SU08INDIA. MUMBAI, INDIA
MOBILE CRÈCHES: REDEFINING EDUCATION WITHIN INFORMAL COMMUNITIESwww.internationaldesignclinicINDIA.org
PUBLICATION at www.lulu.com
In the summer of 2008, the IDC, in partnership with Temple University and D.Y. Patil School of Architecture in New Mumbai, sent a forty-person team representing two countries, eight universities and six disciplines to Mumbai, where they redesigned the centers run by Mumbai Mobile Crèches - an Indian non-profit that provides education and health programs for children living on the construction sites of Mumbai.
During this five-week project, our team of students, artists, architects and designers would forge a collaborative effort with a people who spoke a different language, had different customs, and carried different values to address the complex and fluid set of programs, sites, and communities engaged by our client.
In terms of program, Mumbai Mobile Crèches did not want, or need, a beautifully designed school; they needed a beautifully crafted vision that could inform interventions at a range of scales, from furniture, curriculum and interior design to architecture and urban planning. In terms of site, Mumbai Mobile Crèches occupied dozens of sites around the city, providing services to communities ranging in size from a few dozen families to several hundred.
Moreover, given the fact that Mumbai Mobile Crèches would, on average, only occupy a site for two or three years before they had to give way to the condos and offices under construction, they required a vision that could move beyond these known conditions and address the specifics offered by future projects. The importance of this mandate would only grow over the next two years, as Mumbai Mobile Crèches worked to almost double their capacity and provide services to over 10,000 children by 2010.
To operate well within this context, our team realized that the value of the products created lay less in their quality as isolated acts and more in their promise as progenitors of future evolution. The team thus focused their efforts harnessing the momentum offered by the project’s existent systems and flows to create a design infrastructure that would inspire the type of “unpredictable regenerations” described by author Lebbeus Woods (1997). This created a bottom-up design process that prioritized concise moments of clarity over overarching design gestures. The resulting work quite naturally varied widely, ranging from small-scale furniture prototypes and curricular strategies to large-scale urban interventions and autonomous mobile schools.
As the project progressed, the team applied pressure to each of these points, testing their value relative to the existing flows of the project: those ideas anchored upon key principles quickly proved their mettle, garnering greater attention, while those that needed additional tenacity sought out strategic unions with other proposals through either a symbiotic merger or a complete consumption. A Darwinian approached emerged, one that would compel our team to judge the value of their work not as a static product, but as an open, evolving movement - a hybrid address of education that would allow our international partners to possess and evolve the proposed strategies in a meaningful way.
Projects from SU08 INDIA include:
- A 99-RUPEE ($2) WATER FILTER [AND OTHER ACTS OF GUERRILLA HYGIENE]
- shiftingEARTH: A PORTABLE TROMBE WALL [AND OTHER ACTS OF GUERRILLA CONSTRUCTION]
- mobileWALLSCAPES: (DE+RE)CONSTRUCTING THE WALL ON THE CHEAP
- movingFLOORS: KID-SIZED FREESPACE ON THE CHEAP [AND OTHER PLAYFUL ACTS OF EDUCATION]
- MYbottle: BUILDING COMMUNITIES WITH A WATER BOTTLE
- THE MOBILE MOBILE CRÈCHE: BUILDING A SCHOOL ON AN AUTO RICKSHAW
SU08INDIA. MUMBAI, INDIA | A 99-RUPEE ($2) WATER FILTER [AND OTHER ACTS OF GUERRILLA HYGIENE]
Every morning a truck pulls onto the sites occupied by Mobile Crèches to give the children and faculty their allotted water for the day. Although this supply is ample in quantity, it generally is insufficient in terms of quality, containing bacteria that must be boiled away before consumption. As the gas required to boil this water is quite expensive, the Crèche only boils drinking water, despite the fact that the bacteria contained in the water is often sufficient to compromise other activities such as washing.
To address this concern, our team turned to the sun. Using a standard sweater bag, a reclaimed tarp and four grommets, our team proposed creating a bag for transporting water that could unfold and expose its contents to the sun. After only 6-8 hours (longer if cloudy) of exposure the sun would eliminate over 98% of contaminants from the water, greatly reducing the likelihood that this water would cause illness. Although not sufficient to make this water potable by itself, this system would provide the crèche with water clean enough wash dishes and hands. When combined with the other hygienic systems proposed by our team, all of which used common materials such as paint and reclaimed wood to address concerns ranging from the location of various activities to health-related educational initiatives, this device could help Mumbai Mobile Crèches reduce the likelihood of water-borne illnesses and promote a healthy learning environment.
SU08INDIA. MUMBAI, INDIA | shiftingEARTH: A PORTABLE TROMBE WALL [AND OTHER ACTS OF GUERRILLA CONSTRUCTION]
During our second week overseas, our team noticed that children living in Mumbai have alarmingly high rates of illnesses brought about by various air-borne pollutants. In response, we expanded our research and uncovered several indigenous plants that could potentially remove these contaminants from the air. As this line of inquiry progressed, our team delved into matters of construction, hypothesizing that it might be possible to create a green wall that would help to clean the air. Just as important, given the ever-shifting nature of our client’s centers, this green wall could also be transportable. If the wall were constructed as two distinct parts, portable exterior structure and variable infill, once the school was no longer needed, construction workers could potentially drain the earth from the wall and return it to the site, where it would be retrained using a new set of indigenous plants.
Although quite interesting as a hypothetical, our team had no idea if this proposal could be executed using the means and materials available to the client. To answer these questions, our team analyzed this wall relative to other systems of construction currently used to create a crèche. From this assessment, we proposed a wall that could be constructed using a reusable outer form containing no more rebar than typically used in CMU wall construction, common plastic tarps, and various forms of earth and rubble - a system of construction that eliminated the need to purchase full blocks and minimized the amount of waste created during construction.
To ascertain if this system could be executed within the conditions of the project, the IDC, through funding from the AIA, teamed up with local laborers (individuals who would largely be responsible for building versions of this wall should it prove useful) to construct several experimental versions of the wall. Through these constructions our team was able to realize a wall that spoke to issues of commodity (how the proposal spoke to the site, program and budget), firmness (how much deflection could be accommodated before the wall would crumble), and delight (how the unique deflection offered by this proposal animated the wall both immediately through the play of shadows and over time as the wall moved to accommodate different forces).
SU08INDIA. MUMBAI, INDIA | mobileWALLSCAPES: (DE+RE)CONSTRUCTING THE WALL ON THE CHEAP
The families served by the health and education programs offered by Mumbai Mobile Crèches live on the construction site while they are a part of the construction effort. Therefore, as the construction progresses from foundation work to final interior fit-up and the project demands workers with new expertise and talents, these families move to new sites, prompting a constant shift in the population of the site. For Mumbai Mobile Crèches, which provides serves to children ranging in age from infants only a few months in age to pre-teens, this ebb and flow is quite significant, resulting in a constantly shifting student population. One week, the toddler classroom might be filled to capacity, the next, the infant room is bursting at the seams.
Not surprisingly, this constantly changing population leads to several challenges for the crèche. First, the space of each classroom must be able to accommodate new bodies at very short notice. Unfortunately, current construction techniques, which include brick and mortar walls and stud constructions, have limited flexibility. The result: either the crèche initially asks for extremely oversized spaces in order to accommodate unknown population shifts or they size the spaces to the entering population of students. In the latter scenario, the classrooms are outdated, in terms of size, only a few months after construction, often leading to overcrowding and underutilization within the same crèche. In the former scenario, the facility generally ends up being much more expensive than it needs to be, placing an unnecessary burden on the developer who pays for the construction and donates the site. This makes it more difficult for Mumbai Mobile Crèches to make the case for the crèche, potentially limiting the number of sites served by their work. In addition, by sizing classrooms to unknown increases in population, the classrooms can become quite cavernous, an environment that is antithetical to the welcoming, focused and controlled learning environment desired by our non-profit partners. A second difficulty encountered through this shifting population is related to storage and other support programs, which also must shift in order to remove cleaning supplies and other dangers from a suddenly ballooning toddler population or relocate facilities to accommodate the growing needs of an unanticipated explosion of the infant population.
To address these concerns, our team looked for new potential within existing wall and storage systems. Through this creative readdress, our students devised a portable interior wall system based upon the metal shelving already used by the crèche. By shifting and supplementing the materials used by the standard shelf, the students created a modular system that could easily shift to accommodate a shifting student population and provide more adequate storage without additional cost. In addition, the proposed system realized spaces and programs currently not offered, such as small reading and game nooks for the children of the crèche and more storage options for the teachers. Our team also incorporated various games and activities into the design and construction of the wall, potentially allowing the children of the crèche to radically affect the physical fabric of their classroom. The proposed system is also easily moved, allowing the crèche to quickly move the system to new sites and minimize the construction waste generated by their relocation. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all of these assets are realized for the price of the standard storage system already in use.
SU08INDIA. MUMBAI, INDIA | movingFLOORS: KID-SIZED FREESPACE ON THE CHEAP [AND OTHER PLAYFUL ACTS OF EDUCATION]
Mumbai Mobile Crèches provides the children who live on the construction sites of India with a dedicated space for education. Protected by the crèche from the construction work taking place immediately outside, the children are given the chance to escape from the rigors of their daily life and learn about life outside their community. Aside from the educational benefits of this arrangement, this gives the children a critical character foil to their dominant experience - a break from the construction site that helps them to reflect and see their experience in new ways.
To build off the successes realized through this arrangement, our team proposed several interventions at the scale of the child. For, although the crèche successfully provides an oasis for the children at the scale of the school, they currently have limited ability to provide such a structure at a smaller scale. In fact, aside from the provision of a child-sized play mat that marks the personal space of the child during various activities, very little exists to help the child carve out areas for themselves. Even fewer exist that allow the child to assume an active role in the definition of such zones. In order to address this concern and provide a more dialogical physical fabric for the child, our team attempted to build off the successes of the mat to realize new environments at the scale of the child. The first such proposal simply transformed the mat into a box that could serve as both seat and container for learning activities.
Covered with a material that welcomed acts of drawing and various learning activities, this intervention was intended to create a dialogue with the child, allowing them to intensify, in a small way, the relationship between themselves and their environment. Another project proposed intensifying this relationship further by providing ways to link a triangular version of this expanded mat together with other mats and creating a playlandscape that would encourage unpredictable forms, programs and occupations. Essentially a free-space at the scale of the child, this intervention was intended to allow the children of the crèche to have an active role in the construction of their environment and create an oasis for imagination and learning at a more intimate scale.
SU08INDIA. MUMBAI, INDIA | MYbottle: BUILDING COMMUNITIES WITH A WATER BOTTLE
During our first interview, Devika Mahadevan, the director of Mumbai Mobile Crèches, mentioned that the migratory workers served by her organization were, in many ways, invisible to the rest of India. Physically, the tall construction fences surrounding their homes hid them from sight. Geographically, the constantly shifting nature of their communities and associated lack of physical address erased the residents from any maps or studies. Democratically, the intense schedule endured by members of these communities erased them from the political process - a serious anomaly within a country that boasts great civic participation at all income levels. For the children of these settlements, this invisibility stretches deep into matters of memory and identity. That is, as members of a constantly-shifting community group, they lacked a fixed point of physical reference to their childhood - from infancy to adulthood, every house, every school, and every community they called home would only exist for a few years before it was erased by the homes, schools and communities of others. Growing up, they would have few photos of their childhood and few physical reminders of their early life.
In response, our team proposed several activities and curricular strategies intended to build identity and create physical reminders of the early life of these children. One such project used various educational activities to translate water bottles into memory capsules. Starting with acts of physical marking (painting, drawing, etc.), children would personalize their bottles. They would then be encouraged, through various exercises of observation and foraging, to fill their bottles with things found in their community that were of interest to them. These reminders would create a dialogue between the physical context of the community and the children, encouraging the children of the crèche to see their world differently. Through various show-and-tell exercises and projects, these reminders would also encourage conversations between the children and their classmates, building communal identity. By using the bottle to introduce the children to members of their new community when they moved (a fairly routine occurrence), this sense of community could travel with the child. To widen this conversation further and encourage other community-centered dialogues, individual crèches could trade their bottles with other crèches around Mumbai, Delhi, and Calcutta. As a final act in this progression, through acts of digital photography and websites such as Flickr, Mumbai Mobile Crèches could expand this conversation to the world. Aside from building awareness and aiding fundraising efforts, this expanded dialogue could result in international exchanges between currently ‘invisible’ people groups around the world - all for the price of a water bottle.
SU08INDIA. MUMBAI, INDIA | THE MOBILE MOBILE CRÈCHE: BUILDING A SCHOOL ON AN AUTO RICKSHAW
Before Mumbai Mobile Crèches can offer its health and educational programming to those living on the construction sites of India, they have to convince the developer to provide the land, labor, and material required to build a crèche. As the crèche has, to date, assumed a fairly traditional architectural form, this can result in the construction of a large brick and mortar structure that will exist for about two or three years before it is torn down to make way for the development under construction. This arrangement is obviously a bit wasteful, not to mention relatively expensive and time-consuming, conditions that do little to help the proponents of the crèche make their case.
In order to reduce this footprint, our team attempted to distill the essence of the crèche as efficiently as possible. Through this work, our team not only realized a more efficient brick and mortar structure, but also several strategies that exist outside this paradigm. One such strategy reduced the crèche to the scale of a trailer truck. Roughly the same scale as some of the smaller crèches, this mobile device could be positioned on site for the duration of the project, effectively replacing the more traditionally-aligned buildings currently used. Although more expensive initially, this crèche could be reused over and over as the developer realized new projects, resulting in a net savings and greatly reducing the environmental footprint of the project. A second proposal distilled this essence further, effectively reducing the infrastructure of the crèche to a series of components that could be mounted onto an autorickshaw or van. Called Mobile Mobile Crèche by its inventors, this proposal could easily travel from site to site. Upon arrival, it would unfold to reveal its core components and encourage others to expand its envelope as needed. As this proposal only requires a fraction of the material and labor called for by a traditional brick and mortar crèche, Mobile Crèches could potentially use this mobile infrastructure to radically expand their reach and exceed their goal of reaching 10,000 children by 2010.
