Mumbai: Second Week

March 10: Mapping Dharavi Main road

Mapping Dharavi Main Road

How can you take a picture without looking at the camera, knowing that you are being measured by the people who walk next to you?

March 11:

An open Discussion with the teachers about what we were doing.

March 12:


Tour through the city, we drive around in the bus the thing that called my attention was the fishermen village. A small place in the middle of the city which I imagine was completely swallowed by Mumbai and now it can be consider as a slum. We ended in a movie theater to see Bollywood. Of course I felt sleep.

March 13:
A day without a camera by myself and without the opportunity to draw anything.
We had to find Amina Khan, social worker in Muslim Negar. Amina lives there since 1947 and everybody knows her and she also knows everybody. Amina is an incredible woman a complete matriarch. The presence this woman has inside the Negar is huge, almost scary to tell the truth. Even when she live in Dharavi, I have the impression that that woman is everything but poor. She was very helpful for us and she helped us to understand the culture and the History of Muslim Negar.

March 14:
Another day without a camera by myself and without the opportunity to draw anything.
We met Azif, another social worker in Muslim Negar. As Amina, he gave the impression of being quite wealthy, if not wealthy, not poor. His presence is not a strong as Amina’s but it is obvious that he also knows a lot of the Negar. It is a shame that we did not have any other opportunity to talk with him.

Mumbai first Weekend

March 8


We went to visit the temples but I think what I enjoyed the most was the attempt to fly after the sunset.


March 9

We were free, so we went to Elephanta Island.

Mumbai: First Week

March 3: Mapping the Border


The street: Hundreds of colors, women dressed in white, red, blue, green, purple, red hairs in henna. People are walking all at the same time in the same space in between the cars.

March 4: Mapping the section

A curious child is looking at me. He is standing half of his body behind the door in which in front there is some kind of food drying in the sun.

March 5

Reality Tour, no cameras allowed, quick, very quick drawings:
At first I thought that is a way to make the slum a touristic theme. I still think that, however it indeed showed very interesting things, some of them is how organized is Dharavi. It is divided in zones with a clear division of the use of space, establishing zones for industry and living. I found amazing the thing that there is a School where half of the plot is occupied by it and the other half is a garbage deposit.

March 6: Map production

First day of production of the maps, everyone is busy; the hotel became a workshop where all of us are trying to create the maps. Also we had an invitation to a religious celebration where people offer small sacrifices in forms of flowers in the presence of the priest who is singing and praying.


March 7: JJ School

We went to JJ School to a conference in the morning, during the afternoon we worked on the maps with the Indian students in the workshops of the Faculty. There was something missing in our map and it was a drawing made by Ved (our Indian group mate). After the work was done I started to enjoy the light that can only be achieved with a camera in a tropic country. To do this i counted with the help of my groupmate who acceded to be the objective of my shoots.

Mumbai, first experiences

March 1st
I just realized what we are doing or what I am doing, it is quite amazing. At this moment we are in our way to our next destination. The words “grazie” and “prego” are in the back. In front a strange language is spoken by a couple, I imagine is the same language we will hear for the next three weeks. At my left that language again and at my right an open international newspaper with a headline about Israel. Soon we will see a boring movie and I won’t be able to sleep for the noise of the engines that keep us in the air.



March 2nd
We are at the University of Mumbai. We already passed our first experience, taking the train in Sion Station. We were divided in men and women, so my three partners were separated from me. The train arrived; I went in, one hundred people fighting each other to get inside a wagon very small.

Study Cases

The City of Dead, Cairo

Our study case was the cemetery of Al Qarafa in Cairo which calls the attention of people all around the world for the fact that people live in this cemetery. Our first reaction was to be scandalized by this fact, however, after look for the history of the place we realized that we were judging too soon without any knowledge of what is actually happening. This research helped us to understand that the differences in culture and traditions can be so powerful that before trying to understand a place we should try to at least get informed of the culture that the people who lived there have.

@tlas | photography | ed kashi | cairo
The Cemetery of the Living: Cairo's Al-Qarafa

Mapping senses in Delft

How to do the map?
We start to discuss how we were going to make the map. At first we started as any other Architect, looking things from above. However, after a bit of discussion we decided to do a map focused only in senses, smell, sight and sound. We choose a specific location in delft with the idea to achieve a broad type of people.

Discussing the maps

Mapping Sound
We split in groups of 2 people; each group took an specific sense, in our case we had to map sound. To do this we decided to ask people in the street to wear headphones and cover their eyes with the idea of isolate the senses. After that we uncover the ears for a period of time of 30 seconds for the people to be able to concentrate only in the sounds surrounding them and give their impression of what they heard.

Mapping Sound

Result:
In our effort to map the sound we measure the sound with two different instruments. The first: the ears of the people, people were told to tell us how strong was the sound and if it was disturbing for them or not.
Second: A technological device to measure the decibels of sound, with this we knew exactly how strong the sound was in that specific places and we were able to compare with the answers of the people.
Te fact is that in places were the sounds are created by traffic, people find it more disturbing and strong, even when the decibels were inferior to those that existed in other places.


Reflection:
A map based in sound not just will demonstrate were the sound is stronger but it can be used to know how people react to different sounds. It is not the same to hear the sound of a person talking loud than a horn of a car in the street, even when the person can be as loud as the car or even louder.

Salaam Bombay

A good movie
The movie of Mira Nair tells the story behind what we are able to see. The part of life that is hidden for normal eyes and reveals only to those people who are involved in such way of life is presented here in a very delicate manner. From my point of view this movie is a good piece of art that helps to know what we will never understand.

Heteroropia

A very interesting concept:

Places that mirror other places, it begins to function fully when people find themselves in a sort of absolute break with their traditional time. It lies in the sphere of culture. The theater, the soccer field, the temple, universities, schools, graveyards, places that reflected what could happen in reality but should not happened in reality.

Difficult concept to understand because I never knew if it was the physical place or the state that people acquires when they enter to this places. If I have to think about it, I rather not fully understand the concept because I like to think that I live in heterotopia and that implies that my mind is the place that mirrors all the other places.

MAPPING

Our costumes are always reflected in the things we throw away.

Urban device: An object to promote a social practice.
We decided to create a map based on the garbage that is found in the different spaces of the faculty of Architecture. Out of this the idea was to create consciousness of how much garbage we produce and to understand the behavior of the students in the different spaces of the faculty.

A very simple proposal:
Small boxes that will contain a sample of the garbage that is found for people to recognize what they are doing. The proposal was thought for the faculty but it can be applied in different things. It was thought to be presented in different spaces as public squares in the city. It can also be a comparison between different cities or even countries.