Mending The Mills - Adaptive Reuse Of Sitaram Mills, Mumbai | Bachelors Design Thesis

Information

Project Name: Mending The Mills - Adaptive Reuse Of Sitaram Mills, Mumbai
Student Name: Dhiraj Sachdeo
Awards: GREEN INNOVATION AWARD, Nippon Paint- Asia Young Designer Award (AYDA) | COA THESIS AWARDS 2021, Shortlisted for COA National Awards for Excellence in Architectural Thesis 2021, & JK AYA Best Architecture Student of the Year Award 2021 | ARCHIRESOURCE'S THESIS AWARDS, Honourable Mention
Softwares/Plugins: AutoCAD , SketchUp , Adobe Illustrator , Adobe Photoshop

Year: 2021
Discipline: Architecture
Level: Bachelors Design Thesis
Institute: Padmabhushan Dr. Vasantdada Patil College of Architecture (PVPCOA)
University: Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU)
Location: Pune, Maharashtra
Country: India

Excerpt: Mending The Mills – Adaptive Reuse Of Sitaram Mills, Mumbai, an award winning architectural bachelors design thesis by Dhiraj Sachdeo from Padmabhushan Dr. Vasantdada Patil College of Architecture (PVPCOA), Vivekanand Institute of Technology (VIT), Maharashtra, India, narrates and identifies the past and present of the forgotten textile mill to the people of Mumbai, by putting dead spaces to use and also creating valuable public space for the city. The project aims to revive the forgotten textile mills and reestablish their relevance in Mumbai’s urban fabric.

Introduction: “Re-use” is the call of the century. This is applicable to our bags, furniture, or even clothes. A piece of cloth in every Indian household is only thrown away after it is worn outside, at home, on Holi, or has been used as a “pocha”, before it has completely depleted all its possible uses.

However, the question arises “What is our approach when it comes to buildings?” The neglect of our built heritage, today, has deprived us of a better association with our history, and the possibility of learning from it. This study (bachelors design thesis) presents a story of the mills of Bombay, and tries to find a meaningful ‘Re-use’ of one of the closed mills – Sitaram Mills, in a manner that it adds value to the present urban context of Mumbai.

The mills evoke memories of an industrial city that witnessed a myriad of developments. Once the economic backbone of the city, the mills gave a skyline of chimneys to the city of Mumbai. Today, however, 25 mills that lie under the National Textile Corporation (NTC) are, unfortunately, dead, defunct, and underused.

Architecture of Memory: Reimagining the Mills

Some of the recent redevelopments of these mill lands have led to commercial and political exploitation; while some others have become sites for many illegal activities. Rather than creating a narrow vision that imagines possibilities with a blank slate, thus erasing a significant part of Bombay’s history, the project uses “adaptive reuse” as a strategy to re-imagine the mills as a “mnemonic device” in the contemporary context, as a form of cultural landscape to transfer knowledge for creating an architectural experience. Borrowing clues from the Charles Correa Report, this mechanical device, set in the urban realm of the city, not only gives valuable public space back to the people, but also acts as a living memoir of the various stories that the mill lands have to narrate. Based on the context of Mills of Mumbai, the design proposal focuses on the site- Sitaram Mills, which is located in the urban context of Lower Parel, Mumbai, India.

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Site Context

The Defunct Mill campus of Sitaram Mills is surrounded by the Lodha Towers on one end and a row of informal settlements on the other. Once a functioning mill in an integrated campus setup, the Sitaram mill compound today stands defunct, only survived by 8-metre-high stone walls and an internal road that divides the site.

Final Outcome

Plaza of Thought and Action: Relevance in the Contemporary Context – The revitalization approach attempts to reinstate the campus setting by introducing a central pedestrian plaza between the three defunct blocks and rerouting vehicular access. The plaza becomes a pause point in the busy activity route, holding several smaller architectural remnants of the past. It becomes an attempt to initiate interactions and bring together people from the three blocks, which are otherwise different in function. A change in the paving material and pattern limited to the footprint of the old demolished structures acts as a strong reference point to the functional mill, symbolising an important part of the city’s history.

The chimney retained as an urban artefact, acts as a physical mediation between the past and the present. The amphitheatre becomes a space for collective pronouncement, hoping to become an informal forum where dialogues are initiated. The retained green pocket right in the centre of the urban plaza is an expression of accepting the current state of the mill and celebrating it. In many ways, these remnants invoke notions of human agency in the narratives of the past and become spaces for dialogue and interactions in the present.

To make the mills relevant in the contemporary context as well as respond to the reimagined public nature of the intervention programmatically, the compound aspires to become a “Plaza of Thought and Action.” At the scale of the immediate context, the plaza caters to the existing residents of the informal settlements and provides a workshop space for them to sharpen their skills in wood, metal, or electrical work.

At the scale of the neighbourhood, a co-working space and startup block become a collaborative space for startups, especially relevant for the growing IT sector in Lower Parel.

Completing the loop of “Think-Make-exhibitʼ, the Exhibition Block becomes the most public unit in the plaza, catering to the scale of the city. Along with large-scale exhibition spaces, it contains a library, a flea market space, and a cafeteria. Working within the partly broken mill, this block concentrates the heavy mass near the back walls, freeing up space that faces the plaza and creating a large public entrance. The library secludes itself from the otherwise public building, allowing one to find a quiet nook to read. The exhibition area on the ground floor has a huge ramp that takes visitors to the first floor, which houses a permanent exhibition of “the history of mill lands.” The objects on display in the gallery space use the old mill wall as a backdrop, making the mills an equal part of the exhibition.

Negotiating the Old and the New: Architectural Language –

The architectural language of the project carefully negotiates the existing mill walls and the new interventions, by retaining the original structural grid. The project pays homage to the past, while the contrasting use of steel identifies the new structures. This approach allows for a tectonic experience of the old mill walls, creating a harmonious dialogue between the past and the present. The three blocks within the plaza—the workshop block, the co-working and startup block, and the exhibition block—follow a common design framework that establishes a cohesive architectural language. This framework can be applied to future interventions at the numerous other defunct mills scattered across the city.

The project narrates and identifies the past and present of the forgotten textile mill to the people of Mumbai, by putting dead spaces to use and also creating valuable public space for the city. In the words of Macus Cicero, “The life of the dead is placed within the memory of the living.” The approach of erasing architecture wipes out connections with history and the possibilities of learning from it. This architectural design thesis, as a lived experience, is thus a testimonial to the architecture of memory. And in many ways, it is a larger comment on insensitive conservation practices in the city that “erase” rather than “adapt.”

[This Academic Project has been published with text submitted by the student]