Bazaar [+] : addressing critical adjacencies in Mumbai's urban farm

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the city of Mumbai, and evolves the notion of how "critical adjacency" has been instrumental in guiding the city's urban transformations into modernity. Presently, Mumbai experiences some of the highest densities and land value Levels in the world, and the city still continues to grow. New development in the city often involves the displacement of slum dwellers to the periphery of the city, or further diffuses them into obscure interstices of the urban fabric. This thesis takes an ethical stance which calls for the reincorporation of these "slum publics" back into the fold of the central city by experimenting with manipuLations of adjacency and grain at the urban and architectural scale. The expectation of the thesis is that through tactical collisions of multiple socio-economic publics, new commercial development can serve both top down and bottom up modes of modernization.