding Film City around the Vihar lake, constitute a new part of the Mumbai city introducing new construction developments that were identified as an important emerging area with the potential to become a strong attractor for future developments .

Another group of students visited the port and downtown area to identify processes and strategies for interventions in their studio project for phase 3.

Afterwards, IAAC students had a meeting with Mr. Dilip G. Patel Chairman, Mumbai BEST buses to understand the  system and organisation of bus transport.

The last class before the Research trip to India was by the Self-sufficient building research studio, where students presented their 300 roomed hotel capsules to faculty Willy Muller, Assistant Maite bravo and invited jury. The students projects have come to architecture from concept.The faculty finished the class showing students parts of the movie, Hotel Chevalier – by Wes Anderson where theneeds of a hotel room are perfectly described as the movie goes on. This discussion on the ideal capsule for theTouristizen continues for the next phase as students will know more about their site and context.

IAAC IS DOING A RESEARCH TRIP TO INDIA FROM February 28th to March 8th from Barcelona to Mumbai to Chandigarh following the tradition of IAAC’S Research Trips which brought us to Brazil, Taiwan, Eslovenia, and Tunisia. This years trip IAAC will be working in Mumbai exploring current conditions and dynamics of the territory. Some highlights of the trip will be day 1 students will take part in the  HOLI (festival of colours)! Day 2 they will attend a Lecture Series and Discussion at BSSA (partner for the research trip) followed by a Workshop discussion, lectures on city, humanities & hospitality, a Mumbai City Tour, Slum Tour which will delve into exploring recycling materials and  Slum fabric!

On day 4 IAAC will arrive in Chandigarh and students will research Sector 22, Housing, Lake, Sector 17 to analyse housing types and the sector plan, lake and sector 17 facades. On day 5 they will visit the Capitol Complex by le Corbusier and embark upon a city tour. On day 6 there will be a very important visit to the port and on day 7 a visit to the Film City and surounding Suburbs.To conclude the trip there will be a round table discussion to share insights on student research.

The Research Studio III finished the second phase, with students projects presenting their projects to Faculty Malé-Alemany, Victor Viña and Assistant Cesar Cruz Cazares with invited critics Marea Balestrini (Communication) , Nuria Diez(Interactive Architecture), Sergio Carratalas (Design) and Luis Fraguada (Design and Computation). With the main research on this studio being accessibility, adaptability, specificity on fabrication methods. The presentations were based upon their thesis, fabrication research and initial material tests, their machine development,  mechanic material tests, parametric space, Its deployment on site and the design avenues this machine will lead them to. There have been seven different projects, with seven unique approaches with Material, Mechanics and Computations developing at the same time. These projects will continue through out the next phase, students with the faculty and invited critics discussed on the future of their machines and how they are applicable in real time situations.

¨Faux Mountains and the essence of the symbol¨ : Michael Jakob

Michael Jakob is Professor in Landscape & Art at hepia (Geneva) and Lecturer in Theory and History of Landscape at EPFL and at ISE (Geneva University). He studied at the universities of Tübingen (Germany), Paris, Stanford and Geneva. He has been a guest professor at the Universities of Neuchâtel (Switzerland), St. Gallen (Switzerland), Turin (Italy), Rome (Italy), Grenoble (France), Urbino (Italy), Stanford (USA), Princeton (USA). He has worked with the Centre d’Art Contemporain (Geneva), the Magasin, Centre d’Art Contemporain (Grenoble), the Museum of Grenoble, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur (as the curator of the photographic art show ‘Girola’). He is founder and head of COMPAR(A)ISON, an International Journal of Comparative Literature, and the chief editor of «di monte in monte», a series of books on mountain culture (Edizioni Tarara’, Verbania). He produced several documentary films for TV and has a longstanding experience as a radio journalist. Among his recent publications: Letteratura e paesaggio, Olschki, Firenze 2006 ; Paysage et temps, Infolio, Gollion 2007 ; Le Paysage, Infolio, Gollion 2008 ; Il giardino allo specchio. Percorsi tra pittura, cinema e fotografia, Bollati Boringhieri,  Torino 2009 ; Il paesaggio, Il Mulino, Bologna 2009 ; Paesaggio e tempo,  Meltemi,Roma 2009 ; Le jardin et les arts, Infolio, Gollion 2009.

 Research Studio I development came to an end. Students presented their final works, institute’s director Vicente Guallart and faculty member Hemant Purohit gave their final comments along with the guest jury members Luis Falcon, Ferran Grau and Marta Male-Alemany.The Project aim was to design a framework for self sufficient living, statistically in the form of a neighbourhood for 10000 people in three densities (site areas of 300, 30 and 3 hectares). Hyperhabitat was the basis of analysis in these projects. Hyperhabitat is the organisation and categorisation of urban entities in a list of Nodes, Neworks, Fields etc. Scale is dominant factor which categorises them from 1 to 1o million. The projects are experiments to invent a system of living, generic in nature and without any specific context. In order to develop an argument for their project and derive consistency of design strategy some projects take reference from – natural resources & topography (Tamara-Nicolas), natural resources & climate (Jacek-Ander), existing urbanity (Veronica and Michael-Moises). While others are completely autonomous projects/systems solely based on density and their inherent criteria for self-sufficiency (Roberto-Renata, Ekateriina, Hristo, Lourdes-Gopal & Edgar-Ali).

Lecture: ¨One Project, Three Designs¨“SADAR VUGA ARHITEKTI”  Founder, Bostjan Vuga graduated at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana (1992) and continued post graduate studiesat the AA School of Architecture in London (1993-1995).Since 1998 he lectures at architectural schools, conferencesand symposiums in Slovenia and abroad. In 2003 he was a studio tutor at Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. He was a visiting critic at AA School of Architecture, at Bauhaus Kolleg in Dessau, at the IAAC in Barcelona, at the ETH in Zurich, at the Universitaet fuer Angewandte Kunst Wien and Academy of Visual Arts Vienna. As a visiting editor he took part in two issues of AB architectural bulletin.He had published numeurous articles on current occurance in architecture and urban planning, presented in national and international professional and broad interested publications.

Students presented their work for a jury of nine people, which included Thomas Noll-Executive Director of Grand Hotel Europe (Orient Express) in San Petersburg,Russia, Simon Weber -President of Long Bay Investment Group S.L.; President and owner of diverse real estate groups, Belgium, Ramón Aragonés -General Director of NH Hotels in Spain, Barcelona, Daniel Alonso -Business Development Director of Talonhotel,Madrid, Patrick Delbeke -Tourism New Business Consultant; Business Events organizer related to Interactive applications,Ibiza, Spain, Fernand David-FDMS (Fernand David Management Services); former Vicepresident of Hilton Group and Executive Director of Sunparks Resorts, Belgium, Vicente Caseiro-Coordinator of the Conference; CEO and Executive Director of Hermitage Hotels&Restaurants Consulting en San Petersburgo, Russia, Javier Illa- Advisor Appointed of “Grupo Inversor Hesperia S.A.”; President of the Hotel Chain Association; Advisor of NH HOTELES, S.A., Barcelona and Mario Chang-Professor of the “LA Catholic University”, Government Financial Consultant and various Holdings in the USA.

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On the approaching trip to India, Faculty Areti Markopoulou and Heman Purohit with Academic Coordinator Nadine Pinkett introduced to students what will be done during their stay in mumbai and Chandigarh.The week that will follow the 28th of February, they will be in a different territory researching on different topics ranging from day to day life activities in Mumbai to the famous Bollywood identity which is currently influencing the city. Students will analyze the city based upon the interactions they will encounter, they will observe and discover the city which they will base their projects upon for the upcoming phase of the IaaC masters class.

Faculty staff Marine Bagneris highlined the importance of communication between professionals that take part in the whole process of construction, and showed different tools to improve that communication. Works by Arata Isozaki, Toyo Ito, Helmunt Pottmann or Alain Marty helped to understand this issue. Finally, students structures were presented, a wide range of experiments such that will be uploaded soon to the blog.