Infrastructure
India in My Rear-View Mirror
By PETER WONACOTT in the Wall Street Journal In China’s Southwest Sichuan province, the road to enlightenment is a superhighway. In about 90 minutes, the highway zips travelers 180 kilometers from the provincial capital of Chengdu to the former farming hamlet of Leshan, home to a sitting Buddha that is more than 230-feet tall and [...]
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, [...]
Bandra Worli Sea Link
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 [...]
Centre for Urban Planning, Infrastructure set up in Bangalore
Centre for infrastructure and sustainable transport and urban planning has been set up at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) here. Established with a corpus of Rs.300 million/Rs. 30 crore/$6 mn, it is the first such government-academia facility in the country that will address urban planning and critical infrastructure issues arising out of rapid growth [...]
Mumbai: Big Steps in Infrastructure in 2009
The new year will be a busy one for the infrastructure sector as some prestigious projects finally see completion and with others scheduled to take off. The much touted Bandra-Worli Sealink, an urban haat in Navi Mumbai on the lines of Dilli Haat, eight flyovers on the Western and Eastern express highways and 50 skywalks [...]
Building urban India
That we really don’t know what India’s urban infrastructure price tag is going to be is a big challenge by Ramesh Ramanathan India’s cities face many challenges, and one looms larger than the rest: How much will it cost to build our urban infrastructure? Among the recent sources of urban infrastructure cost estimations are: —From [...]
As India’s southern centres choke, IT goes north
TWO Indian cities are emerging to challenge the traditional centres of Bangalore and Hyderabad as the country’s information technology services grow at 20 per cent annually. Chandigarh – home of India’s first Olympics gold medal winner, Abhinav Bindram – and Coimbatore are fast attracting technology companies and workers as inadequate infrastructure cripples the southern centres [...]
Re-use of Olympic Architecture post-event
As New Delhi gears up to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010, the issue of what cities do with star architecture projects post-event comes up. The article below looks at one such instance in the aftermath of Beijing 2008. In a July interview with Der Spiegel, celebrated Olympic architect Jacques Herzog defended his decision to [...]
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 [...]
Railway expansion plan stuck in court
Central railway station is bursting at its seams. The number of trains and passengers far exceeds the capacity of the building and also the railway lines. Southern Railway has finalised an over Rs 600-crore expansion plan to build a separate terminal on the west side of the Moore Market Complex (MMC) and to realign the [...]
Elsewhere in India
- Shout Out > Poonchh by AarohiAarohi Singh is putting her art where her heart has always been. Poonchh is a collection of products created in aid of stray dogs. It will be showcased at 100Ft restaurant, Indiranagar, Bangalore on the 10, 11 and 12 February 2012. A great way for those who feel for the cause to show their support […]
- Caught my eye > Chai Paani, Naqqashi Platter, Kaagazi, Junk Mirror, Recycled Paper JewelleryChai Paani money bank. Fitting considering the political climate. Available at Store ABD, Whitefield – Banaglore, U store, Delhi and Mumbai and online at Shopo Gourd Platter made with Naqqashi (engraving) By Tejas Soni – tejassonidesign(at)gmail(dot)com A proper Paper Bag by Kaagazi. More here. Junkyard Mirror. Help recycle some junk. Available at Plush Plaz […]
- Book Review > Pattern and Ornament in the Arts of IndiaAs visitors to grand Palaces, Temples, Mosques and Tombs, we are likely to come away more with awe than with a picture of what we have really seen. Often, details merge with a memory of the whole. Until someone points out the complexities and captures them so we can study how the place came to […]
- Caught My Eye > Aarti Verma, SAS Home, Maati, Raja GondkarAarti Verma of Art Meets Fashion. Hand-painted by Aarti, bags made by Karigars. I liked these three from her hand-painted work. More of it here – Blog and facebook. A beautiful rust Nandi silk table runner by SAS Home available on sale online at Heaven and Home. Could probably also use it to dress up […]
- Fashion Feature> SLOW. useless.Today, our fingers and hands do more of this – typing words onto screens, hailing taxis, raising toasts, holding files, carrying shopping bags – and less of this – folding paper to make planes, digging through mud to sow a seed, sewing a button, threading a needle to darn a tear. The process of making […]
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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