Para-Situation [Mumbai]

Para-Situation [Mumbai] India takes the need for new world-scale agricultural and industrial revolutions a degree further. Working under the theoretical urgency of Ecosophy (The Three Ecologies, Felix Guattarri and Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson), this Architectural and Urban Design output from the post-graduate research-by-design studios of Dr. Dorian Wiszniewski, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA), University of Edinburgh, 2013-2015, reconstructs the organizational premise of the working city of Mumbai in light of the post-industrial and post-colonial legacies of the West. The work reconsiders the principles by which we consider and make the land productive and how people live in and around the urban/agricultural/ecological fabric of Mumbai. Rather than pursue the simplistic model of city inhabitants being served by separate and generally poorer rural colonies, the city is considered affirmatively as an aggregation of multiple communities with both distinct and shared interests in hybrid scales and types of production, amenity, dwelling and economy. These photographs form a part of the initial field-work and capture many instances that frame categories of what we might call para-situations.