Rahul Mehrotra wears many hats. The architect, urban designer, teacher, writer and conservationist is also that rare professional who has combined each of his roles with equal felicity. His work as an architect spans the entire spectrum from single family residences to social housing projects.
His work as an urban designer has seen him research, write and lecture extensively on civic and urban issues. Several seminal publications, mostly focusing on the city of Mumbai, have resulted from this engagement. He has taught for more than a decade before assuming his present position as the Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the GSD (Graduate School of Design) at Harvard.
Rahul Mehrotra was in Bangalore recently to speak at a lecture organised by MASA — Design Matters, a city-based forum that organises monthly lectures on architecture and design.
Larger concerns The first part of his presentation titled ‘Working in Mumbai’ focused on his engagement with larger concerns on the urban scale.
He spoke about how urban India provides a peculiar canvas where various realities collide and coalesce, each of them being simultaneously valid. This pluralism is seen in many South Asian countries which are still in a state of transition, and they give rise to the binaries of formal and informal, rich and poor, modern and traditional. The conventional idioms deployed in city planning deepen these binaries, polarising society and breeding inequities. He advocated instead the emergence of a ‘kinetic’ city which is elastic in nature, allows for incremental growth and for a dynamic appropriation of spaces. But designing for such an environment also calls for a different mode of thinking and working. As he said, ‘Designs have to be flexible, robust and ambiguous enough to accommodate kinetic qualities.’
Impatient capital He then talked about the nature of architecture that results from what he calls ‘impatient capital’ or capital that demands immediate returns, the results of which are seen everywhere in our cities today – glass fronted offices, malls and other paraphernalia of a ‘modern’ city. If an alternative has to emerge, it has to possibly accept the reality of ‘impatient’ capital and yet subvert it. In his work he has tried to do this through conservation projects which allow intelligent reuse of existing spaces, or by designing the building such that capital flows back independent of the total construction process (see box).
Attitudes and lessons that come from his work at the urban scale find their way into his architecture, and this was seen in the second part of his lecture where he presented projects that his firm had been involved in. He called this approach the ‘localising of global programmes and the globalising of local programmes’. The former plays out in what were hitherto unknown typologies in the Indian context. The offices for Hewlett Packard in Bangalore, and for Lakshmi Machine Works in Coimbatore are emblematic of this approach, where the design was not aligned to a Western model but to a localised model that segues seamlessly into the context. The latter is seen in projects that are uniquely Indian but can no longer be approached in a traditional manner. The housing project for elephants and their mahouts, and the design of a campus for slum children (see ‘Magic Bus’ box) demonstrate this approach. He also showed some projects that were initiated by his office, not by a client, and they emanated from a desire to provide design solutions for social problems, such as a proposal for toilets within a Mumbai slum. While it did get constructed, the project ultimately failed because it was hijacked by persons other than the intended beneficiaries. On the other hand, a proposal for the historic Fort precinct in Mumbai saw success, and it became the first designated conservation precinct in India. He felt that while architects routinely talk of their successes, it is important to also speak of their failures, and perhaps ‘aim to fail better’ in future projects.
Through all the work that he showed one saw a consistently thoughtful approach that sought to go beyond the brief and created an architecture that was embedded with layers of meaning beneath the simpler, outer envelope. While he talked about the need to respond to climate, materials, technology and context, the achievement of additional objectives saw a more nuanced and richer architecture emerging.
Each project became an opportunity to examine and reconsider accepted norms, sometimes creating new and previously unknown paradigms.
KMC corporate office
The Magic Bus campus. – PHOTO: ARIEL HUBER This structure had to respond to two imperatives – build and occupy, and embed sustainable features in the structure. Rahul Mehrotra came up with a solution that split the building into two parts. The inner core had an RCC frame with standard aluminium windows which could be constructed in a short period of time. The outer skin was a custom-built metal trellis with hydroponic trays to hold plants. The planting helped cool the structure; the variety of species, and the varying times at which they bloomed helped in animating the façade. With this separation, the office could start functioning independently of the façade which developed over time.
Magic Bus
The campus for Mumbai-based NGO Magic Bus was a place where slum children could visit for training programmes. The palette of materials used was restricted to those found in squatter settlements – corrugated metal sheets, rubble stone, planks of wood from crates – and then reconfigured. The idea was to take something that was familiar to the kids and then show them the possibilities of using the materials.
