Domestic Commons in Mumbai and Auroville

Abstract

India is a significant contemporary design laboratory for collective housing models in terms of both the construction of housing that experiments with new building materials and technologies and the design of flexible housing in informal contexts. Starting with a historical review of housing models created by B.V. Doshi and Charles Correa in the mid-1900s, this paper compares recent collective housing projects designed by Anupama Kundoo and Bijoy Jain (Studio Mumbai) in Auroville and Mumbai. The chosen projects explore new prototypes for housing and demonstrate the ability to respond in an original way to the growing challenges linked to environmental and social sustainability, opening up to new typological and technological experimentation.