Neethu Mathew
Tekton
Tekton: Volume 12, Issue 1, June 2025
pp. 70 – 79
Neethu Mathew is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University, studying how residents shape and adapt their living environments in Mumbai’s chawls. Her research focuses on everyday spatial appropriation, particularly how domestic life extends beyond private interiors into shared and public spaces. She is also a studio tutor in the Bachelor in Urban Design program at CEPT University.
neethu.mathew.phd21@cept.ac.in
ABSTRACT
This essay presents a segment of my ongoing PhD research, focusing on the spatial imprints of everyday life in Mumbai’s chawls. The broader research aims to explore how residents in these urban neighbourhoods actively appropriate, alter, and negotiate space in their daily lives. Originally constructed to house the city’s industrial workforce, chawls have been the subject of numerous studies. However, the research aims to extend the discourse on the spatial production of such neighbourhoods by investigating how seemingly mundane everyday life shapes these environments. This essay explains explicitly the qualitative methods employed during fieldwork to collect data and argues that a mix of experimental methods focused on the leftover everyday life provides a crucial yet underexplored way of understanding the inner workings of similar urban neighbourhoods.
KEY WORDS
Appropriation, Domesticity, Everydayness, Neighbourhoods, Territory, Temporality
