Edited by
Rahul Mehrotra
Sarah Fayad
Soledad Patino
Neha B. Joseph

Published by
Architecture Foundation 

Produced in collaboration
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture and Graduate School of Design, Harvard University

This book attempts to represent the crisis of sanitation, both globally and within India and Mumbai, with the intent of propelling a broader imagination of the issue. The problem of sanitation is bigger than a need for more toilets; it includes diverse social, cultural, technological, economic, and environmental factors.

In Spring 2019, an option studio at the Harvard Graduate School of Design proposed the rethinking of sanitation infrastructure as an instrument to
integrate otherwise marginalized populations into mainstream society. The interdisciplinary studio focused on an indigenous fishing community, known as the Kolis, who were the original inhabitants of Mumbai. The students explored ways, in which sanitation infrastructure could be reimagined, to engage with systemic and ecological thinking while expanding the definition
of what sanitation might encompass.

The eleven proposals presented in this book are independent projects which encompass dramatically different aspects of the deployment of sanitation infrastructure - from innovations in housing, the deployment of technologies for capturing and recycling water, to the reexamination of community spaces as sanitation infrastructure. The students who authored these proposals were encouraged to think ecologically about the issue of sanitation, as an interconnected network of many aspects that collectively determine the health of any community.

Write to info@architecturefoundationindia.org to order a copy of the book.