3×4: Exploring metaspace platforms for inclusive future cities

(Short paper)

Keywords: Informality, metaspace, telematic, resettlement, communities, videoconference, urbanism, population, India, cities.

In megacities such as Delhi and Mumbai – and within one of the fastest growing cities within the world, Ahmedabad – more than 50% of the population live in informal urban settlements. 3×4 metres is the plot size seen to be provided in some resettlement colonies, a government initiative which relocates people within informal inner-city settlements to vacant land on the periphery. In a collaboration between Professor Paul Sermon at the University of Brighton, Dr Claire McAndrew at The Bartlett, UCL, Swati Janu a Delhi-based Architect and photographer Vivek Muthuramalingam from Bangalore, 3×4 looks at informal settlements differently where informality is not viewed as a problem, but a promising new model of urbanism for the global south. 3×4 uses an immersive telematic networked environment to provide a playful, sensorial exploration of new hybrids of digital space. Merging two 3×4 metre room installations in Delhi and London through mixed-reality, this transnational dialogue intends to set an aspiration for developing metaspace platforms in megacities of the global south. It builds upon practice-based research conducted as UnBox LABS 2014 Fellows in Ahmedabad, India; which used an immersive installation to explore the qualities and values built through selforganised communities that are lost in the resettlement process.