Environment and Climate
As Mumbai Spills Over, Floodwater Creeps Closer
By VIKAS BAJAJ for the New York Times. MUMBAI, India — As this city prepared recently to inaugurate a shiny new bridge that officials promise will ease Mumbai’s chronic traffic jams, Dilip da Cunha was peering at the underbelly of the city’s waterways and drainage systems. Taking two visitors on a tour of the busy [...]
India’s Demand on Nature Approaching Critical Limits, Report Finds
Copyrights Global Footprint Network Blog As the world grapples with the escalating effects of the financial crisis, Global Footprint Network reported on another mounting – and unsecured – debt: a growing gap in India between the amount of natural resources the country uses and how much it has. India now demands the biocapacity of two [...]
Green and intelligent
Through sustainable building systems that conserve environment and natural resources, developers look to offer the home buyer health, comfort and security in the long term. By Bijoy Ghosh Green and intelligent buildings are fast becoming the norm as developers and buyers see concrete value in them. Green buildings are about environment and natural resource conservation [...]
Green bldgs: Fuel savers or fashion statements?
There’s a new mantra among builders and they’re chanting it with the fervour of cheerleaders: green architecture. The flag bearer of green construction is the Indian Council of Green Building (ICGB). An organisation formed by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre, the ICGB is calling eco-friendly architecture a movement. [...]
Open Spaces for the People
For the people Much of our experience of a city depends on its public spaces. Yet in India, citizens seem unaware that they have a right to a hospitable city. We examine some of the reasons Himanshu Burte We hear a lot about cities in the West competing for the loyalty of their residents. In [...]
Mumbai leads the way in Green projects
Where builders regularly flout environment rules for profit, it’s hard to believe that Mumbai is becoming an eco-friendly city. But it is true. Of the 259 buildings in the country that are waiting to get accredited as green buildings, more than 70 are from Mumbai. Five of them have already received accreditation. A green building [...]
Indian Green Building Congress 2008
The Indian Green Building Council of Cll – Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre announces its flagship event "Green Building Congress 2008", International Conference & Exhibition on Green Building Technologies between 24 & 27 September 2008 at the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai The main congress consists of a series of parallel events. International Conference on Green [...]
Freedom Park in Bangalore Set to Open in November
A vital green space to beat the city centre rush, topped with a slice of history. On offer is a unique experience, as the BBMP gets ready to open the long-in-the-wait Freedom Park to the public in November, this year. The 20-acre park, coming up in the former central prison premises on Seshadri Road, has [...]
Rabi Rashmi Abasan: India’s First Green Housing Project Completed
Via Bengal DCL Rabi Rashmi Abasan, India’s first solar housing complex, conceived by WBREDA and engineered and managed by Bengal DCL on a plot of 1.76 acres in New Town Kolkata. Destined to be a dazzling milestone in the development of housing complexes in India where every owner will not only have his land but [...]
Mumbai Metro rail project to earn carbon credits
The Mumbai Metro Rail project has been in the news for decades. However it is only very recently that it became a real project and is being executed. When completed it will alleviate a lot of the pressure on the local train systems. Interestingly it will also earn carbon credits. BL reported that, after Delhi [...]
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 […]
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