after weeks of haggling(july-august) i had finally got the permissions from the housing society where i intend to have the project. although they have only allowed us to use the office, a stage adjoining to it and the ground, i quite like the space. though i had wanted a house here. the imagination of the project has qiute changed from what my initial discussions with prayas and manmeet were.

this space is one of those planned parts of the city(mumbai).... esp. a form of social housing. its planned for the LIG and the LMIG. the community spaces work quite  well here, since all the houses open out into a common corridor and at places these corridors widen into grounds for larger meetings. all the houses are G+1. though some will raise questions on the ideas of privacy in such settlements, they are debatable and also we can look at settlements in our socio-cultural scenario down history to support this kind of housing. but they are also facing pressures of 'the desired urban kind of housing' ie the apartment system.

urban planning and architecture have always debated on living patterns-with increasing individualism, nuclearisation, etc in urban life- negotiating with the various contexts to develop a system of community living. blame it on political/imaginative mediocracy very few experiments have been conducted in our country/ city. some of these projects are indeed interesting in terms of an imaginative process.

i wonder if i am romanticising with these settlements too much, coz i think it a very sucessful architectural experiment. also i feel like justifying it further since i have seen the way [people interact with each other in these clusters 

and for the project i intend to use the negative spaces that is the community spine and the ground. will update more info about this space since we have to intervene in here.