Add To Collection
Add to Collection
Streets of Aspiration Pavilion
Streets of Aspiration Pavilion
Mumbai, India
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
View Original
Add To Collection
Add to Collection
Other Projects by SJK Architects
Streets of Aspiration Pavilion
Mumbai, India
The Ideation Process:
Mumbai is a city built on contradictions—where aspiration and exhaustion, privilege and
precarity, constant motion and brief pauses exist side by side. When we were invited to interpret
this city through a pavilion, the entire office chose to participate. We divided ourselves into eight
groups, each identifying a specific tension or disjunction embedded in daily life. These
explorations were later synthesised through a core working group, shaping a single pavilion that
could hold multiple truths about Mumbai and allow each to find space.
The Core Disjunctions:
Several disjunctions surfaced repeatedly. The most fundamental being the stark inequality that
endures in Mumbai—the coexistence of wealth and scarcity, formal and informal living
conditions, occupying the same geography but rarely sharing the same experience. Yet this
inequality churns itself into a peculiar ecosystem where the informal sustains the city, filling the
crevices the formal city leaves vacant.
Another recurring idea was Mumbai’s perpetual state of becoming—a city forever under
construction, full of the promise of better futures, while demanding that its present live amid
dust, disruption, and constant adjustment.
Through all of this, it is the streets that hold the city together. As Mumbai’s true public
realm—crowded, layered, vibrant and communal—they are where these disjunctions become
visible and lived, bringing everyone momentarily to the same ground.
The Pavilion:
The pavilion reinterprets these streets as spaces that hold activity and pause, density and
breathing room, and aspiration and exhaustion all at once. This is expressed through steps and
seats—elements that invite gathering, movement, waiting, resting, and encounter. These
“streets” descend into the “underbelly” of the pavilion, representing the 67% of Mumbai that lives
informally, often without adequate light, ventilation, legality, or dignity, while also acknowledging
the informal trades and labour that sustain the city yet remain marginalised. Through projections
and layered sound, this space becomes enlivened by real encounters with this unseen
infrastructure.
Moving out of the enclosed space and upward one reached the “ivory tower,” constructed from
mirror finished acrylic panels. Reaching it is possible, but not fully accessible; the route is
uneven and winding, symbolic of the city’s unequal yet persistent promise of upward mobility.
Inside this reflective tower, one encounters distorted versions of oneself and fragments of rare
blue sky above. The mirrors bend reality just enough to remind us that such inequality also
warps perspective—shaping how we see ourselves, others, and the city.
The entire pavilion sits within a scaffolding frame, referencing the city’s constant state of
construction. Old, used saree fabric offers shade, softness, memory, and the presence of craft,
reminding us that amidst machinery, ambition, and strain, it is people and resilience that
continue to give Mumbai its spirit.
Materials + Modularity:
The pavilion is constructed as a modular system, allowing it to be assembled, adapted,
dismantled, and reused. A uniform MS scaffolding frame forms the structure supporting the Ivory
tower panels and will return to construction use after the festival. Within this framework, the
steps and seating are created from modular wooden boxes made from recycled packing crates,
internally supported by mild steel frames and treated for durability. Designed beyond the festival,
these modules can be detached and relocated across the city, continuing to serve as places of
rest and everyday urban pause.
The Ivory Tower uses waste commercial plywood as the core material, clad with mirror finished
acrylic panels supported by the scaffolding above and wooden modules below. After
dismantling, these panels will be reused as architectural elements elsewhere. Together, these
strategies prioritise reuse, circularity, and continued relevance, allowing the pavilion to live on
through its parts well beyond the event.
Closing Thoughts:
Despite everything—the grit, hustle, exhaustion, and inequity—our memories of the city are not
only of hardship. They are of kindness, humour, and familiarity. Of a vada pav vendor slipping in
an extra pav after a tiring day, of strangers steadying you when you trip on an uneven
pavement, of unexpected generosity in the most crowded moments. Our pavilion attempts to
hold all of that: the aspiration and the discomfort, the harshness and the humanity, the city as it
is and the city as it hopes to be.
Mumbai is a city built on contradictions—where aspiration and exhaustion, privilege and
precarity, constant motion and brief pauses exist side by side. When we were invited to interpret
this city through a pavilion, the entire office chose to participate. We divided ourselves into eight
groups, each identifying a specific tension or disjunction embedded in daily life. These
explorations were later synthesised through a core working group, shaping a single pavilion that
could hold multiple truths about Mumbai and allow each to find space.
The Core Disjunctions:
Several disjunctions surfaced repeatedly. The most fundamental being the stark inequality that
endures in Mumbai—the coexistence of wealth and scarcity, formal and informal living
conditions, occupying the same geography but rarely sharing the same experience. Yet this
inequality churns itself into a peculiar ecosystem where the informal sustains the city, filling the
crevices the formal city leaves vacant.
Another recurring idea was Mumbai’s perpetual state of becoming—a city forever under
construction, full of the promise of better futures, while demanding that its present live amid
dust, disruption, and constant adjustment.
Through all of this, it is the streets that hold the city together. As Mumbai’s true public
realm—crowded, layered, vibrant and communal—they are where these disjunctions become
visible and lived, bringing everyone momentarily to the same ground.
The Pavilion:
The pavilion reinterprets these streets as spaces that hold activity and pause, density and
breathing room, and aspiration and exhaustion all at once. This is expressed through steps and
seats—elements that invite gathering, movement, waiting, resting, and encounter. These
“streets” descend into the “underbelly” of the pavilion, representing the 67% of Mumbai that lives
informally, often without adequate light, ventilation, legality, or dignity, while also acknowledging
the informal trades and labour that sustain the city yet remain marginalised. Through projections
and layered sound, this space becomes enlivened by real encounters with this unseen
infrastructure.
Moving out of the enclosed space and upward one reached the “ivory tower,” constructed from
mirror finished acrylic panels. Reaching it is possible, but not fully accessible; the route is
uneven and winding, symbolic of the city’s unequal yet persistent promise of upward mobility.
Inside this reflective tower, one encounters distorted versions of oneself and fragments of rare
blue sky above. The mirrors bend reality just enough to remind us that such inequality also
warps perspective—shaping how we see ourselves, others, and the city.
The entire pavilion sits within a scaffolding frame, referencing the city’s constant state of
construction. Old, used saree fabric offers shade, softness, memory, and the presence of craft,
reminding us that amidst machinery, ambition, and strain, it is people and resilience that
continue to give Mumbai its spirit.
Materials + Modularity:
The pavilion is constructed as a modular system, allowing it to be assembled, adapted,
dismantled, and reused. A uniform MS scaffolding frame forms the structure supporting the Ivory
tower panels and will return to construction use after the festival. Within this framework, the
steps and seating are created from modular wooden boxes made from recycled packing crates,
internally supported by mild steel frames and treated for durability. Designed beyond the festival,
these modules can be detached and relocated across the city, continuing to serve as places of
rest and everyday urban pause.
The Ivory Tower uses waste commercial plywood as the core material, clad with mirror finished
acrylic panels supported by the scaffolding above and wooden modules below. After
dismantling, these panels will be reused as architectural elements elsewhere. Together, these
strategies prioritise reuse, circularity, and continued relevance, allowing the pavilion to live on
through its parts well beyond the event.
Closing Thoughts:
Despite everything—the grit, hustle, exhaustion, and inequity—our memories of the city are not
only of hardship. They are of kindness, humour, and familiarity. Of a vada pav vendor slipping in
an extra pav after a tiring day, of strangers steadying you when you trip on an uneven
pavement, of unexpected generosity in the most crowded moments. Our pavilion attempts to
hold all of that: the aspiration and the discomfort, the harshness and the humanity, the city as it
is and the city as it hopes to be.
Product Spec Sheet
Were your products used?
Join as a manufacturer to add your products.