IaaC Blog

The workshop ‘Sea Sand Structures’ focuses on fringe conditions of limit and discontinuity within the city by exploring one of the aspects, the coast of Mumbai. Set up and coordinated by Renu Gupta along with the faculty members of BSSA in Mumbai and in IAAC, Barcelona, the workshop was conducted simultaneously to have an interesting exchange of concepts and design approaches by locals and foreigners to the same issue. (19,20,21st Jan 2010)

The workshop precedes the IAAC’s India visit in March 2010. By focusing on one aspect, the workshop raises many subsequent local issues within the city of Mumbai. It remains important to initiate a design dialogue before the actual visit that deals with a number of questions in Indian cities and familiarizes the students with the ‘site’.

Link to BSSA workshop

http://bssa-projects.blogspot.com/2010/01/sea-sand-structures.html

Download the PDF

Wave energy
Wave magnification
Responding structure
Building

Our site is a small fishing harbour located on one of the main tributaries running through Mahul on the east coast of Mumbai.  The harbour lies on the fringe of the creek, which consists of a 32m wide waterway, a 15m wide intertidal zone linking to a mangrove zone of 15m behind which lies a small community of  approx. 2000 people.

Our proposal aims to bridge the gap between land and water breaking down the barrier defined by the line of the high tide and by introducing a new structure in the intertidal zone that responds directly to the movement of the tides allowing access to the river at all time throughout the day.

We identified our site as one of the main boulevards and promenades along the coastline of Mumbai. It is the Marina Drive – a 3 km long 6 lane boulevard and a pedestrian promenade along the sea front, that is part of the most attractive residential and catering facilities. There seemed to be a gap between the sea itself, the magnificent views of the sunsets it provides and the pedestrian area, that is situated so close to it. This is why we decided to try and provide a suitable link between between the inland and the sea. A detachable and easily installable non-permanent structure that can aid the people to get to the the seafront and the water itself. It also has to designed to fit in between and above the tetra-pod wave breakers, which are a serious obstacle for reaching the sea.

Initial continuous geometry platform

Platform broken down to fewer segmets

Functional Diagram

Click here to see PDF Presentation of Sea,Sand & Structures Workshop : Partially floating platforms on the Marine Drive, Mumbai

The intervention area of our group is the coastal zone of the Colada slum, within the Back Bay Reclamation Gulf. The main characteristic of this zone is the disconnection between the slum and the sea, which is being prevented by an intermediate  mangrove belt. This has resulted to the ‘isolation’ of the slum inhabitants from the sea, which cannot even be seen from within the slum.

Our intention is to create ’bridges’ which connect the three layers [slum border_mangrove zone_sea] and this way give the slum the opportunity to take advantage of the sea and develop activities. The structure of the bridges will be adjusted to the tree different layers context [ground_mangrove sand_water].