Working in Mumbai By Rahul Mehrotra (RMA Architects)

Working in Mumbai is a critical reflection on thirty years of the practice of (Rahul Mehtota Architect) RMA Architects.

Rahul Mehrotra weaves a narrative to connect his multiple engagements in architectural practice, including teaching, research, documenting, writing, and exhibiting since the establishment of the practice in 1990.

The book is structured around the subjects of interior architecture, critical conservation, and work and living spaces that straddle the binaries of the global and the local as well as the rural and the urban.

While the book is a portfolio of the selected works of Rahul Mehrotra Architects,

the projects are curated to unravel and clarify the challenges faced by architects in India and in several parts of the “majority” world where issues related to rapid urbanization and the impacts of global capital are among the many that dispute conventional models of practice.

Working in Mumbai is used emblematically to interrogate the notion of context and understand how the practice evolved through its association with the city of Bombay/Mumbai. 

“This well-illustrated record of the last 30 years of the exceptional practice of (Rahul Mehtota Architect) RMA Architects, founded in Mumbai by Mehrotra in 1990, is as the architect insists, critical documentation rather than a monograph, so that from the outset it not only documents the work but also accounts for the context which gave rise to its existence.

At the same time, it clearly indicates how the practice has evolved from designing a whole series of quintessentially urban interiors in interstitial fabric to the of major civic works such as the Tata Institute of Social Science at Tulapur of 2004 and, more recently, the Lilavati Library at the CEPT campus in Ahmedabad of 2017.

What is remarkable about Rahul Mehrotra and his Indian practice,

is his insistence that the architect must fully embrace the political implications of the métier and that to this end the architect, as a public intellectual, must serve both as an engaged designer and as an advocate of certain critical policies rather than other often more expedient solutions often opted for by the society at large.

Within what is already an extraordinary rich Indian modern tradition this consummate the practice represents the very best of the post-Nehru generation of Indian architects emerging today as a model of what the profession should aspire to worldwide in today’s anthropogenic environment.” -- Kenneth B. Frampton

About The Author

Rahul Mehrotra is a practicing architect, urban designer, and educator. He is Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and the John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD).

Rahul Mehrotra founded his Mumbai- and Boston-based firm (Rahul Mehtota Architect)  RMA Architects in 1990.

(Rahul Mehtota Architect)  RMA Architects has designed and executed projects in India and across the world, including government and private institutions, corporate workplaces, private homes, social housing, retail and art spaces, as well as conservation and restoration projects.

In 2018, RMA Architects received the Venice Architecture Biennale Jury’s ‘Special Mention’ for “three projects that address issues of intimacy and empathy, gently diffusing social boundaries and hierarchies.” The projects of RMA Architects will be published as a book titled “Working in Mumbai” in 2020.

Since 2014, Rahul Mehrotra has been a member of the CICA ― the International Committee of Architectural Critics. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Laxmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard.

Rahul Mehrotra Studied at CEPT University, Ahmedabad

where he received the gold medal for his undergraduate thesis (1985) and graduated with a Master of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD) degree with distinction from Harvard University (1987).

At Harvard GSD, Rahul Mehrotra has served as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design (2010-2015 and 2020 to date); the Director of the Master of Architecture in Urban Design Degree Program; and the Co-Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design Degree Program (2018 to date).

He has also taught at the University of Michigan (2003-2007) and the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007-2010). 

Working in Mumbai By Rahul Mehrotra Architects (RMA Architects)