THE RESILIENCE OF INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS -ADDRESSING QUALITY IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
An article on incremental housing and informality by Rakhi Mehra, Marco Ferrario and Amarinder Arora published on the ISOCARP Review nr.14. ISOCARP Article mHS
Category: Blog
Agony and Ecstasy of Housing
Nidhi Sohane, our community architect, recounts her first field experience as part of mHS team and her vision of better housing for all. I find myself maneuvering up a chasm of a two feet wide staircase, so steep that I clamber on its one foot high steps. They are too short and leave the heels of my […]
The relativity of resilience
Our founder Marco Ferrario writes on the complexity of resilience. On 24th August, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck the centre of Italy and almost destroyed the town of Amatrice, also heavily damaging other villages and towns in the area. With almost 300 killed, it left thousands more without a roof over their heads apart from […]
Rakhi Mehra at TEDx Bocconi 2018
Rakhi Mehra, founder of mHS, talks about Cities, housing and her life as a social entrepreneur. How innovative solutions can solve complex urban challenges and contributing to the creation of inclusive Cities? Watch her talk at TEDx Bocconi 2018!
Smart phones for smart construction
Our co-founder Marco Ferrario talks about our latest theory of change and how a simple tool or an idea can change the world, one house at a time. Remember those little black gadgets called pagers that could be hooked onto belts? Or playing ‘Snake’ on the Nokia hand held mobile phones that weighed almost a kilo? In less than two […]
Digital Tools – Revolutionize the Incremental Housing Sector
Low-income urban dwellers in India face crucial but complex decisions when they engage in the construction or expansion of their houses, their most valuable assets. From financial planning to construction management, they rely solely on advice from neighbours and local masons and their decisions often lead to poor use of limited financial resources and technical […]
Design Home Solutions
mHS conceptualized DHS to bring construction finance and technical assistance to households. In partnership with BASIX-BSFL, a microfinance institution, the product reached 15 families with 2-storey construction. The technical assistance ensured structural safety, better ventilation, cost estimates, and monitoring assistance to those living in highly precarious structures. mHS conceptualized DHS (Design Home Solutions) as a […]
Modular Shelter
There are anywhere between 5-8 million homeless people in urban India. The majority of these are daily wage labourers unable to afford rental units in the slums. In partnership with a local NGO, mHS designed and constructed two modular shelters to accommodate about 150 persons per night. The project serves as a scalable model for providing […]
Sundernagri slum redevelopment proposal
As part of a Rajiv Awas Yojana pilot project, mHS facilitated a community-driven design process for a slum redevelopment scheme in East Delhi’s Sundernagari basti, developing a low-rise, high-density model and participatory process more appropriate to lifestyles and livelihoods of the urban poor.
ekSHELTER
mHS City Lab continues its engagement with the homeless communities with the goal to influence the policy and provide practical solutions that could alleviate the life of the millions of homeless in Indian urban centers. One milestone of this activity is the 100 Shelters campaign that saw the production and distribution of over 100 tents to homeless […]