Chawls
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Neera Adarkar, an architect and urbanist, traces the history and emergence of the ‘chawl’ typology in Mumbai. She sheds light on the role of chawls in facilitating flows of migration into the city, the sense of community and solidarities that were fostered in the life within chawls and whether…
in Interview
The Chawls of Mumbai were not just homes to the migrant labourers who flocked to the city to work in the textile mills, they brought with them a way of life and cultural forms—folk theatre, music and dance—which were recreated by different communities that inhabited the chawls. This excerpt from…
in Video
Typically, a chawl is a set of rooms strung along a corridor. Each of these rooms are inhabited by different households. Chawls can be single- or multi-storied—generally they have a ground floor plus two or three above. While one end of the corridor has a staircase, the other end typically has a…
in Article
Chawls have been well represented in popular depictions of the city of Mumbai through movies, serials, plays and books. Most visibly present around the erstwhile textile mill regions of Parel and South Bombay, chawls have emerged as a housing typology across the entire city. Today they represent…
in Overview
The chawls of Mumbai have been the most recognisable characteristic of the urban identity of the city. Initially built by the colonial state for the working classes who migrated into the city to work at the illustrious textile mills, chawls gradually transformed into the most common middle-class…
in Module