Macchi: Redevelopment of Sassoon Dock as Smart Maritime Hub

Author: Umesh Santosh Lad
Site Location: Mumbai
Institute: School of Planning and Architecture, SPAV
Advisor: Dr. Prashanti Rao

Description

Mumbai’s ports and docks have played a vital role in shaping the city as India’s major maritime and commercial gateway. Among them, Sassoon Dock has historically supported fishing, trade, employment, and the livelihoods of the traditional Koli community. However, despite its economic and cultural significance, the dock today faces challenges of outdated infrastructure, poor hygiene, overlapping circulation, limited cold-chain facilities, inefficient waste management, environmental degradation, and vulnerability to climate change and rising sea levels.

While airports are modernized, metro corridors are digitized, and business districts are reimagined, traditional maritime infrastructures like Sassoon Dock remain spatially inefficient, environmentally stressed, and technologically outdated. Fish handling lacks hygienic zoning; circulation of goods and people overlaps chaotically; cold-chain integration is limited; waste disposal affects the harbour ecology. Despite being economically and culturally significant, the dock has not evolved with contemporary standards of resilience, logistics, or smart governance.

The Redevelopment of Sassoon Dock as a Smart Maritime Hub proposes a resilient, inclusive, and technologically integrated waterfront while preserving its cultural identity and traditional fishing economy. The proposal is organized into four interconnected zones: Heritage Core, Fish Market Zone, Community Spine, and Public Plaza. Adaptive reuse of cold storage building strengthens the heritage character, while upgraded fish markets, auction spaces, sorting, storage, and cold-chain facilities improve operational efficiency and hygiene.

The waterfront integrates blue-green infrastructure, including mangrove restoration, tidal wetlands, sponge landscapes, ecological buffers, and a public promenade. Smart systems for environmental monitoring, waste management, and building operations further enhance resilience.

The project envisions Sassoon Dock as a living waterfront where livelihood, heritage, ecology, and public life coexist, creating a future-ready maritime hub while safeguarding the identity and livelihoods of its fishing communities.