2018_Vidhi Gandhi — SEA Archives

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Objects of the street: Understanding articulation of street space through furniture
Claims and its Spatiality
Vidhi Gandhi, 2018

Furniture has been primarily understood as an integral part of domestic environment i.e. indoor spaces. However, when moves out of its domesticized nature and enters the street, it turns the flatness and sterility of the street into a liveable environment. Unlike other places in the world where streets end up as places for mere vehicular movement, in urban contexts like ours, streets also become an active part in the lives of people in most South Asian contexts. In urban context, especially in cities like Mumbai, we notice that the streets are used for social interaction, congregation and mass communication. These activities on the streets are facilitated through the objects on the street that people use as ‘furniture’. Much of these objects in the street trigger social action, creating space for conversations to occur. It thus becomes a layer that facilitate these social encounters on the street. In addition to aiding infrastructure for economic and social purposes, urban street furniture adds vibrancy to the streets.

The aim of this thesis is to understand the role of furniture in humanizing streets and the manner in which articulation of urban spaces takes place through a varied and inventive set of objects that users devise to live with the street. Along with benches, street lamps, traffic lights, traffic signs, taxi stands etc. provided by the State - that facilitate public activities on the road or the sidewalks, movable objects brought in by people on the street allow for certain public formations and actions within the city. This paper focuses on these portable, transient and pliable objects on the street. The study argues that these also constitute of the urban street furniture that is created and utilized by people, almost adding up as the infrastructure on the street. This disquisition intends to understand how people use furniture to make spaces on the street and thus investigate what a street can afford so as to find new ways to make ‘architecture’ amenable and accessible to people.

Read also under ‘Claims and its Spatialities’:

The claims of everyday street

Claims and its Spatialities
Abhilasha Ambhire, 2021

Mumbai's street religiosities: spatial negotiations and making of public space

Claims and its Spatialities
Karan Dalal, 2018

Land tenure dynamics and built form

Claims and its Spatialities
Nidhi Mehta, 2021

Architecture of watching

Claims and its Spatialities
Riya Parekh, 2018

Architecture of mass living | retelling of tenurial relationships

Claims and its Spatialities
Ruchita Sarvaiya, 2021

Humanising infrastructure: a study of transit related infrastructure in Mumbai

Claims and its Spatialities
Shrushti Jain, 2018

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