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Description:

MADAM NARANGI

Street vending via a traditional street-cart is often presumed to be a lucrative means of employment for women from underserved communities in India. However, in reality, the daily challenges of navigating the streets, setting up of stalls and the lack of dedicated hawking zones has made street vending a difficult terrain to traverse for enterprising women. This illustrates how products when not designed for working women can often limit their enterprising ability especially in informal commerce.

Madam Narangi attempts to shift this paradigm through an easy-to-construct metal street cart for women which by design encourages them to partake in commerce both on-and-off streets and becomes a resilient means to earn quality livelihood. Conscious design considerations like clean lines, arched- language, colorful aesthetics, and proportions of retractable elements package it as a unique urban organizational device that allows it to both stand out and functionally reappropriate in diverse public and domestic setting such as-a shop-front to a kitchenette in a home to a buffet in a wedding ground. This enhanced programmatic versatility makes Madam Narangi not just a ‘vehicle’ for enterprise but also for economic, social and cultural resilience of the household and the community at large. 

Madam Narangi, by design has the potential to anchor with any context, formal or informal and also inform idiosyncratic scenarios, agglomeration patterns and provide uncontested legitimacy to informal commerce. In effect, encouraging entrepreneurship for women, triggering positive public space practices and supporting both cultural and pedagogic projects of the community through its diverse commercial, public and domestic uses.

Collaborators:

Designers:
Niroopa Subrahmanyam and Sian Architects

Project ideation and execution:
Chaal Chaal Agency

Project Duration:
1 year

Location:
Ahmedabad , India