[26] Housing 'out of the box'.

Laser cut model at 1:50.

Early model experiments. Looking at ways of building 'air-space' architecture without the intrusion into the host buildings.

[25] The Site, Clerkenwell Road, Farringdon, EC1N, London.

The site is a complex of office buildings in Clerkenwell Rd. It is based on the preliminary journey of 243 bus from Holborn to Old Street.
The formation contains two voids facing each other, what brings the potential for the two future structures to be joined 'in the air' to create a shared area. East elevation faces Onslow Street, which is off limit to the vehicles, West elevation faces one way Saffron Hill road.

East elevation.

West elevation.

Section looking North.

City island diagram & transfer time calculation.

The users/occupiers of the airSpace are the young office workers of the host buildings. They are pioneers of newly evolved concept for urban planning involving working and living at the same location. The area is rich in small, privately owned enterprises providing all the amenities without the need for long distance travel. The site plan shows the potential of the area to become equally infected with the idea of building in the gaps of existing structures and creating a mix use urban spaces with thriving communities and social kinships. 

[24] Recipe for a thriving city: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by J. Jacobs

Jacobs argues that the principals of urban planning applied in the XX century urban design are destroying the inner-city communities. It is done so due to design according to separation of uses, building isolated urban spaces, and rejection of human beings living in a community characterised by layered complexity and seeming chaos. 

Jacobs proposed a renewal from the ground up, emphasizing the mixed use, rather that exclusively residential or commercial districts. She pointed out that the safe and alive street should be active at a different times of the day through out the day. With different kinds of enterprises mixed in to give people reasons for crisscrossing paths and for those public streets to ‘have eyes on them’ as continuously as possible. This would ensure a social kinships of residents, shopkeepers or local office workers and in return reduce the crime levels, strengthen city life and promote social and economic vitality.

Jacobs’ analysis is clear explanation for the richness and prosperity of Dharavi slum. A low rise densely populated areas with a mixed use living and working typologies that are self-built, self-emerged and spontaneously designed around the activities that are taking place in the slum. The system of rules for the spatial arrangement and occupation alongside space organization for circulation were not design by outside force but were unpremeditated and self emerged. 

[23] Spatial patterns in a slum communies.

A case study of Baseco, Manila, Philippines.

A case study of Daravi slum in Mumbai.

The Indian megacity of Mumbai has an estimated population of about 14 million. Its biggest ‘informal settlement’, Dharavi, has a population of more than 600,000 people and one of the world’s highest density at more than 12,000 persons per acre. Despite its common depiction as a “slum” it is actually a successful work-cum-residential settlement.
Despite its plastic and tin structures and lack of infrastructure (residential infrastructure (roads, housing with individual toilets, public conveniences, etc.), Dharavi is a unique, vibrant, and thriving ‘cottage’ industry complex, the only one of its kind in the world. It is in fact the kind of self-sufficient, self-sustaining ‘village’ community.

Dharavi pulsates with intense economic activity. Its population has achieved a unique informal “self-help” urban development over the years without any external aid. It is a humming economic engine. The residents, though bereft of housing amenities, have been able to lift themselves out of poverty by establishing thousands of successful businesses. A study by Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology indicates that Dharavi currently has close to 5,000 (informally 15,000 one room businesses) industrial units, producing textiles, pottery and leather, and performing services like recycling, printing, and steel fabrication. 

A unique characteristic of Dharavi is its very close work-place relationship. Productive activity takes place in nearly every home. As a result, Dharavi’s economic activity is decentralized, human scale, home-based, low-tech and labour-intensive. This has created an organic and incrementally developing urban form that is pedestrianized, community-centric, and network-based, with mixed use, high density low-rise street-scapes. [This is a model many planners have been trying to recreate in cities across the world. A simplistic re-zoning and segregating of these activities - common in the United States - would certainly hurt this very unique urban form].

In fact it is not a residential slum, but a unique self-contained township (in the sense of close work-place relationship so eulogized since the days of Patrick Geddes, but which has never been achieved in any of the new towns). Because of all these community-based successes, Dharavi needs to be replicated (albeit with adequate physical infrastructure). Instead, the state government wants to force the relocation of Dharavi’s population into tiny cubby hole apartments in high rise towers so that the vacated land can be commercially exploited by developers through the Dharavi Redevelopment Plan.

Any plan for Dharavi must explicitly take into consideration the work-place relationship developed over the years so that it does not destroy the existing intricate urban structure that has sustained the local economy. This plan must acknowledge existing economic activities and their spatial organization, and not destroy it in the process of redevelopment.

Case studies all over the world have documented the inappropriateness of high-rise resettlement projects in poor areas. The social and economic networks which the poor rely on for subsistence can hardly be sustained in high-rise structures. These high rise projects are not appropriate for home-based economic activities, which play a major role in Dharavi.

The least that can be done in this redevelopment plan is to refurbish the work places of the existing industries within the residential areas and remodel this project by providing low-rise high-density row housing for existing families engaged in home based occupations. This way, each house will have a ground floor and an additional story , as well as a terrace and a courtyard which can be used for these home-based business activities.

Based on article by Prakash M. Apte.