Cities
Height Restrictions Removed: A Boom for Skyscrapers ?
Scorpiogenius makes a compelling arguement for “Taller, Greener, Better”. The Civil Aviation Ministry and the Airport Authority of India have trimmed down the height restrictions for constructions around our airports. This allows for buildings to sprout higher into the skies above our cities, almost double to what was permitted until yesterday. I expect Kerala to [...]
Moshe Safdie to under take beautification of Golden Temple surroundings
CHANDIGARH: Internationally acclaimed US based architect Moshe Safdie, who had successfully accomplished the most prestigious project of Khalsa Heritage Centre (KHC), Sri Anandpur Sahib would soon undertake the beautification of the surroundings of Golden Temple (Sri Harimandir Sahib) along with the corridor project (Galiara) around the holy Golden Temple at Amritsar. A decision to this [...]
Le Corbusier’s legacy lost in last 40 years
Forty years ago, we lost a kind of leadership which inspires creativity. With Le Corbusier’s passing away, a voice which talked of a new vision of the world was taken away from our midst. In the 1950s all architects in India were steeped in patterns of thought that had come to us from our British [...]
Celebrating Bombay’s Art Deco: Rahul Mehrotra in Conversation
Rahul Mehrotra, an architect, conservator and an urban planner has been at the forefront of his generation in several important conservation projects such as in the Mumbai Kala Ghoda area as well as the Chowmalla palace complex at Hyderabad amongst o thers. His practice conceives/conceptualises projects from urban housing, commercial spaces and unusual projects like [...]
Wadala Tower and Interstate Bus Terminal to be India’s Tallest Building.
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, [...]
MMRDA Priorities Lopsided
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
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 [...]
Messy Urbanism: India
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 [...]
Megacities Threaten to Choke India
By PATRICK BARTA and KRISHNA POKHAREL LUCKNOW, India — Voting is drawing to a close Wednesday in India’s largest election ever, and a slowing economy, terrorism and the rural poor have been front and center in the campaign. But of growing concern are the country’s teeming new megacities, which are swelling rapidly even as jobs [...]
Notes from the Emerging Architecture of India Conference in New York City
The Emerging Exchanges: New Architectute of India conference was held last Thursday and Friday at the New School Campus here in NYC. Jointly hosted by the New School, India China Institute, and The Architecture League it brought together a great mix of practitioners from India. Thursday’s first session was an introduction to the theme. Kazi [...]
Elsewhere in India
- Caught My Eye > Sham Patwardhan-JoshiThe 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 childrenSome 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 > KatranMaterials 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 TyabjiBritish 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 TimeThis 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 […]
South Asia
- Conference + Symposium 09.09Le 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 ProceduresThe 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 CityIn 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 wantedArchitect 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 MakersA 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 ExcavatedIt 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 AlternativesIn 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 IdeolgyLet 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 […]
A Wadias.Inc Enterprise
