The very first idea for my work came to my mind while I was coming back home from my second travel in India. I was in a cab in Mumbai, going to the airport, and from my window I was looking at the very poor houses along the road, wandering about some little and cheap changes that could improve their conditions.

I didn’t know yet, but I was crossing Dharavi, the biggest slum of Asia, the second one in the world (as somebody says, but it’s difficult to give numbers in these cases). Dharavi is an incredible working reality, always moving and growing. More than 1 million people lives there, in a slum too near to the centre of Mumbai to be ignored by economical interests.

I came back to Dharavi after 2 years - in 2008 - and I lived in Mumbai for 3 weeks studying the reality of Indian slums, the bamboo scaffoldings system and trying to do my best for my thesis to be as real as possible (I studied Building Engineering and Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano).

“SHANTITOWN” is a play on the words “shantytown” (meaning slum) and “shanti” (sanskrit word for peace).

The idea is to create a multifunction building system for emergency applied to the case of shantytowns. The frame is made with bamboo simply tied, as the techniques of Asian scaffoldings. The claddings are made with different recycled materials, as typical in cases of necessity.

All the material and the techniques are local, nothing needs to be imported, and local Indian workers can teach people to create their home and to maintain it.

I followed the principles of slum (recycled and cheap material, simple systems, teaching of techniques, multifunctional buildings..) trying to obtain the best comfort possible.

Saturday 30 October, 2010

Going on..?

In Summer 2009 I was in Tamil Nadu, in Pondicherry. Pondy is an ex French colony, a very quiet and clean placein just in front of the Ocean, inhabited by Indian people with Indian passport, Indian people with French passport, and people from all around the world just passing by or permanently living in a community called Auroville.


Auroville is an experimental town, an effort to create a place where people can live together in armony, sharing experiences and knowledge. Without a political or religious creed, Auroville today is inhabited by more than 2.000 people from all over the world.
It was created in 1964 on a dry ground, once full of tropical forests.


In Auroville there is a community of people - Sadhana Forest - who is trying to full this ground again with trees just like the firsts Aurovillians did (today Auroville's houses are to be found inside an amazing alive forest).
                                                                                  Auroville in 1964 and today:
I met the founder of Sadhana Forest community, Aviram Rozi, and I visited their homes, so amazingly similar to my thesis Shantitown. Aviram bought a new ground to build new guest housesfor the volunteers that come from all over the world to help them for free with their work. He found my Shantitown idea perfect for his necessities, but he needs help to realize it.
I keep on dreaming on a future realization...in the meantime, for more information on Sadhana Forest please visit: http://www.sadhanaforest.org                                                                   

Sadhana Forest buildings:

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