Shroffleón A Mineral Nature

In a diverse urban fabric where buildings of heritage and historical value co-exist with numerous, burgeoning high-rises, a project in the locale of Bandra in Mumbai is a harmonious addition, owing to its delightful, yet functional architectural details, thereby offering a striking material tactility to its users.

- Suprio Bhattacharjee

Bandra retains, in many ways, an image of being the unchallenged fashionable suburb of the city of Mumbai. Upmarket apartment buildings rub shoulders with private dwellings — or those that have managed to survive the onslaught of surging land prices (and the accompanying invasion of land sharks) or even the inevitable tussle of family succession battles.

But this does not mean that the quality of architecture being produced recently is of any consequence; more often than not, the buildings that disappear take with them a piece of the place’s history and human-ness, with their replacements being nothing more than pretentious wannabes claiming their rights over the place. One would be hardpressed to find a replacement architecture that can fittingly affirm that the change has been welcome.

In this respect, it is heartening to find efforts being made by a few families to expand and refurbish their residences. One such effort, as seen here, though diminutive in scale or size, has been seized by the architects in question as an opportunity to leave the mark of time on the ever-layered palimpsest that any city should cherish to be.