Martina is an architect from Vienna in
Austria who has spent a lot of time in India. She is now undertaking a PhD on the
slum area of Dharavi in Mumbai and lives nearby. I met her in a coffee shop
with an Indian architect friend and we had a good discussion on slum renewal. Martina
is studying 4 small communities in Dharavi including papad makers (a snack),
recyclers, washing people and broom makers. She is looking at architectural,
sociological and urban morphological issues and will develop a design tool to
lead to improvements in slums. Martina prefers bottom up approaches to design solutions.
We discussed the Slum Renewal Authority
(SRA) approach of selling the land to developers with dramatically increased
densities so that the slum renewal is subsidized by private housing. She
believes this approach collapsed with the Global Financial Crisis. Dharavi
currently has one toilet for 200 people. Men are happy to go to common toilets but
women prefer a toilet in the house.
We talked about the aspirations of
architectural graduates in India as Martina has taught at CEPT. She believes
most graduates want to work in America or Europe or on large projects. They
represent the new India...a global perspective with high aspirations. Slum renewal
is not on their agenda.
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