City of Women in Mumbai Fall 2006
Exhibited in the Venice Biennale
In order to secure Mumbai’s future as a powerful mega-world city (current pop. 18 million), a drastic plan for solving its most urgent crisis, poverty was the focus of this project. The plan calls for an empowerment of 45% of Mumbai’s unexploited* population, the women. A city of women 9.5 miles and half a mile wide will split the city into North Mumbai (where everyone lives) and South Mumbai (where everyone makes money). The self-sustaining city will be built with all the “hi and lo tech” systems necessary to produce and distribute resources to Mumbai in order to close the gap between developing to mega city. Only women are allowed in the massive defensive structure; however there will be a small degree of porosity (public daily access from the North to the South and zones of interface for business between the City of Women and the rest of Mumbai.)
WOMEN BEGAN TO UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN “HUMANITY”, THEIR BODIES IN THE SPACE. THE CITY IS BASED ON THE FUNCTION OF THE OBLIQUE. NOTHING IS FLAT, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF PARTS OF THE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM; EVERYTHING IN THE CITY IS SLOPED (ANGLED-OBLIQUE). CONCEPTS OF DISTANCE CHANGED AS DIFFERENT VELOCITIES PER VARIOUS ANGLES WERE EXPERIENCED. THE UPHILL CLIMBS, THE FATIGUE, THE WORKOUT AND THE ACCELARATION, THE ENERGY OF GRAVITY ARE METHODS OF OPERATION IN THE CITY.
Once inside this “revolution” city, the human experience will not be ordinary; navigation throughout will be unlike anything outside of it; for this reason the overall design of the City of Women will be based on the function of the oblique. The V-form allows the city to function as a large water reservoir. The public underground downtown slightly hovers over the reservoir and is always dark.
With the exception of parts of the transportation system, everything in the city will be at an angle. Concepts of distance will change as different velocities per various angles are discovered and become part of mass knowledge. Fatigue and potential, work-out and speed, and the use of gravity as a primary energy are all integrated into the operation of the city. Conveyer belts use gravity energy to power alternators for directionally-inclining motors. The City of Women will be a food, water and power factory for the rest of Mumbai. It will control current Mumbai’s transportation issues, with the denial of private car access from North to the South, an excellent public transportation will be an undeniable necessity; this will answer to one of Mumbai’s present problems: pollution… “Breathing the air of Mumbai for three hours is the equivalent to smoking 20 packs of cigarettes.”
All Indian women are allowed to stay in the oblique city. They will be free to move beyond conventional situations.