Month: August 2013 - Rozenberg Quarterly

A few days ago we found the project let’s talk about garbage through a tweet by @alucidwake and immediately two things catched-up our attention, the renders of such a big slum project and the quote “the land (and people living there) has been put up for sale by the city authorities.” The people has been put for sale?

We have been writing recently about capitalism and his close and deep relationship with architecture, and this project is a clear example of this fact. Dharavi is one of the largest slums in the world, with an estimated population between 600,000 and over 1 million people. This land, according to the architects’ research, is worthover 2.3 billion dollars, because the slum generates profits worth 500 million dollars, supplying the whole of Mumbai with necessary products and goods. In this context, UGO architecture and design has proposed a new facility based on a structure without a prescribed function, with blocks for residential uses to the south and a recycling part to the north, only divided by two corridors, and with the ground floor space serving mainly to supply garbage from the dump.

Assuming that we were moving on arena of speculations, it was not surprising that this project was the start point of a deep and intense open discussion on facebook, with more than fifty comments, including several references in a thought-provoking debate. That’s why we want to keep the debate alive and decided to bring here some of those thoughts, arranging them as a form of collective writing, born from the exchange of ideas between a group of architects and thinkers which engaged the conversation.

dpr-barcelona – Housing The Remnants Of Capitalism