urbz

Name: urbz
Address: Room 56/AB, 1St Floor, T-Junction Dharavi, Koliwada, Sion-Bandra Link Road, Mumbai, 400017, IN
Telephone: +917738467192

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URBZ is a platform for experimental urban action-research created by Matias Echanove, Rahul Srivasta

urbz is an experimental urban research and action collective with collaborators in Mumbai, Goa, New York, Bogota, Sao Paulo and Geneva. urbz organizes collaborative workshops, conducts field research, generates ideas and projects, and produces web content about urban space and places since 2008. urbz believes that residents are experts in their neighborhoods. Their everyday experience of the places where they live and work constitute an essential knowledge for planning and urban development.

01/12/2025

Workshop Guadua y Periferia en Siloe. Este taller se enfocó en la consolidación de la segunda etapa de Teatro Verde de la corporación .siloe organización del Siloe que promueve el arte y la cultura en el territorio. Este proceso a contado con la coordinación de y el apoyo de y . Gracias a todos los participantes por apoyar la consolidación de este espacio comunitario.

21/11/2025

We are thrilled to announce the launch of “The Homegrown City” by Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, founders of urbz.

Slums, informal settlements, and other unplanned habitats are seen as the antithesis of the metropolis. The book explores how neighbourhoods and their inhabitants have been unfairly dismissed when they should, in fact, be understood as partners in the story of cities and urban development.

The book is being published by Verso Books, London and will be available from 13th January, 2025. You can click the link in our bio to pre-order your copy now!

17/11/2025

Del 27 al 30 de noviembre tendremos el workshop Guadua y Periferia para la consolidación del Teatro verde de la organización Lomerit. Si quieres saber más sobre la historia de este proceso y conocer más sobre los objetivos y aprendizajes del taller te invitamos a esta sesión informativa liderada por .siloe y . Encontrarás el link para participar aquí : https://meet.google.com/rrq-ugji-obo o en nuestra bio o por DM. Te esperamos !

28/10/2025

Ocupação 9 de Julho

São Paulo, Brazil, is one of the biggest cities in the world. Similar to Mumbai, India, a significant portion of its population struggles to access affordable housing. Unlike India, Brazil explicitly recognises a fundamental right to housing. The right to housing, in combination with articles in the constitution which assert that unused property must perform a social function, has encouraged disadvantaged communities, both rural and urban, to organise themselves and occupy unused buildings/lands for housing or agricultural needs.

The large number of abandoned buildings in downtown São Paulo have become sites of resistance, claiming access to space in the city centre. Typically, economically marginalised communities are pushed to the peripheries. People in desperate need of housing have leveraged the constitution to occupy these buildings. These occupations are undertaken by individual families or highly organised groups of families with clear leadership and support from housing activists comprising lawyers, engineers and architects.

One occupation has grown to become an exemplar of how community participation can not only provide housing and livelihood to its inhabitants, but also goes beyond social and spatial boundaries to include and engage the entire neighbourhood and the city. Ocupação 9 de Julho boasts of an all-women leadership that has transformed the narrative around occupied housing from a place of dire straits to a vibrant cultural engine of the city. We had the honour of meeting Carmen Silva, whose vision and determination guide the project. We were glad we could make it for the delicious Sunday lunch, which the residents cook and host at the building, served with Carmen’s potent recipes for Caipareñha cocktails !!!

24/10/2025

We recently got the chance to visit Paraisopolis, one of the largest homegrown neighbourhoods in São Paulo, Brazil, which was an abandoned half-built gated complex appropriated by people to fulfil housing needs. We were struck by the similar vibrant energy and form of housing in Dharavi and Paraisopolis. Both homegrown neighbourhoods - built by users to accommodate their needs. Both produced using the skills of local contractors and artisans.

As we walked the streets of Paraisopolis, guided by old-time urbzian , who spent almost a decade working here, he reminisced about how in 2014, urbz facilitated a knowledge exchange between contractors in Paraisopolis and Dharavi. During their visit to Paraisopolis in 2014, the urbz team befriended mechanic turned artist Berbella and local building contractor and artisan Ataide, who visited Dharavi as part of the exchange. More than a decade later, we were thrilled to meet some of these collaborators and ended our visit with one of the best meals in São Paulo, served hot and fresh in the streets of Paraisopolis!

Slide 1- Streets of Paraisopolis - the gridiron layout is a relic from the gated complex, and as far as it had progressed, the construction of the complex was abandoned soon after

Slide 2 - Residents have incrementally built shops and housing, turning it into a vibrant neighbourhood

Slide 3 - urbz team in Paraisopolis with artist Berbela and a travelling photo exhibition which collapsed the distance between Dharavi and Paraisopolis, 2014

Slide 4 - After more than a decade, the photos are still on display in Berbela’s studio

Slide 5 - Berbela and the urbz team from Mumbai

Slide 6 - Visit to see one of the exposed brickwork projects done by Ataide on the rooftop of a community centre

Slide 7 - Lunch in Paraisopolis with and a massive fried Tilapia!

21/10/2025

Seated at the Teatro Oficina, a pioneering space for the performing arts in São Paulo, we enriched our minds and spirits with conversations that unfolded between some of Brazil’s most profound thinkers. We heard from , , Leda Maria Martins, and amidst other indigenous and Afro-Brazilian voices talking about architecture and race, urbanism and collective empowerment, archives and non-indexed memory, ancestrality and non-heirarchical, non-Western cosmovisions.

What made the re:arc symposium of “Architectures of planetary well-being” so unique and special was how bridges were built across language barriers, allowing knowledge produced in Brazil, in Portuguese and usually inaccessible to the English-speaking world, to be instantly translated and streamed into our ears.

Provocative performances by the Teatro Oficina Company, spontaneous chanting, dancing and music, interspersed between and sometimes even part of the lectures, encouraged us to participate beyond intellectual engagement. The doors to an alternative world of thinking, feeling and being were thrown open - a world far away yet profoundly connected to our own.

Thanks to the .institute for inviting us to be a part of the magic!

08/10/2025

We are happy to share that our project - Sacred Waters/ Águas Sagradas - made it all the way from Mumbai to São Paulo, for the 14th International Architecture Biennale happening at the Oca, Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo!

This community-led project is a collaboration between urbz and the indigenous fishers, the Kolis, in one of the densest settlements in the world, Dharavi, Mumbai.

For the Kolis, the waters symbolise a sacred relationship with the environment. They commemorate nature by celebrating festivals such as Naralli Purnima, where every monsoon, on a full moon day, they renew their pledge to protect their habitat.

The project includes the regeneration of fishing grounds, which remain important to Koli identity. It unites their livelihood concerns with an ecological imagination that grows from their collective, ancestral knowledge and expertise.

The intimate interaction with the estuary has also made the community a vanguard of climate adaptation. The project hopes to transform a stressed ecology by re-establishing a connection to the sacred waters.

Friends in São Paulo, please do visit the Biennale, which showcases the efforts of local communities, architects and urban planners working on a diverse scale and range of projects addressing the impacts of an overheated planet. The Biennale is free to enter and on until October 19th, 2025!

20/08/2025

En este taller de encuentro de saberes entre los territorios autogestionados del Distrito de Aguablanca de Cali y Cazuca en Soacha pudimos aprender más sobre lo significa la Guadua en proyectos comunitarios . coordinó est espacio de encuentro con ._escape aportando a la consolidación de Casa Guadua espacio auto gestionado y popular del barrio Altos del Pino en Cazuca. Apoyaron

10/08/2025

Este taller se realiza en Soacha y está enfocado en aprender y explorar técnicas en Guadua para la consolidación del proyecto comunitario Casa Guadua en Altos del Pino gestionado por la ._escape en Altos del Pino en Soacha.

El taller se realizara el Lunes festivo 18 de agosto desde las 8 am a 12 30 m y sera coordinado por Miguel Anacona, bioconstructor de la guadua hace 15 años, nacido en Cali- Colombia; fundador del colectivo y de la Escuela Popular de la Guadua, una alternativa para enriquecer conocimiento y tejido comunitario del Distrito de Aguablanca y los barrios de las laderas de la ciudad de Cali.

Inscripciones abiertas. Toda la info en DM.

08/08/2025

Customs Chowki Study Room

•Inaugration Day•

After a massive year-long collaborative effort between the Dharavi Koli Jamat Trust, local building experts, artisans, and our team in Mumbai, we inaugurated the Customs Chowki Study Space for Dharavi Koliwada on July 26, 2025. The day started with traditional rituals, reflecting the inauguration customs of both the Hindu and Christian Kolis and ended with live music and dinner for all the residents of the village.

It was evident from the scale of the celebration that the Koliwada in Dharavi took great pride in the revival and reclamation of a place that represented their seafaring heritage and their evolving relationship with the land and water. Rebuilt from its ruins, the Customs Chowki, while reconceptualised as a study space, now hosts memorabilia and historic documents. The Dharavi Koli Jamat has displayed drawings of the building issued by British Surveyors in the 1800s and plans to add more content that helps trace the history of the fishing village. Digambar Koli, Secretary of the Dharavi Koli Jamat and an educator by profession, believes that, “while our students aspire to professional degrees and move away from fishing, it is important that they know about their history and roots”.

The Customs Chowki project is part of the ABCD of Koliwada - a neighbourhood-level project that attempts to show how urban development can happen incrementally and from within. The successful completion and inauguration of the project marks an important milestone in the self-development process of the urban village that has lent its name to the world-famous homegrown settlement of Dharavi, Mumbai.

23/07/2025

En nuestra próxima sesion conoceremos la experiencia de Sebastian Trujillo y Kruti Shah quienes en 2017 fundan Chaal Chaal Agency en Ahmedabad (India), vinculado su practica y reflexión en Colombia y diversos contextos.
chaal.agency surgió en disidencia a un panorama de prácticas que no solo no contempla a las grandes mayorías, sino que refuerza estructuras de poder sustentadas en procesos de marginación y privación de derechos. Por tanto, surgió un modelo de práctica a través de experimentos que operan en la intersección del arte y la infraestructura como una forma de DEMOCRATIZAR EL DISEÑO.

El trabajo de Chaal Chaal se basa en procesos de participación e inclusión de grupos sociales que, de otro modo, tendrían menos voz. Ya sea incorporando directamente a estos grupos de interés en los procesos de planificación y diseño o centrándose en hacer aflorar el valor que poseen, CCA se esfuerza por adoptar un enfoque basado en la colaboración en la construcción de nuestras ciudades. Invitan

03/07/2025

Desde le gurpo Arquitectura, Decolonizacion y Anarquismo abrimos este encuentro para conocer la experiencia de Miguel Anacona, bioconstructor de la guadua hace 15 años, nacido en Cali- Colombia; fundador del colectivo Caságrafo y de la Escuela Popular de la Guadua, una alternativa para enriquecer conocimiento y tejido comunitario del Distrito de Aguablanca y los barrios de las laderas de la ciudad de Cali, creando un espacio de encuentro donde se comparten diferentes saberes y conocimientos, técnicas de bioconstrucción, bio arquitectura, diseño, maquetas a escala, cargas estructurales con bambú y agroecología, acompañando procesos comunitarios, artísticos y de memoria colectiva que fortalezcan la autonomía de las comunidades en aspectos como, vivir dignamente, la soberanía alimentaria y espacios seguros dentro de los barrios. Logrando así ampliar el espectro educativo enlas comunidades vulneradas del oriente de Cali y las laderas, con un enfoqueen las costumbres y tecnologías ancestrales de nuestros territorios, con la guadua como protagonista. Invitados en promueven

Address

Room 56/AB, 1St Floor, T-Junction Dharavi, Koliwada, Sion-Bandra Link Road
Mumbai
400017

Telephone

+917738467192

Website

http://www.urbz.net/

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