Categories
Cities Infrastructure Real Estate

7 deadly sins of Indian design

Came across a very interesting article in LiveMint.

 

India is enjoying a design boom, but we seem to be making some odd — and expensive — mistakes

by Melissa A. Bell

Every other week a new design store opens in a major metropolis in the country. In every direction, buildings are coming up, hotels are being refurbished, and homes are being renovated. In the mad rush of design and architecture over the past few years, taste, beauty and urban planning have often fallen by the wayside. Here are the seven worst mistakes we’re making as we rebuild India.

SLOTH: COPYCAT DESIGN

Walk into any recently reopened design store on Delhi’s Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road or stroll through the shops in Mumbai’s Raghuvanshi Mills, and you’ll feel as if you’re trapped in a maze of mirrors: Every display looks the same. Didn’t you just see that gold pillow, decorated with sequins, sitting on a beige couch? Wasn’t that mahogany coffee table, inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a dragonfly design, in the last shop?

Designers say the customers take photos of products they like on their cellphones, and then take them to other stores asking for the same design. But even this does not account for the near-identical furniture displayed in different stores.

Most furniture stores have failed to establish any personality — they all meld into a blur of high-priced, straight-lined, contemporary looks that fail to stand apart, or surprise.

Categories
Real Estate

Landmark City: New Cyber Park in Gurgaon

Via the Hindu

Landmark Group, an information technology and real estate company, will be constructing a Rs. 350-crore Cyber Park in neighbouring Gurgaon. The company also plans to invest over Rs .4,000 crore in various real estate projects in the next three to four years in North India, particularly in cities and towns neighbouring Delhi.

The project is designed by Christopher Benninger

greenit1

The Cyber Park is situated in sector 67 of Gurgaon city, India’s new business destination and economic hub. The park will be built on 1.5 million square feet of land and boast 100% wi-fi support, fiber-optic connectivity, and 100% power back-up, all of which are prerequisites of any IT industry. The facade has been designed facing North and North East to help mitigate the heat of the tropical South.

The park will incorporate several green design strategies. The building will be energy efficient, significantly reducing energy costs. The external walls will be clad to reflect the sun and insulate the interior work areas. Natural light will shine into working areas without heating up the structure, which reduces the need for lighting during the daytime. Terrace gardens in the sky courts will help to cool the interior, and will be irrigated by the structure’s water recycling systems. The design also integrates rainwater harvesting and ground water recharge. These eco-friendly features will cut the structure’s energy use by over 35 percent. [link:inhabitat]

Amongst all the renderings available on Landmark City’s website, this one caught my eye. Guess there is no spellcheck in the rendering program !

greenit4

Categories
Infrastructure Real Estate Technology

Estate Manager Software to monitor Real Estate Projects

In order to monitor ongoing construction activities and ensuring real estate projects are not delayed, builders, architects and international property consultants are launching new innovative software and design tools.

Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj (JLLM) has recently launched a software, Estate Master. Anuj Puri, country head and chairman, JLLM told FE, “We have tied-up with Estates Master—an Australian company and launched the software tool in India.

Real estate developers can keep a tab on construction activities and also avoid delayed deadlines with the help of this software. Besides, JLLM is also planning to foray into master planning and design consultancy for townships and clusters of other real estate projects.