News
GRIHA: India’s Answer to LEED
Evaluation is necessary to ascertain how green a building is. Apart from verifying claims, such systems ensure that best practices are followed and the gains made are quantified. GRIHA (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment), the green rating system developed by The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), is promoted by the Ministry of New and Renewable [...]
Building with a heart: Anne Feenstra Exhibition
Every edifice should speak the language of its country, says Anne Feenstra, displaying friendly buildings at an exhibition in New Delhi By Shailaja Tripathi / The Hindu Three different structures by three different architects in three totally different countries and settings… but what binds them is their innate connection with the human beings who not [...]
Council of Architecture India under investigation
Termites In The Woodwork The government has accused top officers at the COA, India’s apex architectural body, of criminal misconduct. BRIJESH PANDEY tracks the issues as the CBI investigates IN A move that could change the face of the study and practice of architecture in India, the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) has recommended [...]
CTBUH 2010 World Conference in Mumbai
3rd – 5th February 2010 | Renaissance Hotel & Convention Center, Mumbai. Rapid urbanization of developing countries such as India and China over the past decade have resulted in almost 200,000 people migrating from rural to urban regions somewhere on the planet every day (United Nations statistics). This translates into the need for the world [...]
Tallest in Asia: Maharashtra moots Asia’s tallest tower
This article appeared in the Business Standard today. Is it just me or does anyone else think this is a really ridiculous idea? Just building tall for the heck of it makes no sense at all. There is no infrastructure to support such a tower, and getting into the tallest tower race is really doomed. [...]
A Monograph on the works of Nari Gandhi
We are very happy to inform you about the soon to be published Monograph on one of India’s foremost architects Nari Gandhi. There is a personal connection here for us at UAI. The author of the monograph is Prof. H, Masud Taj my professor at Rizvi College of Architecture from 1992 to 1997, and a [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Architecture in Recession: India
The economic crisis has architects hurting around the world. This series reports on the global state of design. Here, a look at the "new" India By Tripti Lahiri In the past five years, as India’s hunger for glass-encased IT parks and marble-swathed gated communities appeared insatiable, architects designed supersize projects dreamed up by Indian [...]
The City and Emerging Technologies
The Real Time City by Andrea Vaccari The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed, alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure. While architecture has shaped the built environment to satisfy urban dwellers aesthetically and to accommodate their functional needs such as face-to-face interactions and [...]
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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