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The exhibition, State of Housing, has be-
en curated by Rahul Mehrotra, Ranjit
Hoskote and Kaiwan Mehta, the same
team behind the successful The State of
Architecture exhibition from 2016. Howe-
ver, it needs to be accessed independent-
ly and not as a second ‘part’ of The State
of Architecture. Unlike The State of
Architecture, which, to put it simply,
focused on the architectural achievemen-
ts and practices of India, State of Housing
is actually about the people who inhabit
these architectural spaces.
Food, clothing, and shelter, have
traditionally been considered basic needs,
and used as a marker for the measurement
of absolute poverty. Set against the
backdrp of rapid urbanisation and the
mass movement of people to the cities,
State of Housing looks at the condition
of housing in modern, technology-
obsessed India. The exhibition opened on
February 2 at the Goethe-Institut / Max
Mueller Bhavan Mumbai, and will remain
on view till March 18, 2018.
Though the title of the exhibition is a
statement, the exhibition itself is anything
but. In fact, it is the by-line of the
exhibition that provides a key to its
content and approach. Aspirations, Ima-
ginaries, and Realities are the three words
that hold this show together and bring
forth the emotions attached to these very
basic requirements, which, in popular
culture, have been equated with romantic
notions such as the universe or heaven.
Aspirations: To own a house or a
dwelling is an aspiration of every being,
irrespective of religion, race, or
economic background;
Imaginaries: Every person has a certain
imagination of the kind of dwelling she/
he would like to inhabit;
and then comes Reality: What is the
actual situation? Is India in any way even
close to meeting the aspirations of
its citizens?
Housing Research and Exhibition
Should the right to
housing be a
constitutional right?
The curators were well aware of the
complexity of the issues at hand and the
challenges of working on such a topic.
Their first step was to host a conference
in early 2017; it involved architects,
activists, designers, and urbanists who
have been actively working in the sector.
The conference formed the bedrock of the
exhibition. This approach allowed the
curators to pull together different voices
into the narrative of this exhibition. Their
next challenge surely would have been to
place these voices within a single
exhibition space, but to still maintain
their individuality.
The exhibition design ensures that
nothing is lost between the research table
and the exhibition space. The design uses
the walls of the gallery to put up an
exhaustive timeline marking important
dates and events in post-Independence
India, which are crucial to understand
the development and planning policies
and the position held by housing in urban
planning. From Nehru’s dream of a modern
India to the development of the SRA
(Slum Rehabilitation Authority) schemes,
the timeline gives the viewer concise
information on the changing
urban and rural landscapes, political
situations, and guidelines that have
affected the development of good
sustainable housing schemes across dif-
ferent cities in India. The timeline is an
educative tool — one that helps us
understand the complexity of the
situation and the stopgap approach
employed to rectify it through plans,
statistics and infographics.An ongoing exhibition on
housing in urban and rural
India attempts to construct
debates on subjects such as
the ideas of home and
homelessness, affordability
and adequacy, and the
history and outcomes of
policies and agencies that
facilitate the provision of
homes across segments of
society in the country. A
project by the Urban Design
Research Institute (UDRI)
and the Architecture
Foundation (AF), itencapsulates the housing
crisis and aims to create an
integrated database of case
studies, enabling a
comprehensive analysis of
the situation
Text by Amruta Nemivant
Photos by Rajesh Vora