Bridging The Gap

The G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture situated in a reconstructed warehouse is more than just a venue; it is a space where innovation and collaboration come together to find expression.

- Saritha Rao Rayachoti

In the punishing afternoon heat of Mumbai's infamous second summer, I find myself in the gridlocked Saat-Rasta intersection that falls midway between the recently dismantled Delisle Road Bridge and my destination – the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture. Stuck in the thick of traffic, I have time to ponder about this bridge that the city took for granted all these years, and about G5A, an adaptive reuse project in a reconstructed warehouse, that I’ve been curious about ever since it popped up on my radar for its collaborations on unusual contemporary performances and programmes in Mumbai.

It has often been said that the work of a good architect or a space planner stands out for the way it combines form and function. But I find context an interesting variable in this mix. That’s another bridge that we take for granted. It becomes almost imperative when we speak of a space like G5A that we begin with the context of how it came to be.

In 2013, Anuradha Parikh, architect and film-maker, inherited a warehouse with a 3300 sq ft footprint, attached to a printing press for name plates at the Laxmi Mills Estate in Mumbai’s Shakti Mills Lane. ‘I had no immediate use for it,’ says Anuradha. ‘In 1990, my mother, Shaila Parikh, started the Mohile Parikh Centre at the National Centre for Performing Arts as a space to bring students and young professionals together to share information and conversations about international and national contemporary visual arts. Art schools not only had limited resources but lacked imagination and bandwidth. I decided to enlarge the scope to include the performing arts, language arts and design and architecture, and create a new not-for-profit Foundation for Contemporary Culture in 2013.’