Community & Social Infrastructure Design

Designing on a tight, triangular plot in Mumbai required us to push the limits of standard residential layout. For the Multipurpose Working Women’s Housing, we employed a system of vertical fins and staggered balconies to draw in cross-ventilation and natural light, transforming a dense footprint into a safe, airy, and welcoming home for 180 women.

Social infrastructure is about more than just square footage. It is about policy, advocacy, and the built environment working in tandem to support citizens. Our work on this project began long before ground was broken. Through our involvement with the Gender Advisory Committee, we helped shape the policy guidelines that led to this development.

We approached this building as an urban intervention. Because the site was limited in size, we avoided internal corridors that feel dark or isolating. Instead, we focused on three core principles:

• Light & Ventilation: The facade design uses vertical fins to provide sun-shading while allowing the sea breeze to circulate freely through the living quarters.
• Privacy & Safety: Staggered balconies ensure visual privacy for residents without creating a fortress-like exterior, maintaining a sense of openness.
• Community Flow: We incorporated common interaction zones to ensure that the women living here have spaces to meet, share meals, and build a community, rather than just occupying isolated units.

This project demonstrates our belief that institutional design should be human-centric. By combining technical site analysis with an understanding of the end-users' daily lives, we created a building that stands as an example of how public amenities can be bright, dignified, and joyous places.