Chlorophyllous Urbanism: Mumbai
Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture
Tutor: Dorian Wiszniewski

In Chlorophyllous Urbanism, Marshall Inglis and Marcus Rothnie create a new strategy for architectural intervention in the Indian city of Mumbai. This is based on a response to the contrasting approaches to territorialisation of two key factors in the city’s character: the economies of its fecund mangrove forest (identified as red), which was partly destroyed for land reclamation, and that of the colonial cotton industry (shown as green). The colonial economy encompassed mill lands, and cotton industry-driven intensities and railways.

The project aims to increase the propagation of the ‘red’ approach to urbanism that it understands as being more appropriate to how Mumbai naturally territorialises. It does this through the investigation of six sites along Mumbai’s Thane Creek coastline. Here, it creates persuasive architectural interventions (identified as gold) that dismantle the colonial green approach and instead increase ecological, social or political reds. These include a Mangrove Embassy, Vocational School and two Agronomy centres. Together these interventions become the Chlorophyllous Urbanism strategic plan for an imagined city of Mumbai based on the theories and territorial aspirations of the red approach of the mangroves.

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