How to Build an Indian House focuses on one of Mumbai’s and India’s perennial and most daunting questions: mass housing. It documents, analyses and represents robust examples of different housing types in the city. Along with the documentary drawings and photographs, Sameep Padora developed a series of analytical models in order to understand spatial organization and infrastructure in residential building typologies.

This documentation is particularly pertinent today, given the critical need to address the issue of housing in India. Since this subject is of immense interest to professionals and students alike, the cases studied here range from residential typologies in Mumbai, such as the chawls (originally workers’ housing that has morphed into vibrant communities), to more hybrid examples such as the Swadeshi Market, which demonstrates an interesting multiuse building. These Mumbai typologies challenge architects, planners and designers to test their imagination in thinking about affordable housing.

The present publication is a handbook for academics as well as practitioners: designers could use it to compare and discern efficiencies and various ratios that can inform the process of other design exercises.

How to Build an Indian House focuses on one of Mumbai’s and India’s perennial and most daunting questions: mass housing. It documents, analyses and represents robust examples of different housing types in the city. Along with the documentary drawings and photographs, Sameep Padora developed a series of analytical models in order to understand spatial organization and infrastructure in residential building typologies.

This documentation is particularly pertinent today, given the critical need to address the issue of housing in India. Since this subject is of immense interest to professionals and students alike, the cases studied here range from residential typologies in Mumbai, such as the chawls (originally workers’ housing that has morphed into vibrant communities), to more hybrid examples such as the Swadeshi Market, which demonstrates an interesting multiuse building. These Mumbai typologies challenge architects, planners and designers to test their imagination in thinking about affordable housing.

The present publication is a handbook for academics as well as practitioners: designers could use it to compare and discern efficiencies and various ratios that can inform the process of other design exercises.