‘All that a city will ever allow you is an angle on it – an oblique, indirect sample of what it contains, or what passes through it; a point of view.’
- Peter Conrad.
What then is the architecture of our times?
“Bom-bai” is a visual documentary of the brutal urban landscape of our times. I believe we are a city in transition. A city that can either take its heritage and move into an aware future or transcend into a failure of ginormous proportions. High–rises have replaced 4-5 story buildings leaving a disparity in building language. The new flyovers and expressways, though a convenience to its users are changing how we read and map the city as an individual resident. The landmarks and known roads and junctions are disappearing under these new flyovers. Each part of Bombay had a language. Dadar was different from Bandra, which was different from Santacruz which was different from Borivali. Each place had its own culture. Today, its all the same.
I believe we are a city in the middle of a beautiful memory and a massive catastrophe.
Urbanization has been so rampant in the past years that it has become both an opportunity and threat to Bombay’s growth.
Coupled with growing migration from the rural and other cities of India, lack of infrstructure maintenance and addition and growing privatization of services, the general habitability of the city has lowered drastically, leading to consistently lower expectation of the masses.
As I document this city I realize the skyline has already changed since the last time I photographed it.
The reason behind this project is to question what we are leaving behind, and to leave behind, what we are building, as our legacy.
