CITY MUSEUM​
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MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA
of the museum extension in the Ranibaug complex: the public entrance is shifted to the Watchtower that lies on the axis of the Triumphal Arch and a new Information Centre is situated on the axis from the museum; the same axis is extended through a pavilion on the ground level; with large public open areas connecting programs and activities throughout.
of the museum extension in the Ranibaug complex: the public entrance is shifted to the Watchtower that lies on the axis of the Triumphal Arch and a new Information Centre is situated on the axis from the museum; the same axis is extended through a pavilion on the ground level; with large public open areas connecting programs and activities throughout.
What is the role of a city museum?
What are the connections that it is capable of making?
Can we create a dignified dialogue
between the old and new by allowing them to be as they are?
Is the museum meant to be a grand white box?
How can we create an environment of chance and exploration?
Is the way of making a building palatable and popular by amalgamating all the tensions?
Extension to a city museum
8000 sqm
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The city of Mumbai will, in the foreseeable future, have a city museum in the confines of the Ranibaug and Bhau Daji Lad Museum complex. This project is an imagination of what that building in this rich context should or could be like, although a large international starchitectural firm has already made the conceptual design for the same.
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The site has layers of history and meaning accorded to it owing to various developments in its time. The old Triumphal Arch is the gateway to the Botanical Gardens, along with an old “Palmhouse” for “tropical” plants, similar to the one in the V&A Museum in Britain at the time it was built. The structure is in a state of disrepair and the gardens have paved way for a zoo where locals and tourists traipse to enjoy a little bit of nature and respite in the otherwise overstimulated city. In this sits the beautifully restored Bhau Daji Lad Museum, which houses vignettes and objects illustrating Bombay’s culture and history. There are a few oddballs such as the “Kalaghoda” statue that was moved from the location that takes its name from it to the Ranibaug during the British Era, and so has the Elephant sculpture from a historic island near Mumbai, which inspired the name Elephanta for the same, apart from several other statues and busts. A rather inconspicuous, but glorious piece of architecture, nonetheless, is the clock tower at the very edge of the site and the city pavement, Apart from this, a large playground, bustling with activity throughout the day, forms the corner of this potent, urban plot, which is interestingly also the site for the new museum building.
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The city of Bombay/Mumbai/Bambai/Whatever-one-chooses-to-call-it is akin to the ‘bambaiyya bhel’, which essentially embraces a myriad range of ingredients that aren’t necessarily similar to each other. It would be interesting to imagine the city museum as a ‘bhel’ that would combine such diverse constituents of the site, which includes the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, the Botanical Gardens and Ranibaug, an old Clock Tower, an Observatory, a Garden, a Play-ground and the Museum Extension Building. This shall root the extension building into this rich mix and make one aware of the setting of the new museum
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The exploration started with the question:
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What is the value of a museum in a city?
Museums are often panned for being "white boxes" - that are self-indulgent, elitist - and that engender systems for cultural tourism
so, when the opportunity for making a museum in my city present itself, I don't want to start by programming a new museum, but look at the city I've loved and loathed and see it for what it is, what it means to me.
Bhelpuri, anyone?
Mumbai city’s image is much like a ‘bambaiyya bhel’-an eclectic mix of the people, who call themselves Mumbaikars, and their cultures. This forms a sometimes-confusing social fabric. What this also does is it gives the city its epithet-the city that never sleeps. At any time of the year, one finds people dancing and making merry on the streets, blasting loudspeakers at crude volumes and burning the meaningless cracker that the todaphari is, when they are not busy with their daily routine. People are always in a hurry – something that must have rubbed off from the ‘local ‘. If those who live in the city are the figurative organs of the complex/strange body then the transport networks form the blood circulation system. The local trains other than being a means of transport are peculiar environs where no matter what class, caste or state of mind a person is in, he/she is suddenly overcome with a sense of belonging. The sheer number of people, most of them interesting, is awe striking to an outsider. Mumbai represents excess. The excess number of individuals aside, one finds an obscene amount of resources being pumped into this ‘mega polis’. This creates excessive rubbish-it’s ubiquitous! Televisions are blaring with politicians’ speeches and Salman Khan demanding he stay eighteen ‘til he dies! What do we really value in the city?
What makes us retain some spaces more than others? Baolis were spaces that stored water. That is probably one reason they were built. Gardens were kept because of their ability to lend a beatific setting in our cities. We value the Ranibaug for it’s a space of relief from the urban chaos. The museum functions as a box that stores remnants of a culture bygone. The building should talk about the technology of today. Is it a huge container that stores and opens to the public?
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The site and will be an important factor in contributing to the perception and image of the museum. Also, hawkers and people wandering around on the pavement-what becomes of them? Bhau Daji Lad and the Triumphal Arch remain hidden, but the green edge towards the street-interaction is minimal.
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Easy approach. Visiting the museum or an art gallery must beckon even the person who doesn't want to. Free like the Jehangir art gallery where I walk into it easily and enter an alternate world-different from the uproarious and lousy mass media.
Like the city that is of a displaced nature, where nothing remains of its own, the Museum also has a certain ephemeral quality to it. The structure remains constant, the content changes. The permanent exhibits may dictate the nature/geometry of the structure.
Ultimately, the building will go beyond the museum itself. Its role is not limited to the art that it displays but a space for discourse and discussion that it creates. The existing plaza can be extended to become a larger one that will hold the public functions of the museum. The existing 'ground' shall be lifted up to the roof of the museum calling the city to take charge and thus becoming the playground it never was.
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How does the museum sit between the road and the Ranibaug and with the existing museum at the side? Could it become the gateway to Ranibaug? Or does the Ranibaug take over the museum? Or will represent what Mumbai stands for-excess. Or do away with it and go back to the time in history where it didn’t even have sufficient land to stand on and pushed forward with minimum resources?
Museums have been gates and windows to the world ‘outside’. The outside to a city this huge must be of some scale and size for even with so much to assimilate, one finds it necessary to visit the museum. The space becomes superficial; each moment is a dialogue with the exhibit, trying to listen to a story. A museum is also representative of the culture of a city –its interest in fields of art, craft, architecture, history, philosophy, etc. A trip to the museum is a reminder of where we have come from and where we aspire to go.
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The masterplan will talk about the site as a huge bhelpuri
each ingredient, each entity layered with chutneys of movements, add a pinch of the old, mix a bit of history, wrap in a new layer and let people savor!
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thinking about the public layer of this building
museums are essentially public, but what makes them open?
The playground! The actual building is facing heat because of the contested land on which it is going to be built is a playground, often used as a cricket field, which is the bone of contention. The city loses one public space to make way for another.
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Why can't it have its bhel and eat it, too? The cricket field is going to an integral component of the museum building. It will be lifted from the ground and pushed to the terrace of the museum. A perfectly mental idea for an equally mental city.
In fact, the ground floor is going to be a huge public space, made consciously public and free-flowing - the city's living room.
Thinking about Renu Sawant's workshop and the talk about crowd, city, individual and interaction. It is a City of NO Respite, therefore the city museum takes it upon itself to make non-programmable spaces to encourage the public to become a part of the Ranibaug premises.
The idea of the city museum is cast. Iterations, looking at structure, movement, image, volume follow.
The programmatic arrangement of public spaces, the playground and the museum functions is iterated to achieve the concept of a "mixed" museum, which is further is reflected in the materiality.
That was the short or long of the project City Museum