Mumbai, a metropolis of missed alternatives?: Interview with Robert Stephens on his new guide, Bombay Imagined

Architect and Mumbaikar Robert Stephens’ new guide, Bombay Imagined, data unrealised plans for the town — from an underground railway to monsoon-regulating canals

Architect and Mumbaikar Robert Stephens’ new guide, Bombay Imagined, data unrealised plans for the town — from an underground railway to monsoon-regulating canals

Maybe Bombay/Mumbai is the one metropolis that’s so clearly the product of circumstance reasonably than deliberation. That stated, additionally it is essentially the most reshaped. In its greater than 300-year historical past as a rising littoral to mercantile to world metropolis, there have been as many misses as there have been hits. Architect and civic historian Robert Stephens’ (37) compilation of the unrealised tasks that might have formed Mumbai, Bombay Imagined: An Illustrated Historical past of the Unbuilt Metropolis, is the most recent addition to the literature on the town’s improvement, and maybe some of the important.

Robert Stephens
| Photograph Credit score: Tina Nandi

The American — one of many newest in a protracted, comfortable custom, to come back from exterior the town (in 2006) and to make it his personal — has rigorously and resourcefully prised out greater than 200 imaginations of Mumbai from, in his phrases, “two dozen establishments on three continents”. These embrace reclamation plans, infrastructural overlays, monumental structure, airports, and much more airports. All got here to naught, however nonetheless inform us of the town, of the time they have been proposed in, and permit us some wishful hypothesis. In doing this, the principal architect at RMA Architects has additionally dropped at mild some figures from its previous who deserve a greater place within the canons of historic personages that formed Mumbai. Edited excerpts from an interview:

How do you assess the relevance of archiving the unbuilt within the historiography of a metropolis’s improvement?

As a child in class, I cherished tug-of-war, although our staff nearly at all times misplaced. I like to think about the town’s constructed surroundings because the byproduct of an city tug-of-war. Historically, within the constructed historical past of most cities, one sees and hears in regards to the victors. Those that have been fortunate sufficient to have their desires translated into actuality take the cake of historiography. However for each scheme that was constructed, there have been one or two or three or a dozen alternate concepts difficult each other, every with distinctive and sometimes related arguments for his or her existence. By rewinding and exploring the town by these seminal moments of wrestle we glean insights into the very marrow from which our metropolis’s type, maybe one may even say her very soul, was crafted.

The Bandra Gateway and Civic Centre proposed by Scottish polymath, Patrick Geddes, in 1915
| Photograph Credit score: Tina Nandi

As soon as you bought into the momentum of gathering tales of unrealised tasks in Mumbai, how far did it’s important to forged your internet to assemble collectively this in depth archive?

After 15 years within the metropolis, I’m satisfied that phrase of mouth is the easiest way to get something carried out in Bombay. In the event you want a tailor, you ask a neighbour for a advice. In the event you want a very good dealer for locating an condo, you ask a buddy. The identical precept proved to be true in archival analysis. If it is advisable uncover those that imagined a remodeled metropolis, ask these you already know. For instance, though I by no means met Charles Correa, I knew about his in depth work on the town, main me to hunt out as a lot materials referencing him as I may discover. In an interview in 1986, Correa unveiled Le Corbusier’s failed dream to design the Air India Tower at Nariman Level. He exclaimed:

‘[Le Corbusier] requested Mr. Tata, however Mr. Tata refused. He turned down the best architect of the century and as an alternative employed a rotten third-rate agency from Chicago to design the constructing. Are you able to think about if Corbusier, on the top of his energy, had designed that constructing? … Ten or 20 different folks driving down Marine Drive would have been impressed to create a constructing like that. It could have modified our metropolis.’ Whatever the century through which they lived and labored, Bombay’s artistic residents have persistently cherished to reference these whom they each admire and despise. Phrase of mouth, even from these whose voices have lengthy been silent within the grave, proved to be essentially the most fruitful type of analysis in creating the Bombay Imagined archive, a group which attracts materials from practically two dozen establishments on three continents.

The elevation of Chisholm’s proposed Indo-Saracenic design as seen from Hornby Highway
| Photograph Credit score: Urbs Indis Library

You’ve got devoted this guide to William Walker. He’s, as but, an unknown determine within the historical past of Bombay’s city improvement.

I like to think about William Walker as one of many earliest environmentally-minded citizen-activists in Bombay’s historical past. He moved to the town in 1845, on the age of 45, and stayed for 20 years. Beneath the pseudonym of Tom Cringle, Walker penned dozens of dreamy articles which have been revealed in native newspapers, pointing his fellow residents to a future Bombay that was extra considerate, extra environment friendly, and in some ways, extra variety.

I like to think about William Walker as one of many earliest environmentally-minded citizen-activists in Bombay’s historical past. He proposed to mild avenue lamps with fuel captured through the cremation of Bombay’s deceased, and envisioned an open-air quarry jail the place convicts may work in direction of restructuring society with a rock strong basis.

Walker opposed the Again Bay Reclamation Scheme [arguing instead that the very centre of commercial gravity should shift towards the centre of the island where empty land already existed], and as a substitute proposed that the rocky foreshore needs to be remodeled right into a lush pedestrian promenade. Walker proposed to mild avenue lamps with fuel captured through the cremation of Bombay’s deceased [a gesture he deemed deeply symbolic… even in the darkness of death one exudes a bright light!], and he envisioned an open-air quarry jail on the mainland, the place convicts may work in direction of restructuring society with a rock strong basis [literally]. In the direction of the top of his tenure in Bombay, Walker compiled his articles right into a self-published guide and gifted one copy to Governor Bartle Frere, maybe in a ultimate effort to advocate for the town he cherished, however knew might be larger.

The forested hillside zoo on Chowpatty Cliff was to miss the economic panorama of Central Bombay
| Photograph Credit score: Aniket Umaria | Hypothesis

You commissioned round 30 works of ‘speculative artwork’, visions of tasks within the guide that had no visible documentation. How rigorous have been you in doing this?

Through the course of analysis, I’d usually come throughout plans that have been expounded upon with nice literary prowess. So evocative have been the written descriptions that I may see the scheme in my thoughts, although there was no identified surviving drawing for example the scheme. What started as a disappointing absence [because I was clear that every failed plan was to be supported by a visual] remodeled into an thrilling alternative once we determined to create speculations. The fundamental aspiration of every hypothesis was to recreate the town at a given time limit with precision utilizing archival maps and historic information, after which into that newly-created context embed the imagined. Within the house between these two primarily quantitative layers [the known historical and the unseen imagined], we let the creativeness fly. The tone of the sky, the lean of bushes, the setting of the solar and different forever-unknowns, these are the place the creative complemented the historic.

Which tasks, in your opinion, would have resulted in a Bombay considerably completely different from the one we discover ourselves in?

Out of the 200 unrealised visions that comprise Bombay Imagined, there are a few dozen which might have rendered the town unrecognisable from its Twenty first-century type. In 1720, the East India Firm’s Captain Johnson devised a scheme to chop a 30-metre-wide laceration throughout the town’s landmass from Mahalaxmi to Mazagon. The salt-water channel was to operate like a funnel, permitting the Arabian Sea to stream by, reasonably than over the town through the seasonal monsoon. Simply think about, if Johnson’s slice had been served, and succeeded, extra cuts may need adopted and Bombay would have remodeled right into a Venice-like surroundings, a flood-free metropolis of monsoon-regulating canals.

The Nice Channel was to operate like a funnel, permitting sea water to traverse by, reasonably than over, Bombay’s latent landmass
| Photograph Credit score: Aniket Umaria and Fauwaz Khan | Hypothesis

Do you suppose the bodily historical past of Bombay/Mumbai is a historical past of misplaced alternatives?

Generally, whereas trudging my method by Mumbai’s convoluted surroundings I wish to dreamstorm: what if lots of the utopian, altruistic plans from Bombay’s previous had come to fruition? If [engineer] PG Patankar’s Underground Railway of 1969 had been constructed, maybe my day by day commute within the native practice wouldn’t be the equal of a full physique therapeutic massage? Or, much more radically, if [journalist] Ajit Bhattacharjea’s proposal to ban personal autos within the Island Metropolis in 1973 had been realised, then perhaps I may enter into my dreamy future of being a pedestrian with out concern? For greater than three centuries, residents of Bombay have allowed themselves to dream freely, solely to awaken to a nightmarish actuality that has persistently turned its again on one daring imaginative and prescient after one other. Town of desires can be the town of missed alternatives.

The author is Professor of Structure at Sir JJ School of Structure, Mumbai.

By- The Hindu

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