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Archive for June, 2009

Wadala Tower and Interstate Bus Terminal to be India’s Tallest Building.

By ⋅ June 25, 2009 ⋅ One comment

Work on the Rs 4,000-crore, 531-mt tall iconic tower to come up at Wadala is slated to start in October. It will be the world’s seventh tallest structure with a built-up area of 60,000 lakh sq ft, the largest among such buildings in the world. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) commissioner, Ratnakar Gaikwad, [...]

Bandra Worli Sea Link

By ⋅ June 25, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Good friend and journalist Rahul Bhatia writes about the Bandra-Worli Sea Link in a recent weekly edition of the OPEN Magazine. On the sea link that will soon connect Bandra to Worli, fifteen men swept, tarred, and patted a stretch no longer than five meters with uncommon urgency. Noxious tar, fresh off a machine that [...]

MMRDA Priorities Lopsided

By ⋅ June 24, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

By Nauzar Bharucha for the TNN Is the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) suffering from hubris? Its plan to set up a 101-storey iconic commercial tower in Wadala at a phenomenal cost of over Rs 4,000 crore has raised serious questions about its sense of priority among urban experts and town planners. It has [...]

Concrete Masterworks: New Delhi

By ⋅ June 23, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Rrishi Raote / Business Standard / New Delhi  Few speak of Delhi’s architectural heritage beyond what the sultans, badshahs and British built. Architect Rahul Khanna and photographer Manav Parhawk set out to challenge this paradigm, as Khanna tells Rrishi Raote. Many of the 47 masterpieces of Delhi’s modern architecture they describe in this slim handbook [...]

CEPT Ahmedabad Introduces New Masters Level Programs

By ⋅ June 21, 2009 ⋅ 2 comments

By Dayananda Meitei / DNA Cept University will introduce two new programmes this academic year, adding to the 23 programmes being offered in its seven faculties. While the faculty of technology and the faculty of arts and humanities will each offer one new programme, a centre for excellence will be set up at the University [...]

Affordable Housing: Post-Election Policy

By ⋅ June 19, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

By Garima Pant in the Financial Express   The recently concluded general elections saw a common mandate in a number of party manifestos — the promise to provide affordable housing. However, when the core thrust of the realty segment for the last decade has been directed towards the higher income group, it still remains a [...]

Messy Urbanism: India

By ⋅ June 18, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

By Viren Brahmbhatt Viren Brahmbhatt is a New York-based architect and urban designer. He teaches at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture, and is the author of the forthcoming book Architecture of Disjuncture.   Like other megacities, the large cities of India are grappling with the conflicting logic of globalization and localization. As new networks [...]

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RSS Elsewhere in India

  • Caught My Eye > Sham Patwardhan-Joshi
    The Origomu site states that “Over 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating on every square mile of ocean today, killing 2 million sea birds and 100,000 marine animals every year, with many getting entangled in plastic six-pack rings.” To create awareness and re-use of plastic waste, Origomu invites and inspires people to make jewellery […]
  • Caught My Eye > Litttle Prachee, Sotomoto, Gnaana Multi-lingual Alphabet Blocks, Pero for children
    Some refreshing products for children that I enjoyed seeing. Litttle Prachee Prachi Walia (NIFT) grew up travelling across India, discovering Indian textiles and now brings it all into her collection. Vintage ‘mom-crafted’ frocks, and the joy of dressing up inspired her in creating Litttle Prachee. Love the use of embroidery, Indian fabrics and the sense [.. […]
  • Design Feature > Katran
    Materials are given second lives in India everyday. Newspapers into peanut cones, old saris into quilts, jeans into storage bags, vegetable peels into compost. Sahil Bagga (College of Art, 2002, Politecnico di Milano) and Sarthak Sengupta (NIFT 2001, Politecnico di Milano) researched on farmers spinning left-over fabric strips (Katran in Hindi) from cloth mi […]
  • Design Industry in India by Laila Tyabji
    British Council Arts did series of interviews with those within the design sector on what the design industry in India is all about and where is it headed. I found Laila Tyabji’s thoughts especially enlightening. Design Industry in India by Laila Tyabji from British Council Arts on Vimeo. More interviews here. […]
  • Caught my eye > Indian Stretchable Time
    This one made me laugh out loud. Time indeed is a flexible commodity for many of us in India. There is an unsaid rule of sorts, a subtext that once understood adds clarity to interactions. This watch makes it explicit. The product note states: In India, ‘fashionably late’ is safely replaced with ‘predictably late’. Cow […]

RSS South Asia

  • Conference + Symposium 09.09
    Le Corbusier: "Freeing the round has become false. Occupying the ground in the Military sense of the term has been the sole true action..." - This foreclosure of the ground is precisely the death of the formative model. It is urgent to invent a conceptual and programmatic model that is independent and functions outside the exhausted institutional f […]
  • Report on Rationalization of Procedures
    The Committee deliberated upon the procedures for grant of building plan approvals and completion certificates including the role of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission therein. The consensus of the opinion was that the present procedures involving a multiplicity of authorities were resulting in considerable harassment and delays. The present procedures of scrut […]
  • Panel Discussion: Architecture and the City
    In late July of 2005, I was invited by Inside Outside magazine to participate in their expo in Bangalore. The idea was to give young architects like me a chance to get noticed. I took the stall, but instead of designing and building the perfect bedroom, I set it up with a TV, two speakers and an amp and screened a film. It was odd, to put it mildly. Many peo […]
  • Introduction to Whitewash!
    India, love it or hate it. Certainly it is impossible to be unaffected by it. My own relationship with the place is tainted by the contempt I feel for the people and incidents that unmake it everyday. Whitewash is merely a reflection of the skewed impressions that present-day personalities and events have made on my life. The deafening roar of the street, th […]
  • Sataire: Architect wanted
    Architect wanted with cool exterior, and studied manner required by established company. Part teacher, part practitioner, part writer, candidate may be a kind of new age Leonardo dabbling in disciplines for which he has neither training nor skill. When there is no work in the office candidate should be willing to write a manifesto or two; when there is nothi […]
  • Whitewash! An Unkind View of India and its Makers
    A tabloid with a difference, Whitewash is a disturbingly indiscreet piece of writing that rips apart conventional Indian notions of politics, equality, caste, gender, ownership, personal rights, heritage, love of country - all in a way that at once distresses and invigorates […]
  • Whitewash! New Delhi Excavated
    It happened just like Mount Vesuvius. A little after mid-day on August 24, 2016 AD disaster struck. Mount Simla on the northern fringes of New Delhi erupted and literally buried the city in a layer of ash. First to be buried were small towns like Panipat and Karnal - towns whose loss could easily be sustained by the national budget; then the suburbs of Model […]
  • Whitewash! "Old Cars Never Die"
    In 1970, Automotive Digest published a picture of the Ambassador car with the heading Old Cars Never Die, they only move to India. The golden anniversary of the Ambassador was celebrated a decade before the golden anniversary of India, and to applaud the union of the two giants, Random House recently released the definitive biography of the car called Ambass […]
  • The Alternatives
    In India, historically, the architect has been used as an anonymous means to an end. In the past, the end was generally the glorification of the State for religion through the creation of plastic forms and visual drama. Today, though not so anonymous, architects are ready accomplices to the property speculators, who either want to make money or glorify thems […]
  • Professional Ideolgy
    Let me put the question differently, with the intention of answering it. What could motivate an Indian to seek advice from an architect? I believe it would be the requirement for a durable shelter which takes care of his needs, which are not only biological–at a certain level they are universal–but also culture-specific needs, subsuming values, attitudes and […]

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