This looks interesting, though it is not clear how open it is to anyone who wants to join. Personally, I prefer the workshop being offered by Urban Typhoon (http://unhoused.livejournal.com/21602.html), which I will be attending, in the Koliwada neighborhood of Dharavi as it will be lead by people from the area and not high-profile theorists and academics from other countries. I wonder why the organizers of the Urban Body Research Studio need to maintain their academic hierarchies when going in to understand a place that could benefit from their knowledge, but in a different manner, where the people of the area are empowered and given a voice and something is built up together rather than in this top-down fashion. They say in the outline that they want to interrogate old ways of thinking about places like Dharavi, but don't seem willing to question their own inquiry and how that might get in the way of truly transformative, empowering work. I look forward to seeing what the results are of both the Urban Typhoon and Urban Body Research Studio efforts.



Mapping Dharavi

Urban Body Research Studio on Mumbai

The studio aims at exploring and mapping the complexity of elements, which constitute the urban, social and cultural texture of squatter settlements in the city of Mumbai. Considering these areas within the broader framework of urban transformations and redevelopment projects, the studio looks at the slums as forms of emergent’ urbanities, which function with a multiple logic and structure of relations both within itself and with the outside.

Strategically, the studio questions both binary logics of opposition and problem-solving attitudes. Polarities such as formal/informal, legal/illegal will be put under scrutiny in order to understand the intertwining and shades of meanings that operate within a multi-faceted context. An explorative and analytical attitude will be therefore encouraged as a device to understand unfamiliar urban mechanisms in a non-judgemental way.

Questions of self-organisation, informal micro-economies, gender roles, private and public spheres will be addressed in relation to both their impact on the actual definition of the slums and to their relation to the broader network of power and political structures of the city. The main focus of the studio will be the slum of Dharavi; being the largest squatter settlement of Asia it allows for a deep and privileged understanding of the multiplicity of layers – on the local, regional and international level – that operate in the constitution and definition of these urban emergences.

Streets will be addressed as the crucial element of analysis. They represent the physical realm of interaction and social experimentation while also being the membrane through which different types of spaces mingle and transform. They will be the “laboratory” to understand relationships between flows of capital, labour forces and patterns of dwelling and inhabitation.

Throughout the nine weeks of its program, the studio will propose and interdisciplinary approach that will be developed through a variety of devices. An “action-learning” approach would foster students to embrace an experiential understanding of knowledge production.

The first four weeks will be dedicated to getting “acquainted” with the urban, social, political and cultural context of Mumbai in general and Dharavi in particular. Seminars, guest lectures, video screenings will be part of the program. Students will be also provided with a basic methodological tool-kit that will allow them to relate in a morally and professionally sober way to a non-western and unfamiliar context. The studio will then propose a three-weeks research and mapping field work in Mumbai, which will be followed by two more weeks for elaboration and post-production of the collected material.

The “results” of the studio will be presented in a public exhibition at TU Delft and NAi and will be the core material for a forthcoming publication. There will also be a follow up of the research that will be presented at the CCA, Canadian Centre for Architecture, in Montreal in the Fall of 2009.

http://www.urbanbody.org/UB2008/Mumbai/