GUERRILLA RETROFITS AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONTINUUM

The South has entered into a phase of urbanization that shows rapid cultural transformations characterized by the emergence of autonomous, mobile, innovative, and unpredictable work entities (enterprises or labor). The shifts in technologies along with increased environmental vulnerabilities have perpetuated these transformations, producing high cellularization of life. This has generated an urban form with hard impermeable edges between individuals, communities, classes, activities, and environments. These appear as walls, security systems, gated communities, and so forth. When resources are constrained, the hardened boundaries create a fractured society as cells compete with each other. The Guerrilla Retrofits seek to soften these boundaries and produce an Architecture of Continuum that maximizes the urban form's transactional capacity—the capacity to afford flows (of bodies, commodities, ideas, money), densities, activities, networks, livelihoods, security, diversity, and care. Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty are urbanists based in Mumbai and cofounders of School of Environment and Architecture.