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Environment and Climate Public Realm Social Responsibility Sustainability

Goa to get Green Infrastructure.

Architects, planners and others with green caps and fingers are unveiling a plan to promote use of green principles for eco-friendly

infrastructure, necessitated by climate change.

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII, Goa) and Indian Institute of Architects (IIA) Goa chapter have initiated a joint effort towards creating a cell in Goa to promote green buildings for housing, industries and commercial sector. "We are working on the building design, incorporating the green concept and doing computer test models to ensure that the buildings are really energy-saving before we actually build them," said Dean D’Cruz, architect and former chairman of IIA (Goa chapter).

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Architects Infrastructure Public Realm

Bureaucracy and other spanners in India’s works

By DAVID LASCELLES / Business Day

THE world has become so accustomed to labelling India as one of the world’s great engines of growth — alongside China — that it comes as a bit of a shock to discover that the reality is a little less dazzling.

Concrete and chaos are the best words to describe India today, as I discovered from a visit earlier this month. The concrete is the building activity you see everywhere, the chaos is the sense you quickly get that things are barely under control.

A typical Indian scene is a large construction site, cement mixers grinding and cranes toiling, while sacred cows munch the grass alongside and a torrent of battered cars, rickshaws and filthy trucks crashes by on the pitted roads. The air is full of noise and grit, but out of it will rise the gleaming headquarters of some new Indian corporate giant.

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Uncategorized

Indian Maze Complicates Building of a Global Stage

By Jim Yardley / NYTimes.com

Manpreet Romana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The roof of the city’s new domestic airport terminal partly collapsed in August. A Metro commuter train derailed the same month, and then a second Metro train derailed in September. The city’s roads are so pockmarked with bathtub-size potholes that newspapers feature regular photo essays of the most egregiously epic offenders.

Summer had already brought a litany of infrastructure travails in New Delhi, and then Michael Fennell, chairman of the Commonwealth Games, came to town. His task was to inspect the progress of stadiums, bridges and roads as New Delhi prepares to host in October 2010 the athletic competition between nations and territories of the former British Empire, the first major international sporting event in the city in 27 years.

Indian leaders, mindful of how the Olympics elevated Beijing’s international profile in 2008, had hoped that the Commonwealth Games would establish New Delhi as a sporting capital, burnish India’s reputation as an emerging, modern power and, perhaps, position the country to bid for the 2024 Olympics. Except that Mr. Fennell concluded that New Delhi was lagging far behind schedule on construction projects and criticized organizers for a “lack of preparations,” even calling for direct intervention from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Recriminations swept through the local news media about New Delhi’s inability to get it done.

India has never enjoyed a reputation for bureaucratic efficiency, and the controversy over the Commonwealth Games has placed an international spotlight on the familiar local problem of ineffective governing. New Delhi presents an especially vivid portrait of the shortcomings of Indian bureaucracy because the city of more than 16 million people is not overseen by one governmental body but several. As a result, coordinating even minor projects, much less a major sporting event, is often undercut by inefficiency and a lack of bureaucratic cooperation.

The city’s government flow chart is a bureaucratic maze. Because New Delhi is the national capital, its land and police are controlled by the national government. The New Delhi state government (a misleading title since New Delhi is not a state) has governing authority over the city, though a different governmental body, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, or M.C.D., handles issues like roads, sewage and local taxation.

Meanwhile, the New Delhi Municipal Corporation, a federal entity known as the N.D.M.C., governs Lutyen’s Delhi, so named for the British architect who designed what is now the city’s leafy center of government. And do not forget the Delhi Cantonment Board, or D.C.B., which has authority over military land, or the Delhi Development Authority, or D.D.A., another federal entity with oversight over, yes, development.

Partha Mukhopadhyay, a scholar at the Center for Policy Research, a leading policy research organization in New Delhi, said the arrangement could complicate even basic improvement projects. The state government, for example, has authority over water while the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has authority over roads, meaning that merely installing underground water pipes can require interagency cooperation.

Often the job gets done poorly, if at all.

“In terms of governance, the city is just completely messed up,” said Mr. Mukhopadhyay, whose specialties include urban affairs.

Most city residents factor civic inefficiencies into their daily lives. Power failures are so common that many people buy backup generators for their homes. Water service can be so bad that wealthier people keep storage tanks atop their homes, while the poor wait for water trucks to refill their buckets. Public expectations for efficient government are fairly low, but hosting an international sporting event is a different matter.

“The Commonwealth Games present a problem because the work actually has to get done,” Mr. Mukhopadhyay said. “There are hard deadlines.”

The controversy finally brought action from Palaniappan Chidambaram, the home minister. Mr. Chidambaram, the federal government’s point man on New Delhi, has called on Delhi residents to improve their manners and curb spitting and public urination. Earlier this month, he ordered that the municipal government be placed under the direct authority of Sheila Dikshit, chief minister of the state government. The move, which has not yet been carried out, infuriated the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., because the new arrangement would place the B.J.P.-dominated municipal government under the thumb of the Congress Party’s state government.

Not everyone blames the city’s convoluted governmental architecture for bad governing. Arvind Kejriwal, an advocate for greater government accountability, blames inadequate public oversight of elected officials for shoddy public infrastructure and graft. Mr. Kejriwal said the system had too few outlets, like public hearings, to hold local governments accountable.

“The people have absolutely no say in day-to-day governance,” said Mr. Kejriwal, who runs a nonprofit anticorruption group, Parivartan.

New Delhi last hosted an international sports competition in 1982 when it welcomed the Asian Games. At the time, the construction effort was led by Jagmohan, then acting as the city’s lieutenant governor (another seat of authority). Mr. Jagmohan, who uses only one name, said practical issues like problems with sites or other concerns often trumped any institutional problems. He said the pressure of a deadline would be likely to focus government attention.

“The government’s prestige is on the line,” he said. “They will put their best foot forward.”

One recent afternoon at the site of the planned swimming stadium, workers were still installing the tall concrete pillars that form the exterior skeleton of the arena. With the project months behind schedule, an administrator, who asked not to be named, said work had been slowed by unexpected excavation problems, among other things. But he said three shifts were now working round-the-clock after a top sports official came to the work site and gave everyone a tongue-lashing.

“It will be finished,” the engineer promised.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

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Environment and Climate Sustainability

Sustainable Styles: Indian Architecture ?

How sustainable is your style?

Can you look at a building and tell if it’s green? Sometimes, appearances can be deceptive. We clue you in on what really makes a building environment-friendly

By Himanshu Burte / LiveMint

Sustainability is the buzzword. Every manner of building makes a claim to “greenness” today. While there are various ways of judging how green a building is, we often assume its look also offers a clue.

stein This seems reasonable. If a building is made largely of a material that consumes less energy and produces fewer emissions, the building is likely to be greener than others. Buildings that expose stone, brick or a wood skeleton consume less cement because they are not plastered. Also, if this material is local, little energy is consumed in transportation. So can there actually be a green look for a building?

That depends on how the question is phrased. We may ask, “Can we judge how sustainable a building is from its looks?” Or “Are there some aesthetic values that lead to more sustainable architecture?”

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Architects Education News

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 a CBI probe against the president, registrar and four members of the executive committee of the Council of Architecture (COA). The COA is a regulatory body constituted by the Architects Act of 1972, which accredits and licenses educational institutions to teach architecture in India. Moreover, every architect working in India has to be registered with the COA.

In a letter to the CBI dated August 27, 2009 (DO No. C-1301168/2009-Vig) — from the Joint Secretary and Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) of the MHRD, Sunil Kumar — requested the investigation of six top officials of the COA, namely, the President, Vijay Sohoni, the Registrar, Vinod Kumar and four members of the Executive Committee: KB Mohapatra, Uday C Godkari, IJS Bakhsi and Prakash Deshmukh. In the letter (a copy of which is with TEHELKA) the Joint Secretary alleges that:

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Uncategorized

Urban Metabolism

A great concept that can be used by Indian cities to compare their carbon footprint.

Green.view  >> Urban metabolism

Sep 28th 2009  From Economist.com

Cities can learn from comparing their carbon footprints

HOW and why do greenhouse-gas emissions differ between cities? Since more than half of the world’s people now live in such metropolitan areas, that is an important question. If the worst could copy the habits of the best, climate change might be slowed significantly.

To address this question a team of researchers led by Christopher Kennedy of the University of Toronto has compared the emissions of ten conurbations. Four were in North America (Denver City and County, Los Angeles County, New York City and the Greater Toronto Area). Four were in Europe (Barcelona City, the Canton of Geneva, the Greater London Authority area and the Greater Prague Region). The other two were in Asia (Bangkok) and Africa (Cape Town).

Reuters

 

Dr Kennedy and his colleagues tried to quantify the contributions of heating, transport and waste disposal, among other things, to the emission of greenhouse gases in each of these cities, and to calculate the emissions per person that resulted. They also included in their calculations some emissions that took place outside the city limits, such as those associated with the production of fuel that was consumed in the cities in question.

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Environment and Climate

Greenwashing in the time of climate change

By Mallika Sarabhai / DNA

If someone were to ask you, which route you preferred while travelling from Delhi to Chennai, the options being via Jammu and via Chandigarh, what would your response be? If someone asked a poor village whether she preferred milk with four per cent fat to that with three per cent, what would her answer be? If someone asked a friend whether, in case he developed cancer, he would prefer cancer of the lungs or the stomach, what would his answer be?

Some questions are stupid, not because their answers will be stupid, but because the framing of the question itself is faulty. The current backslapping and self-congratulatory award functions organised by the "green" building lobby and the institutions that certify the depth of the greenness of the buildings, remind me of questions like these.

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Architecture Cities

The Egg Comes to Mumbai: James Law and Cybertecture

Bindu Gopal Rao speaks to James Law, known across the globe for cybertecture. After the Pad Tower in Dubai, he is now coming up with a cybertecture egg in Mumbai, a unique project built without a single column.

“My career has been nothing less than an adventure,” declares James Law, Chairman and Chief Cybertect of James Law Cybertecture International. This company founded in 2001 offers services including architecture, master planning, interiors, multimedia, information technology and strategic planning, based on a first-of-its-kind platform called Cybertecture. Excerpts from an exclusive interview with DH Realty.

On his journey

I believe that in the limited time we are here we should be lucky to find our innate talent and use it to improve others’ lives by designing buildings and cities. Post my studies at UK, I went to Japan at the beginning of the 90s and began to realise that using a creative mind and technology would be the way forward. My aim is to be a visionary and an innovator and offer a new way of doing things and changing the old order. 

realty-5 In fact, I started my company on January 1, 2001 – a date 01/01/01 to signify a new millennium and a new way of thinking. Today we have offices in Hong Kong, Dubai and Mumbai. When I started there were challenges as no one was willing to give me a project but I was clear that we must plan for the future. However the challenge to translate ideas into action and reach out to a critical mass is what makes this journey thoroughly enjoyable.

Concept of Cybertecture

In the old days construction material was glass, wood, stone and concrete. Today’s new age world has changed with invisible information, interactivity with Information technology (IT), information on the Internet and the collective power of new sciences.

I really see no difference between an iPhone and a building or why a building cannot keep us safe.

Categories
Architecture Design

Bobby Mukherjee : Sad State of Indian Architecture

Indian architecture scene is sad, rues Aamby Valley architect

By Shilpa Raina for Thaindian.

He is the man who recreated the luxurious living experience of America’s Beverly Hills with the famous Aamby Valley project in Maharashtra. But Bobby Mukherji believes that post-independence Indian architecture has little to be proud of.

“We have shown people enough monuments and architecture from history, but what have we done after independence? Nothing! If you look around, we lure the West with monuments made in the Moghul era. After that it’s zilch,” Mukherji, who is in his 30s, told IANS.

“I would like to do something for today,” he said.

Perhaps he already has – by designing the master plan of Aamby Valley in Lonavala, Maharashtra, which is spread over 10,000 acres of land and offers all facets of luxury living. It took shape during 1998-2003.

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Environment and Climate

Mumbai Garbage Dump Gets Rs 26 Crore In Carbon Credits

In a landmark for carbon financing in India, the municipal corporation of Greater Mumbai has earned Rs 26 crore for the scientific closure of a garbage dumping ground.

The cheque from the Asia Carbon Fund of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is an advance for future delivery of carbon credits. The money essentially is for the capture and combustion of methane gas emanating from the dump which results in a substantial reduction of greenhouse emissions. Before giving the money though, the ADB had the project scrutinised by independent validators.

Carbon credit consultants say the deal is one of the largest Carbon advances under the Clean Development Mechanism to a municipal corporation. "We hope to earn a total of Rs 73 crores from the Gorai dumping ground carbon credits, which would be Rs 11 crores above the entire cost of the project,” said additional municipal commissioner R A Rajeev, who drove the project from start to finish.