Author: Pranjal Prakash Tak
Site Location: Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra
Institute: Rachana Sansad’s Academy of Architecture
Advisor: Ar. Ashley Fialho

Description

They raise our skylines, yet sleep under tarps. Their homes are temporary, their futures uncertain. With no access to stable housing, education, or safe spaces, migrant construction workers and their families remain on the margins-building the nation while being denied a place within it.

This thesis is a response to that silence-a call to rebuild what’s been forgotten. It proposes modular, mobile housing units that are scalable, stackable, and site-adaptable. But it’s more than shelter, it’s an ecosystem that includes classrooms, medical rooms, and women-centric spaces, designed to empower and uplift.

A replicable solution that moves with the workers, grows with them, and offers not just homes, but hope.

This project envisions a future, where the hands that build our cities are finally given a foundation of their own.

Rooted in empathy and inspired by the diverse cultural and religious lives of migrant workers from Bihar, UP, Jharkhand, Odisha and beyond, the prototype re-imagines shelter as a shared ecosystem of identity, safety, and celebration. Co-creation with workers informed both private spaces, which respect family structures and rituals, and common areas like courtyards and street edges, which act as cultural bridges-hosting shared meals, celebrations, and conversations

By centering the needs of those most often ignored-women, children, the displaced-this is not just a model for housing, but a manifesto for justice. This is not just about building better homes. It’s about building a more adaptable and humane society.

Drawings

Click here to go back to the storehouse.