Shivar guesthouse, after some searching our hotel was found, and after two hours of waiting (09.00 PM) the rest of the crew got up. It's the first day every one can go to Dharavi, and we will go accompanied by an Indian student from JJ college of Architecture. After a few hours(!) of breakfast, preparation and formation, we are sent out to go around the area, joined by not one but two very nice Indian girls; Sonam and Daksha, who would prove to be an essential part of our group -group love- .
Walking around, Slicing Through
Dharavi is one of the largest slums in the world, it layes in the middle of the financial capital of India; Mumbai. The social differences between the inside and the outside must be enourmous. How does this area effect our sences?
Our first encounter with this urban fabric was one of recording senses; smelling, listening, feeling, looking. As my part was 'feeling', I concentrated on temperature, texture (pavement) and the feel of space (do you feel welcome?).
Walking around, it becomes clear that Dharavi is as an island in the city; every street going into the slum has some sort of informal sphere because of the pavement and the few people standing inside. This informal sphere makes the space like a private one, makes one feel like an intruder, an alien quite an unwelcome feeling. Even walking down the borders of it, consisting of four-lane distributor of traffic and two major train lines, we are looked at with great interest; people are not used to our kind of foreigners. Even though we are moving though an area with over 1 million inhabitants with a density of more than 2 times that of Manhattan, which in other cases would imply a much higher publicness of the space.
Inside the urban fabric of Dharavi, one noticess a great diffrence between areas. The slum is not one; it consists of various little communities, which are formed by profesional, social, religious, and sometimes even family based bands, which are directly translated in the morphological structure .
Dharavi is a massive caved community for communities, with fortification walls made of train tracks and asphalt.
Inside the urban fabric of Dharavi, one noticess a great diffrence between areas. The slum is not one; it consists of various little communities, which are formed by profesional, social, religious, and sometimes even family based bands, which are directly translated in the morphological structure .
Dharavi is a massive caved community for communities, with fortification walls made of train tracks and asphalt.
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