Synopsis
Working in Mumbai is a critical reflection on thirty years of the practice of RMA Architects. Rahul Mehrotra weaves a narrative to connect his multiple engagements in architectural practice, including teaching, research, documenting, writing and exhibiting since the establishment of the practice in 1990. The book is structured around the subjects of interior architecture, critical conservation, and work and living spaces that straddle the binaries of the global and the local as well as the rural and the urban. While the book is a portfolio of the selected works of RMA Architects, the projects are curated so as to unravel and clarify the challenges faced by architects in India and in several parts of the “majority” world where issues related to rapid urbanization and the impacts of global capital are among the many that dispute conventional models of practice. Working in Mumbai is used emblematically to interrogate the notion of context and understand how the practice evolved through its association with the city of Bombay/Mumbai.
About the Author
Rahul Mehrotra is a practising architect, urban designer and educator. He is Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and the John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Mehrotra founded his Mumbai- and Boston-based firm RMA Architects in 1990. RMA Architects has designed and executed projects in India and across the world, including government and private institutions, corporate workplaces, private homes, social housing, retail and art spaces, as well as conservation and restoration projects. In 2018, RMA Architects received the Venice Architecture Biennale Jury’s ‘Special Mention’ for “three projects that address issues of intimacy and empathy, gently diffusing social boundaries and hierarchies.” The projects of RMA Architects will be published as a book titled “Working in Mumbai” in 2020. Since 2014, Mehrotra has been a member of the CICA ― the International Committee of Architectural Critics. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Laxmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard. Mehrotra studied at CEPT Universty, Ahmedabad, where he received the gold medal for his undergraduate thesis (1985) and graduated with a Master of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD) degree with distinction from Harvard University (1987). At Harvard GSD, Mehrotra has served as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design (2010-2015 and 2020 to date); the Director of the Master of Architecture in Urban Design Degree Program ; and the Co-Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design Degree Program (2018 to date). He has also taught at the University of Michigan (2003-2007) and at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007-2010).
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