The scale and emergent patterns of contemporary urbanisation challenges the notion of permanence and material configurations as the default condition for cities. Rubrics like informality have meanwhile become counterproductive as they also implicitly aspire to new processes, protocols and formulations in imagining permanence. Does permanence as the sole instrument in urban imaginaries really matter? For the over 700 million people represented in the cases of this research, permanence is not affordable and obviously does not really matter in their daily existence. What does this then mean for architecture and cities?

Further, we explore what design can achieve when creative freedom and ingenuity is the design brief. By transforming the overall experience from ‘living in rooms’ to ‘living amongst objects’, the design of a house in Pune by The Busride Design Studio offers the opportunity for unpredictable relationships to be discovered with everyday objects. Lastly, we examine how a former co-generation plant in suburban Mumbai is reinterpreted as the gateway to a transformative urban renewal masterplan in a post-industrial landscape to offer the city a glimpse of what is possible with its industrial heritage – and, an affirmation of what has been lost thus far. The new design aesthetics emerges where forms and structures evoke elements that existed on site in the past, and yet have contemporary sensibilities and sensitivities.


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