Cultural Heritage : A form of sustainability in this changing world

The Strategy world tour of Illinois Institute of technology Institute of design kicked off with its Mumbai leg on 7th of February. The delegates gathered at the Oberoi Hotel had a quick introduction and headed towards the 400 year old village in the heart of Bandra.

The evening began with us walking through the perfectly warm and welcoming streets of the Bandra village Ranwar conservatory. We assembled at the St.Jude bakery with the introductory talk by Ayush from UNbox and Quicksand. He explained how his practice builds on inspiration and insights from the ‘experiential reality’ of people — whether they be users, stakeholders or clients. He made us ponder on the thought that we are investigators — exploring the marvellous complexities of human systems and instigators — pushing a collaborative agenda for a vibrant articulation of the same.

Then we met the talented Ayaz Basrai of the Busride Studio. The inherent smartness and resilience of communities is somewhere forgotten and he strives very hard to preserve the heritage and culture at the village. Ranwar means a forest locality which is covered by a lush green vegetation cover. The village has beautiful East Indian culture influence along with Catholic influences as it is the major community residing in that area. He believes that innovation happens when you are willing to experiment with your business model and have a vision. Their design philosophy revolves around solutions that produce actual, measurable results rather than green certificates for a building. They believe in intelligent design based on scientific reasoning, and not airy-fairy architectural ideas. Be it getting a dumpster and cleaning the place all by yourself.

Ayaz has worked on various descriptive scenarios to form a story line and redefine the personal sphere of influence. His challenge was destroying the myths related to the surroundings and trying to compete with the city’s pushing force. The Ranwar square is a living heritage and the families have their own buiding techniques. This conservatory project is a perfect example of systems thinking and problem solving. An ideal street scenario was also looked upon to have a heritage walk. In preserving the cultural heritage there will be several risks but determination, conviction and experiments will lead to success. Vertical expression of the structures was tried out in this project and failures were faced as the houses are internally connected and the people have internal disputes. There was another insight on closed loops where selling doll houses was a successfully experimented engagement. Various way finding projects were also carried out.

We also had a talk with a local cultural heritage enthusiast and a walk through the 400 years old St.Andrews Church. He expressed his passion towards preserving the church as a community not physicality.

Heritage Conservation should be an expanding notion. This also needs to create a sense of lineage and look at land as a heritage not as an entity. One of the great strengths of design is that we have not settled on a single definition. The question is how to prioritise on things when all you are given is ambiguity. The biggest factor is empathy — the art of placing yourself in other people’s shoes. An empathy map is a tool that I have used a lot during my under gradaute college days but its relevance was understood completely in this scenario. The more you empathise with the user the design solution aligns better in the scenario and this results in a long-term engagement and customer loyalty.

The evening at the Bandra took a beautiful twist with the delicacies prepared by Chef Gresham who is the group executive chef of Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality at the St.Jude Bakery which is now an erstwhile defunct bakery. The concept of the food revolved around communal cuisine. He believes in a gypsy kitchen model. The delicacies were cool interpretations of the communal cuisine. The space is warm and welcoming and has a lot of ancient architecture and reflects the East India culture through the light installations, mosaic patterns and furniture. The food theme revolves around communal dining and invite suppers and events to create a conversation on urban heritage and preservation.

The food was a unique experience right from the presentation of the dish , the colours , texture, taste, garnished to perfection. The tomatoes blasted once put into the mouth producing vapours that stimulate the nasal passages more than the tongue because of the wasabi plant was a multi sensory experience by itself. We tasted several other dishes prepared having their main ingredients as pork, tapioca, onion, mushroom, strawberry and chicken. I could relate the delicacies tasted to a colour palette by two entities : their colour , texture had either a warm or cool expression and their taste generated a different colour expression.

Chef Gresham and his team have created a beautiful food ecosystem where they invite housewives and create a collaborative environment , a model similar to that of the pot luck meal. The night ended with the perfect pop up dinner at St.Jude’s Bakery.