Housing in Mumbai

Bad effects are from the heritage point of view that first and foremost, grade III listed heritage buildings should be excluded from redevelopment under rule 33(7) and 33(9). Due to this rule being applied indiscriminately across all so called 'old' buildings, irrespective of their heritage value, they are going ahead and pulling down good buildings too.

Localized poor condition in some parts of a heritage building are being shown in surveys as completely bad so that they can pull down the entire building, sell the old wood, material, etc. as well as consume higher FSI. It is a complete racket.

Developers support the modification to the rule as they get more FSI under the modified rule. The proposed cluster redevelopment scheme proposes an FSI of 4 or even higher, so they keep loading the city with new development with minimum open spaces, etc.

The modification has several harmful long term impacts for the city and people such as load to existing infrastructure of the city, worsening the quality of life, promoting poor construction, promoting a new haphazard and thoughtless architectural and urban design langauge that will alter Mumbai's character.

One of the most basic points against the modification is to question why FREE housing or accomodation of any kind should be given to tenants / occupants of space in the city? Why should a person occupying a tenament of 220 sqft or less get 300 or 400 sq. ft. and what happens to the Rent Control Act?

The modification is driven by vote bank politics and not by any desire to improve the condition of the city. It is a fact that there are more tenants than landlords in the island city; hence the politicians want to appease the greater number of people. It is also a fact that the politicians are themselves builders and developers in Mumbai, and hence have modified the law to suit themselves.

If you study the density and pattern of development of an area such as C-Ward (that is proposed to be redeveloped using the cluster redevelopment model), then you can see the existing architectural, social and cultural grain of the area, that is finely woven due to its low-rise and dense pattern of redevelopment.

This pattern of building will be replaced by the even more dense (due to additional loading of FSI) high-rise pattern of building, that will completely alter the fabric of the old city.

Much of the suburbs of Mumbai are largely characterless and homogeneous due to the building byelaws that allow this kind of thoughtless redevelopment. Infrastructure in the suburbs is already inadequate to cope with the population that is living there. The modifications to DC Rule 33(7) and 33(9) will similarly overlaod the existing infrastructure of the island city, leading to a reduced quality of life for all who stay or use this space.

Blanket solutions and rules are not applicable in a city like Mumbai. Different areas require diffrent solutions.

What is required is:

- a rational survey of the existing building stock to be done, to identify poor buildings,

- amend or abolish the rent control act that has distorted the value of land and housing in the island city,

- apply sensitive and sensible (vs. lucrative) solutions to the existing problem being faced

- give incentives to people who want to repair their buildings skillfully

- allow reconstruction more through owners rather than builders

- remove free redevelopment and offers for free housing - those who can afford to stay here should stay, rest should move northwards etc.

At AHC

An article on Taj@ Chennai for Architect Hafeez Contractor , A+D,Dec 2009.

One day Boss(Hafeez Contractor), when he did not find me seated on my desk, started calling out my name and I discussing some missing aspects with my associate. He wanted me to write an article for A+D. He felt I was the perfect person to proceed with this.

After this article was published I wanted to call him up and tell him about it ,instead I called up his nephew -Karl. The next day when I showed it to him I wasnt sure whther he would like it or not..but 1 sentence makes the difference for me - Gud work..thats wat he said..

This was the most memorable article. While writing about Taj one thing I always heard from my heart was - If Arshad Sir was here....
But he is no more with us and that is a fact. He was like a Father to me and at times my friend. He motivated me whenever I lost my faith in myself.

Nevertheless..I cant forget Hafeez Sir for his n number of support and belief in me,To Pearl Ma'm, for standing as a pillar of inspiration. Hafeez Sir, I cant forget the Kala Ghoda fest, The DSK work, The Rustomjee interiors.. and after the endless late nites of hard work..those days when you have been trying to convince me that I should rest for not being well, and above all for convincing my Father that you are there for me. Thank you for being there.

stories behind the closed windows............

a path of vision

Athens

The city...of Mumbai..

The British left behind an architectural legacy which lives on in many of Bombay’s public buildings. Let us take a look at the Anglo-Indian heritage which once gave Bombay the reputation of the best Victorian Gothic city in the world.

When the British left India, what remained behind was a legacy ranging from intangibles like language, social customs, the modes of administrative functioning, and more enduringly their buildings scattered across twenty-four latitudes and windely varied terrain. A lot of the construction in British India was the work of amateurs and military engineers. Their work reflects a curious adaptation of local materials and weather to a longing for home being expressed in the implantation of European styles in a tropical land. In all of India, apart from Shimla perhaps, it is the city of Bombay which shows the greatest incorporation of a multitude of divergent styles popular in the Victoria era.

As part of the Portuguese Catharine of Braganza’s dowery when she married Charles II, Bombay passed into British possession in 1670. Not a mainland settlement like that of Madras or Calcutta, it was originally a string of islands sheltering the wide inlet of bom Bahia or beautiful bay from the Arabian sea.

Unlike the other two presidency towns, Bombay’s growth was peaceful, untroubled by attacks from native potentates or foreign competitors. Slowly its identity changed from that of an archipelago to a peninsula, as a network of roads linked the several islands. It was only after 1850 and the cutting of the Suez Canal that Bombay boomed from a trading port on a quiet backwater to a teeming, expanding metropolis.

Today as post-independence urban architecture in Bombay burgeons in a plethora of concrete and glass angularly pushing skywards, public buildings of a bygone era still remain like spacious islands of ornate extravagance. These are nearly all the buildings of Sir Bartle’s Bombay. Florence Nightingale, so impressed with the sanitary arrangements incorporated into his town planning, is said to have remarked on the fact that Victorian Bombay had achieved a lower mortality rate than London’s (itself the lowest in Europe). Together with Sir Bartle, James Trubshave, the architectural planner had endeavoured to lay out a model business town of imperial Britain.

According to writer Jan Morris, Bombay is one of the most characteristically Victorian cities in the world, displayed all the grand effrontery of Victorian eclectism. From the Fort the Fort area down to the cantonment at Colaba still stand buildings with examples of diverse architectural features such as German gables, Dutch roofs, Swiss timbering, Romance arches and Tudor casements mingled with more ethnic oriental embellishments.

British reaction to such grand and diverse display was also equally diverse. While Aldous Huxley is said to have sneered and dismissed Bombay s pretentious, architectural historian, Gavin Stamp has called it the best Victorian Gothic city in the world.

Perhaps the most fitting monuments both in name and splendour, the very symbol of the British in Victorian Bombay is a building that was opened in 1887 in time to celebrate Queen Victoria Terminus or VT as it is better known today.

A far far grander edifice in which to dine, the Taj Mahal Hotel was constructed at the ocean’s edge in 1903. It was built not by the British, but by one of the most enterprising Parsees of all time, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata. The idea of building a grand hotel was conceived by him when he was refused entry into the nearby Watson’s Hotel, on account of his race. Today Watson’s doesn’t exist but the Taj has prospered enough to give birth to a growing hotel chain. For travelers on the P&O lines during the Raj, the Taj became as welcome a landmark as another famous hotel, Raffles of Singapore.

Most of the public building in Bombay are still used for the purpose for which they were originally designed. Today much is unchanged too at clubs like the Bombay Gymkhana where members still order chhota pegs at sun down. What is threatened is the dwindling private bungalow with its high ceilings, deep verandahs and tiled floors. Tomorrow’s newspaper will never carry an advertisement like that of the Bombay Courier in 1793 For Sale- a bungalow situated between the two tombstones on the island of Coulaba.