URBAN TYPHOON WORKSHOP
MUMBAI, Dharavi-Koliwada | March 16 - 23, 2008
NATIW
Dharavi's Koliwada is a traditional fisher folk community in one of Asia's largest slum. Koliwada's village like character has been preserved even in the midst of the dramatic urban and demographic changes that Mumbai has experienced in the last century.
The workshop will produce creative urban designs for Koliwada as well as a multimedia testimony to the unique spirit of the community. This workshop will also be an experiment in participatory planning and global collaborative work. Architects, urban planners, artists, activists and legal experts from India and many other parts of the world will be joining the workshop, working in teams consisting primarily of local residents. Faculty and students from University of Tokyo, Harvard, Yale and Columbia will be participating.
All material produced will be uploaded on a wikimedia website developed specifically for the workshop. During the workshop a technology community center will be built with donated computers. This center will allow residents to produce and communicate their own urban data (notably using interactive maps, geotagged data and video recordings), which will be useful to other residents, government agencies, NGOs and the general public.
We hope that the workshop will empower the community to think about the design aspects of redevelopment and build capacity by providing methodologies and infrastructures with which the community can generate and communicate its own urban data.
Urban Typhoon is an experiment in global team-work and participatory design. The first workshop in this series took place in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo (Japan) in June 2006 when 130 local residents and international participants brainstormed with world-class practitioners on the future of this alternative neighborhood located in the heart of Tokyo.
Blue area: Dharavi | Red area: Koliwada
A VILLAGE IN THE CITY
NATIW is leading the project "OPEN DHARAVI, The Nomade Connection" within the framework of Dharavi.org. This project deals with free Internet access for the neighborhood of Dharavi and its residents. It involves three phases whose total duration is expected to be 26 months.
The preparation of the project file which includes:
The examination of requirements, the analysis of financial and technical means, the selection of the project's onsite management crew, the shaping of participation processes as well as the steps for implementing Internet network access.
Expected duration: 2 months
The implementation of the Internet network and its access in the Koliwada and Dharavi areas, which includes:
Expected duration: 12 months
The development of computer and internet services.
Expected duration: 12 months
CHARLES CORREA
Architect | Mumbay
Charles Correa is an architect, planner, activist, theoretician
and a fundamental figure in the
world-wide panorama of
contemporary architecture.
He studied architecture at the University of Michigan and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Over the last four decades,
Correa has done pioneering
work in urban issues and low
cost shelter in the Third World.
From 1970-75, he was Chief Architect for New Bombay,
an urban growth center
of 2 million people, across the harbor from the existing city.
He was awarded the RIBA
Royal Gold Medal in 1984,
the UIA Gold Medal in 1990
and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture In 1998.
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
appointed him as the first
Chairman of the National
Commission on Urbanization.
Correa has taught at several universities and currently
spends part of his time at the
Massachusets Institute of
Technology, where he is Farwell
Bernis Professor in the School
of Architecture and Planning.
BHAU KORDE
Social worker, Dharavi, Mumbay
Ramchandra Y Korde (Bhau)
is one of the oldest residents in Dharavi who has been intimately involved in the social organisation of the neighbourhood all his life.
After completing his schooling he has worked in the administration of the D.S. High School, Sion for around four decades.
He has been part of various political upheavals that Dharavi witnessed in the second half of
the twentieth century.
He has worked closely in preventing communal riots in the neighbourhood by organizing local committees, the Mohalla Committee and launching innovative media intitiatives
He has also been involved with the Nomadic tribe movement - (Bhadaktya Vimukti Jaati) - all over Maharashtra.
SHIRISH PATEL
CEO Shirish Patel & Associates
Mr. Shirish B. Patel holds a Master's degree in arts from the University of Cambridge.
He is the chairman of a firm of consulting civil engineers with expertise in prefabrication, mass housing, tall buildings, planning of factories and design of public works: bridges, marine works, urban planing and projet manag.
He was one of the three original authors of the idea of New Bombay.
