Introducting the Team at UERO

Urban and Environmental Research Organization (UERO) was realized after several cups of coffee and constant discussions about urban issues in the city and across the globe. It has idealized with the vision to attain a deep rooted understanding of our cities and the process of continuous transformation which needs immediate attention. UERO believes that transformation is inevitable while innovative and sensitive urban insertions can prove to be very effective. At UERO, every research project has a strong theoretical understanding that leads to practical, sensitive and innovative design solutions. 

Sameera Rao, Ashlesha Kale, Samruddhi Raje, Saadiya Rawoot  ( From Left to Right)

Ashlesha kale is a Mumbai based Architect, has keen interest in writing on grass root  Urban Issues. She also loves to teach basic design and experiment with students on various techniques of design. She has been a jury in various Architecture schools in Mumbai and Pune. She also loves travelling and believes in the fact that a good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. She has travelled in various parts of India such as Jaipur, Delhi, Pondicherry, Auroville, Jodhpur, Udaipur ,villages of  Maharashtra,Mumbai,Pune, Karnataka,etc and world such as spain, Europe, USA, China, Hongkong, Seoul, Dubai. She has been a speaker on urban morphology conference in china. She also loves reading theories on urban issues and is in the process of finding a new theory on urban issues for the present time. She is a urban design post graduate from CEPT and is presently heading the Masters Program in Urban Design at D.Y.Patil College of Architecture, Mumbai. She is also the Principle of Research and Publications, UERO. 

Sameera Rao  a graduate in Landscape Architecture from Ball State University, Indiana and an urban designer by heart is an associate at UERO. She teaches at D.Y.Patil College of Architecture with a socialistic and humanistic approach to design.  She believes in challenging the existing systems and creating new alternative approaches to design to create habitable living environments. She strongly believes that design is everybody's business and the city dweller has a crucial role in the evolution of his environment. Some of her research interests are Public Spaces in the City, Informality as an Urban Form, Design Thinking and the Role of Research in Education. 

Saadiya Rawoot and Samruddhi Raje are the young and dynamic urban researchers of UERO with a passion to discover the secret behind the evolution and the constant growth of cities. They are curious and anxious to learn the existing theories and understand the metamorphosis through observation, analysis and design.

What's going on UERO?

Here are the projects that we are currently working on:

Great streets in Mumbai

We identified four popular streets in Mumbai and had our students on the streets to critically map them early May. Colaba Causeway, Crawford Market, Marine Drive and Flora Fountain have been our four sites of study and have been analysed in depth to understand the publicness of these spaces. We are now working on the final boards and a documentary film that will unveil the complexity of the fabric of the city of Mumbai!

Crawford Market -Sketch by Pranay

                                           

Colaba Causeway - Map by Gaurav

The final boards will be presented in a public space and will be open for discussion and critiques to initiate public participation in the design of our cities.

How to incorporate bylaws for vegetable farming in urban areas?

With Mumbai having the highest population density and very low per capita open space, creating alternative solutions for open spaces is an important concern. Vegetables today are grown in distant villages and transported to the cities and several agents are involved in the process thus creating a vast difference in the cost at which the vegetables were bought by the farmer and is being sold to the consumer. And also, for mass production of vegetables several chemicals are used and we don't really know what is in our food. Today, there is an awareness towards organic food and a parallel system for growing vegetables in urban areas like terraces and roof tops can be explored. This will also help in reducing the heat island created in cities and create open spaces that are immediately accessible.


Market square in a new town

The organic development of a market square in a planned new town of Navi Mumbai has been documented through a participatory approach. This formation of the urban plaza will be analyzed through different theoretical frameworks to understand in detail the humanizing factor of an urban space.

Art Installation on the site ( Sector 6 Plaza, C.B.D. Belapur)

Public Participation about the Proposed Design for C.B.D Belapur

Interactive Art on the Site

Understanding the real density of Mumbai

Four 1 sq km fabrics in the city of Mumbai have been identified to understand the densities and the diversity in building typologies. This approach has been adopted to explore the varieties of typologies, their respective densities and fabrics that make the city of Mumbai. Dadar and Abdul Rehman street are being considered as the first few cases for the study of density.

What should be the edge like along the Mangroves?

While Navi Mumbai is the largest planned city in the country, today it is constantly reclaiming mangroves and busy violating the public policies. So the Landscape Elective studio is currently researching on the threatened mangroves and others under threat. It will propose alternative approaches Policy level decisions and guidelines for for Mangrove Landscapes.

The Housing Studio - 4th Year Architectural Design Studio ( Ashlesha Kale and Team)

With rapid urbanization and constant migration from rural to peri urban and urban areas, the Gaothan in Karave is an example of the naturally existing blur between completely urbanized and areas under threat for urbanization. This case was taken up in the 4th Year Housing Studio of D.Y.Patil College of Architecture. The process of study and design solutions produced in the studio will be developed into a book to document the findings, research methodology and pedagogy in the studio.

Studio Work - Porus

Student Work - Porus

Chandivali lake edge at Bandra

                                     

Mumbai - a transforming gaothan!

Urban Landscapes is an elective offered by Ashlesha Kale and Sameera Rao at D.Y. Patil College of Architecture to 4th year students. The elective class in Urban Landscapes took off with the study of Bandra Station Precinct. Although as the study got deeper the whole of Bandra is being studied to understand its evolution, transformation and shift from being the queen of suburbs to that of chocked roads, taller buildings and soaring real estate prices.

Discussion in the class

Bandra has evolved from a collection of several small villages to a residential adress of glamour, entertainment and stardom. Bandra has the unique distinction of having 5 churches and the Basillica of the our lady of the Mount. With Bandra Kurla Complex becoming the new business hub of the city, the older generation cannot quite visualize this ever changing image of Bandra.

Mapping Land use

Understanding Bandra Through evolution and several other layers

Mumbai is a walkable city, a city of intermodal transport systems and a city where only 5 % people use private automobiles. With all stations demonstrating intermodal transportation, this image of where the train stops, the bus starts and when the bus stops, there is a cab or an auto waiting is very obvious at Bandra Station. Standing in the foreground of the splendid colonial Bandra station, one can notice the trains, the buses and the autos all moving at the same level which is a model that several countries are striving for today. On the contrary, in the background of the station is the unending skywalk that takes off at the kalanagar station and lands at the Bandra talao. This skywalk runs mostly empty yet has been repeated in several parts of the city.

Bandra Station ( West Side)

Colonial Bandra!

The legendary skywalk!

The built and the unbuilt!

Empty skywalks unmanageable streets

Waiting for the interchange!

Bandra talao which was once known as the pink lake is highly polluted and almost unused today.The restoration plans for Bandra lake talk about having musical fountains, improved sidewalks, flashy lights and other features to make this a city level public place for youngsters aspiring the landscapes of the west. Most of the people living in the low rise and mid rise are tenants as the owners have all moved out of their houses eagerly waiting for the redevelopment plans to take shape. Thus the character of Bandra as a suburb that had its ancestral origins in the Portuguese, the Marathas and the British is seen slowing dissolving in the sea of the redevelopment plans. And the vision of all redevelopment plans is undoubtedly to create a world class city with world class amenities.

along the lake

While this story is not unique to Bandra it is really a story of the commons. The wait for redevelopment of houses with a slightly increased FSI and unattended public spaces also desperately awaiting restoration programs to meet the aspirations of our foreign returned youth is the plight of the streets and neighborhoods of the suburbs of Mumbai! Thus, a gaothan under constant threat to redevelopment is a metaphor to the city of Mumbai!

the old and the new!