Kinetic City: Formal Informality

Abstract

According to statistics, almost 1000 people move into Bangalore every day. This roughly translates to a requirement for 250 homes and a school per day, and a hostel every second day. The IT sector alone is a primary contributor to this flow of people and it manifests in temporary and informal patterns of settlement. The bloating of Bangalore’s population is putting heavy pressure on its space, resources and infrastructure there by adversely affecting the quality of life of its residents.Hence the city is in desperate need of a system which can respond to this explosion of population.

The primary aim of this proposal - Kinetic City - is to address the spatial needs created by this population flow. The project proposes a strategy for generating high density settlements within the city in ways which learn from and adapt to existing informal settlements. An alternative to conventional models of urban renewal, this strategy seeks to integrate with the surrounding conditions - in terms of scale, grain and use – and foster incremental development. It aims to find and establish an optimum urban as well as architectural framework: one which is flexible enough to develop according to the needs and preferences of the existing residents of the informal settlements and which includes work and live zones for the migrant population. Kinetic city provides a model for integrating formal and informal typologies in ways responsive to the broader physical and economic context.