Studio X Mumbai
With 14 million inhabitants, Mumbai is the largest city in India. The NAI is focusing on the city’s urban issues, primarily those relating to housing. In partnership with Indian architects and the Indian project developer TATA Housing, steps are being taken to design and realise a new model for social housing.
The process began in September 2009 when the NAI brought together some forty Indian architects and project developers to discuss the problem of poor quality social housing. Nine socially committed architects were picked from the initial group, and visited the Netherlands in November 2009 to meet with Dutch architects and project developers and hear about Dutch approaches to social housing.
A number of these architects returned to the Netherlands in June 2010. A programme of workshops, debates and exhibitions is being planned in conjunction with these architects. In December 2010, the NAI and this group of architects organised an international conference in Mumbai on slum housing, during which participants discussed numerous international slum renewal methods which were further developed in workshops. The workshop concentrated on Nala Sopara, an actual building location in North Mumbai. Among the Dutch contingent were architects Dick van Gameren and Marcel van der Lubbe and Jannie Vinke of ANA architecten.
Working with Studio X Mumbai, the NAI organised the opening of the exhibition Architecture of Consequence in February 2011 along with an ‘unsolicited architecture’ workshop. The Dutch participants were Gijs van den Boomen (Kuiper Compagnons), Ton Venhoeven (Venhoeven CS) and Robert Verrijt (Architecture Brio) with Matias Echanove, Quaid Doongerwala and Shilpa Ranade among the Indian architects. Some of the results were presented in the NAI Exhibition Unsolicited Architecture which was developed in collaboration with Sao Paulo Lab and was selected as the official Dutch entry for the Sao Paulo Biennale.
In February 2012 the NAI is continuing its Indian Matchmaking Programme and launching an alliance between the NAI and the Indian project developer TATA Housing. Taking its lead from the Matchmaking Programme in China, the NAI has picked five Dutch and five Indian bureaus to collaborate on developing a plan for a realisable social housing project which they will submit to TATA Housing. The following Dutch firms have been selected for this Matchmaking project:
• ANA architecten
• Kuiper Compagnons
• VenhoevenCS
• Dick van Gameren Architecten
• DUS Architecten
Franz Ziegler Architecten were also invited to participate but were unfortunately unable to do so due to prior commitments
The Indian architects taking part are:
• Architecture Brio
• MO-OF architects
• Bimal Patel - HCP Design and Project Management
• Rahul Mehotra Associates
• Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA)
> International Activities
> Debates on Tour
> Matchmaking
> Travelling exhibitions
> Visitors programme
The NAI launched the Matchmaking Programme in China at the end of 2009,
aiming initially at housing in metropolises like Shanghai, Beijing and
Shenzhen. After exhaustive preliminary research carried out by the
think-tank Movingcities the NAI concluded that there is a serious lack
of good quality housing for large low-income population groups.
Furthermore, Chinese architects are also under pressure to develop and
produce buildings at a brisk pace that allows little time for
reflection.
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The NAI launched a matchmaking
programme in China at the end of 2009. The aim is to set up a joint venture for
a number of years in the field of social housing in China involving Dutch and
Chinese architects. Eight Chinese architects were invited to the Netherlands by
the NAI on 30 August 2010 to visit Dutch housing projects.
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The NAI welcomed a variety of
international visitors during the last few weeks. The largest project developer
in China, VANKE, was a guest of the NAI on Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 June.
In the previous week we had visitors from India: New Mumbai Architects.
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In connection with the DutchDFA programme for India, the NAI is targeting the urbanisation problems of the city of Mumbai. On september 5, during Design Yatra 2009, the NAi and DutchDFA organised a Debate on Tour, where Dutch architects explored the subject slum renewal with their Indian counterparts.
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The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) introduces its innovation agenda Architecture of Consequence (referred to in Dutch as Architecture of Consequence) with a book, an international, travelling exhibition and a congress in the last weekend of October.
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