Bollywood Twister: Unfolding Emotions with Indian Cinema
The aim of the competition was to design a 'Film City Tower’ in Mumbai and explore the possibility of a new vertical typology for a film city. The project resolved to put Bombay and Bollywood on the global map through a futuristic and contemporary landmark for the city.
There has been a large and continuous migration of people into Mumbai city with a hope of following their Bollywood dreams which has put pressure on land resource. The setting up of film cities requires an enormous footprint on land, which is a scarce and vital resource in the case of Bombay. The proposal for the land intensive function of a film city was to be compacted and transformed into a vertical tower that would generate an exemplary urban form. So the vertical film city frees up a lot of land and brings all the amenities and departments of the film fraternity at one place making the design efficient and sustainable.
We were asked to design a new island for the Film City tower in the 'Mahim Bay', across the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, in Mumbai. The site island is located at a distance of approximately 100 metres off the BWSL promenade in the Mahim Bay waters, adjoining the Western Express highway. It is bounded by the Bandra Reclamation area to its north and west, Mahim and Worli to the far east and south respectively.
RASA
The Rasa method of performance is one of the fundamental features that differentiate Indian cinema from that of the Western world. In the Rasa method, empathetic emotions are conveyed by the performer and thus felt by the audience, in contrast to the Western Stanislavski method where the actor must become ‘a living, breathing embodiment of a character’ rather than simply conveying emotion. A rasa denotes an essential state of mind and is the dominant emotional theme of a work of art or the primary feeling that is evoked in the person that views, reads or hears such a work.
NAVARASA
Rasa has been an important influence on the cinema of India. The design by 4site Architects attempts to explore ‘the navarasa’. They are the emotions expressed by the face, hand and body movement. The proposed tower expression responds to all the 9 Rasas by its colour, texture and functions.
Shoka - sadness,
Veera - heroic,
Bhayanaka - horror,
Bhibhasta - disgust,
Adbhuta - wonder,
Kroda - anger
Hasya - joy,
Karuna - sympathy,
Prema - love
MUMBAI STREET
A variety of public functions in the tower would greet the public with a panorama view of the city. The ramp which wraps around the tower is a shift in conventions and brings the whole of Mumbai’s urban scape into its folds by encouraging social interaction and distributes the aspect of social and community spaces equally in a tower, which in most of the cases, is absent as the building rises up. The twisting ramp designed as a theme of ‘Mumbai Streets’ connects all the Navarasas at all levels and performs with respective rasas. Panoramic views of Mumbai can be experienced over these vertical streets at different levels making it more experiential.
