Material worlds : [de]constructing the ethos of concrete in Mumbai

What can a building material tell us about a city? As the most widely used structural building material in the world, reinforced cement concrete shapes the urban form of several of our largest megacities Sao Paulo, Cairo, Karachi and Mumbai, to name a few. The predominant building form concrete takes in these cities, is of the concrete frame. This dissertation traces the emergence of the concrete frame as the preferred form taken by reinforced concrete in widespread urban applications, over a myriad of sculptural possibilities that the material offers. Proceeding from the assertion that the manifestation of form reveals to us the condition of its production, in other words the built environment of the city can tell us about the society that inhabits it - I investigate what I call the ethos of concrete in Mumbai as a way of understanding the state of some aspects of the city's society. It must be emphasized that I look specifically at ethos of production rather than reception of concrete framed buildings in the city of Mumbai. The findings of this thesis are both its method of investigation and its discoveries. The frame is seen as the form concrete takes in Mumbai; hence for the scope of this thesis, the frame is concrete in Mumbai. Using the concrete frame as a heuristic device to investigate the production of urban form in the city, the thesis constructs a narrative of the physical formation of buildings that make the urban form of Mumbai. The frame is investigated at two scales, the terrain of the city, and level of the singular building. The ethos of concrete here is its spatial ethos and its productive ethos, each of which are seen at the scale of the city and the building.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Shah, Priyanka (Priyanka Dinesh)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Julian Beinart.

• Architecture.
• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/43913

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/43913