Spontaneous Technologies

A Sidewalk Barber Shop

Amongst the tens of thousands of makeshift stalls in Ahmadabad streets I discovered two makeshift barber shops.

One of the shops had three seats while the second was only a single seat one. Both barber shops were using the sidewalk as a floor and a plastic sheet as the roof (which also defines the shop's territory). Both roofs where knotted to the fence behind the shops.

In each there is a shelf, hanging from the back fence, being the only fixed furniture in the shop.

The resemblance between these two barber shops made me wonder whether this is a known model for "a sidewalk barber shop", or maybe those two examples are only the necessary solution for reducing a common barber shop to its minimal space.

Barber shop A

Barber shop B

  

What Happens to the Street on a Rainy Day ?

The Monsoon season is a good opportunity to examine how the rain does affects the streets of Ahmadabad.

Ahmedabad market befor the rain (left) and during the rain

The scenery changes within minutes as the first signs of the expected rainfall threaten to wash off the street. The entire street is covered with a kind of colored tarpaulin being used as improvised rooftops to protect the market stalls, the peddlers and the others who reside in the street.

A stall which sells plastic covers

Each one quickly raises a light plastic and wires cover as a makeshift roof, tying it to a fixed object, usually to an existing fence. This spread over sheet helping the person looking from the side to understand the defined territory of each such market stall and the boundaries of each temporary living area.

The movement in the street also changes with the pouring rain; take the local market for instance; The market stalls which are usually located on the pavement opening to the street turn their faces to look toward the sidewalk, creating a temporary covered & dry passage to enable the passing by to continue their wheelings and dealings without being too affected by the pouring rain (Usually formed by stitched up tarpaulin pieces stretched between the side shops to the stall).  As the rain stops - the commerce goes back to the street and the improvised rooftops disappear.

Temporary coveres passage

 

Raised Rim for the Bowl

The lady selling apples on board a local bus found her own spontaneous solution for her need to carry a brimming apple bowl, attempting to prevent the apples from falling off the bowl as she picks one out of the pile.

The lady merchant padded the rim of the bowl using a simple brown cardboard thus  creating a new peripheral rim approximately 15 cm higher than its original size, enabling expanding the bowl's capacity as well as securing all the apples in the bowl she carries.

Dustbusters: When Hi-Tech meets Low Tech.

It's either unemployment or high awareness for maintenance? Two persons on a scaffold in Mumbai's Domestic Airport's terminal are dusting off the enormous modern structural of the terminal's roof. Needless to say that the flying dust falls from the roof on top of the people waking by, landing on the pavement waiting for the cleaning people to collect it to the trash can.

This very basic tool which is used for this task is nothing more than a house feather duster (see attached photo) which was extended 8 times its standard length (extended from 0.5 meter to about 4 meter long) by 4 plastic sticks connected to each other by a simple plastic binder.