As Mumbai has grown, both upwards and outwards, it can often seem that there is little care that is given to the city’s built environment. Gated communities, crumbling mills and improvised shanties can be spotted, often within steps of each other. A new documentary Reading Architecture Practice Mumbai made by Rajeev Thakker, Samarth Das, Shreyank Khemalpure, Sunil Thakkar and Philippe Calia is a 37-minute long film that sees five architectural practices sharing their thoughts on the built environment in the city and how it has influenced their work, and how they think about projects in the city. The questions asked to each interviewee are the same, but in their range of answers, one gets a glimpse of how each one looks at the city, and their practice’s role in it.
Impressively shot, by using both street level images, as well as sweeping views from above, the documentary manages to convey the multitudes — of people, professions, neighbourhoods, buildings and lives — in the city, while also honing in on specific images that give the city its unique character.
It is this unique character that Sameep Padora, one of the interviewees, cites when talking about the projects he works on. The other architects and practitioners interviewed are, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty from the School of Environment and Architecture, heritage architect Vikas Dilawari, Aneerudha Paul, Director and Rohan Shivkumar, Dean of Research and Academic Development at Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and urban planner P.K. Das
Propelled by passion
In a joint interview to The Hindu with two of the filmmakers (also architects) Thakker and Khemalpure talked the idea behind the documentary, which both men spoke of with a passion that is belied by the film’s academic distance. For Thakker, the fact that, “There’s very little public discourse right now in the city, or even in India, between people within this profession,” was the key reason that he wanted to see this project to fruition. The medium of digital film was decided because as Khemalpure explains, “We all agreed that film should be the format, since its reach is very, very different than a book, or an interview piece in a magazine for that case.”
When it came to getting collaborators on board, it was something that happened organically. An earlier conversation between Thakker and Samarth Das (PK Das’ son and an architect) had led to Das sharing he was keen on working on a project of this nature, and from there, the team took on more collaborators. “We did a small brainstorming session [among each other] to see what are the different fields or formats of practice that exist, broadly and what are the kind of categories that you see in Bombay. You know ranging from a commercial architect to an activist kind of a range, but also academicians —teachers or professors who engage with students and prepare students to be an architect, and all of that kind of thing,” says Khemalpure, about the selection of the architects that are seen on-camera. The bottom line though, was that the on-camera speakers should, in Khemalpure’s words, “Do something or the other with the city, and they are concerned about the city.”
Common threads
Some of the latent themes that come across in the documentary, is the fact that architecture, in a city like Mumbai, has to serve more than just the builders. As Padora says “The city today is the place of neo-liberal mechanisations of capital.”
There are some other issues that each interviewee talks about, aside from the fact that the profession has to think holistically and move beyond silos. As conservation architect Dilawari questions, “Whether this new development [in the city] can become the heritage of tomorrow?” Both P.K. Das and Rupali Gupte talk about architecture inherently being a social practice, and beyond thinking about what is built, the city should satisfy the social needs of its residents, whether that be markets that extend onto city pavements or promenades that allow citizens to enjoy the coastline, to name just two examples.
Perhaps the most interesting point raised in the documentary is the fact that each of the interviewed subjects views architecture, through a different lens, be it social, philosophical or pedagogical.
While the documentary does not provide any prescriptions of solutions to the multitude of questions raised during its short run time, the hope for the makers is that by putting varied architects on the same platform and fostering a discussion, the movie can start a conversation on the city, urbanisation, its social fabric and how it impacts the city, which both makers hope will start at the film screening and carry on among architects and concerned citizens. Says Khemalpure, “This is a documentary of ideas,” while for Thakker, his biggest takeaway is that “these practices would not exist without Mumbai, they just couldn’t exist in their current form, because the city has actually made them,” showing how for all of its haphazard development, the city ultimately, is something that both has to be shaped and shapes in equal measure.
Reading Architecture Practice Mumbai will be screened at G5A Foundation for Contempory Culture, off Dr E Moses Road today at 7 p.m followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.
