Perspecta

Chandigarh College of Architecture

PERSPECTA

perspecta two-010

Not for commercial distribution

two-010

cca : where even

concrete

breathes >>

A new city, unfettered by the traditions of the past… an expression of the nation’s faith in the future’ – Nehru’s words descirbes the significance of the city of Chandigarh for the country at best.

It was only natural to continue the architectural legacy of Corbusier, the master architect of this significant town planning experiment of the 20th century, in the form of an architecture college. The Chandigarh College of Architecture was thus conceptualized.

Established on 7th August 1961, the CCA building is an adaptation of Corbusier’s design executed brilliantly by late Ar. Aditya Prakash. Mr. A.R. Prabhawalkar was the founder principal of the college.

From its inception half a century ago, the Chandigarh College of Architecture has evolved into a hub of innovation, progress and creativity.

Yes, we are a good 50 years old (we celebrate golden jubilee next year!), yet spirited, enthusiastic and proud of ourselves. We now have a huge library, our very own L-8, an auditorium, yet we all converge at the ‘Ashoka’… We work on CAD, Rhino, the works; yet thesis projects continue to remain group efforts… we still shout ‘gadda’ and still stay ‘gach’. We still beg for extensions and still ‘maaro fudge’. The more we have changed, the more we remain the same… cheers to us! Cheers to the college!

Photograph by: Dhruv Bahl

Principal’s Note Dear students,

As our college nears 50 years of age, I find myself mulling over the past and the journey till now. The technological and infrastructural additions to the college, the fresh, new, enthusiastic batches, the new faculty… and I realize that throughout these years, although things have altered, their methodology remains unchanged in a charming paradox of time. We still have students working towards achieving feats, still uniting during volleyball matches, still converging at the dome and of course, painstakingly compiling this annual magazine.

I am proud to present to you, dear students, the 2010-2011 edition of the College magazine, ‘Perspectatwo-010’.

It is indeed heartening to see that the talents of our students are not just restricted to the profession they’ve chosen, but extends to creative writing, artwork, etc. as well. This is not just a reminiscence of the year gone by, but a memento of your college years meant to be preserved and perhaps shown to your kids someday (‘See how cool your parents were?’). I hope you all enjoy it.

Talking of the future now, I wish you an eventful and successful year ahead. Have fun, enjoy the precious college years but do study too. Cherish your time here since no other time in life would you be as young, energetic and full of dynamic ideas to change the world as now.

Even as CCA enters its golden jubilee year, as our alumni body grows and reaches heights unimagined, as changes occur, we continue to remain a youthful, energetic, exuberant lot. It is my sincerest hope and wish that this undying spirit persists forever. Amen.

Pradeep K. Bhagat

FROM THE DESK OF THE DEAN OF ACADEMICS

The Chandigarh College of Architecture has always believed in nurturing the unique inherent potential of each student and provide an enabling environment for their professional as well as co-curricular development. The current issue of ‘Perspectatwo-010’ is just one of the many endeavours which exemplifies this.

Over the years I have observed that the students who join the field of architecture are a highly talented lot and excel in multiple domains. Painting, drawing, sculpture, creative writing, poetry, music, dramatics and photography are but a few of these.

‘Perspecta-two-010’ chronicles the achievements of the students and reflects their creative talents. It discusses the theme of changing perceptions of students as they progress through the years in the College as budding individuals and as architects simultaneously. The magazine provides a clear insight as to how the educational environment at the College motivates the students to achieve standards of excellence, not only in their professional domain but, in addition, as enlightened responsible citizens of the society.

J.P.Singh

Achievers

The TEAM

Outside the Studio

Archo

Experiences

Poems

Notes from Wisconsin Students

Thesis in brief

Students Work

Intellect

Corbu year-Calendar

Tribute to Lt. Mr. Vineet Sexena

‘Perspecta two-010’ in the making

Editor’s Note

Contents

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Editor’s note

An endeavour that one has worked hard for, seen it take shape from the very seed of a thought to its absolute completion, worked on it day and night, to have it entrusted onto others for their critique or opinion becomes hard… we, the Editors of ‘Perspecta-two-010’, sincerely hope that you, dear college mates will appreciate this effort. We have thought through, discussed and dissected every aspect of this magazine, edited it thoroughly, thought about what you would actually want to read, provided you with our very best! We are of course, biased towards our creation, but we do hope you share at least a fraction of our opinion.

‘Perspecta-two-010’ is a group effort. Without the inputs and help of certain people, it wouldn’t have been what it is, or, in fact, even seen the light of the day. We are extremely thankful to Deepika ma’am, our coordinator. She was always there for us, ready to divulge inputs and advice.

Among the students, we’d like to extend our thanks to the CASA body, without whose help and support we would have been clueless about the technicalities. Further, had it not been for Arjun, Ishita and Nikhil, our junior counterparts, their constant support and insights, this magazine could never have been as ‘cool’ as we like to believe it is. With them on board, the workload related stress and panic evaporated in a riot of laughter, amazing anecdotes and delicious food. Also, a big ‘thank you’ to Bani and Tawish for helping in securing the sponsors!

We would also like to acknowledge Ravinder, Jayant and Aabhas for their unstinting support throughout the editing. The alumini readily helped us by providing the necessary material. And not to forget Mayank Ojha’s undying efforts in creating the fantabulous cover page.

We are especially thankful to Mr. Surjeet, ISPER for providing the required sponsorship at such a short notice.

Beyond the obvious, though, Mr. Surjeet is a magnanimous personality, sharing experience and advice, having been a college magazine editor himself. He supported us through and through, without any conditions. Thank you so much sir!

We hope that our magazine reaches upto your expectations and wish for all future endeavours in this direction to reach peaks of success.

Thank You! Editors (Final year)

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What you are holding in your hand right now is our baby! Yes, the 2010-2011 edition of the annual college magazine, Perspecta, is our lovingly nurtured (though often cursed, but we don’t take that into account since it was while experiencing extreme sleep deprivation) baby. We have lived it, experienced it, through and through….from its very inception to its culmination. We are ‘the Eds’.

From the most initial stages of the creation of the magazine, we knew, in spite of the large team, that we would do just fine. What with the surprising similarity in our thought processes, the unanimous and conscious efforts to make the magazine ‘cool’ and readable, the decision to intersperse heavy doses of text with equal amounts of relevant graphics, it was almost as though all of us were a single entity. It 010 Perspecta

was all smooth sailing. Though not for very long…

There are unavoidable glitches in every project.

However, once you successfully combat them, you only emerge stronger. One such flaw was the process of looking for the sponsor, which, ultimately turned out to be for our own good. (didn’t you know of the subconscious superpowers of ’the Eds‘?) The information that we had to look for a sponsor ourselves was intimated to us pretty late. Obviously, panicking and freaking out ensued.

However, we were advised to go to Mr. Surjeet …….. of ISPER and ask for his help. Not only was he willing to help, he even shared valuable insights about his own experiences as the editor of college magazines he was the editor of 3 magazines in his college days!

The sheer brilliance, yet humility of this man bowled us all over. His cooperation really made things easier for us. Strike 1! Sponsor finalized, we set out on the task of preparing the entire magazine for proof-reading, which was to be done within 3 days. It seemed an impossible task, but it was tackled with weapons ’the Eds’ always armor themselves with - last minute panic, night-outs and just the right dose of hysterical laughter! At break-neck speed, we carried out the editing of articles, the collection or creation of graphic assists, the compilation of the magazine… And managed to pull through. Strike 2!

It was all nice and beautiful and life was good, hence forth. All we had to do now was wait for the response from the target audience, the CCA students. And we all hope (pray! chadhao prashad!) that it will be favorable.

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Ar. Sujay Sengupta (Asst. Prof. CCA)

Peri-urban areas lie at the interface between the urban and rural settlements, literally defining an area bordering a town or a city. These are in most cases the places of crisis. They comprise a mixture of encroached farming land, older settlements surrounded by new real estate development, small industrial sites and slums.

Interestingly, these squatter settlements are the hotspots for the political parties. By facilitating them with some minimal incentives, the parties inflate their votebanks. Studies show that all major epidemics of the recent times like plague, bird flu, swine flu, etc. have their epi-centre within these peri-urban settlements.

Even our “City Beautiful” CHANDIGARH is not free from the clutches of such squatter settlements.

What is a slum??

According to Census of India, 2001: a compact area of at least 300 population or about 60-70 households of poorly built congested tenements, in unhygienic environment usually with inadequate infrastructure and lacking in proper sanitation and drinking water facilities is termed as slums.

Slums have different nomenclature in different parts of our country:

‘Jhuggi’- Jhonpari in Delhi ‘Jhoparpatti’ or ‘Chawal’ in Mumbai

‘Bustee’ in Kolkata

‘Charis’ in Chennai

Projection of Estimated Slum population of India in the next 10 years: The past Census record shows that the slum population of India has increased from 27.9 millions in 1981 to 42.6 millions in 2001.

Projection even suggests that slum population in urban India has doubled by the year 2010.

This means that more than 6% of the total population of the country will be living in the slums of urban India by the year 2010.

For their livelihood, the residents of these informal settlements have to depend either on the mother city or carry out unorganized trade like pottery, plastic product manufacturing, candle making, or small farming or cattle raring. The proximity to the mother city attracts public transports to run through these settlements leading to traffic congestions.

Significantly, in the Indian scenario, there is not much difference between a slum and a peri-urban area.

Slums and Slum population in India: - 42.6 million people living in 8.2 million households have been enumerated in slums of 642 cities/ towns spread across 26 states and Union Territories in 2001 census.

-This constitutes 4% of total population and 23.1% of the 640 cities and towns.

-Andhra Pradesh has the largest number of cities/ towns (77) having slum population while Uttaranchal has the lowest (6).

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According to the Census of India, the total population was computed as 1,028,610,328 (as on 2004) and out of which, 28% live in urban areas.

The future population projection prepared by the Registrar of General & Census Commissioner of India indicates that the population of India at the end of the year 2025 would be at 1.4 billions.

Researches further reveal that by the end of 2025, nearly 50% of the total population will be living in Urban areas of India.

Slums behind EWS housing, Chandigarh

Problem Identification :- A general study and analysis of different slum areas in India reveal that most of them suffer from some common problems like: -Poor housing conditions, -Unplanned and sporadic settlement pattern, -Over crowding – resulting in high density of population, -Poverty, -Lack of clear water supply, insufficient toilet facilities, poor sanitation, etc lead to poor environmental condition, -Most of these settlements are situated in low lying areas like on canal sides, abutting railway tracks, under flyovers, etc, -Juxtaposed with heaps of garbage, -Vulnerable to various social and political pressure.

How can we get rid of these squatter settlements in urban areas?

At the initiation of slum problem, it was felt that slum clearance and slum re-location would help in solving slum problems in metropolitan cities.But these slum relocation drives initiated by the Govt. Of India generated lot of controversy.

Strong resistance came from various political parties.

Simultaneously, Urban Local Bodies recognized the contribution of the urban poor in overall urban prosperity.

So in the later stage, policies do not advocate the concept of Slum clearance, except in case of untenable sites.

Here I would like to leave you with the following questions: Should we relocate and rehabilitate these slum dwellers outside the city limits?

OR Should slum planning be an integral part of our City planning?

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Ar. Deepika Gandhi (Faculty at CCA)

The Earthship concept is the brainchild of MICHAEL REYNOLDS, who has written several books on the topic. Near Taos, New Mexico, where he has his Earthship Biotecture business, which are whole communities of earth ships.

An Earthship is a radically sustainable home, made of recycled materials.

Electricity: From the sun and wind.

Water: From rain and snow melt, used four times.

Sewage: Treated on site in botanical planters.

Heating and Cooling: From the Sun The tires are laid like bricks, with the top tire spanning two tires and the Earth. beneath it, and all of the tires touching each other.

Food: Grown inside and outside.

Earthships can be built in any climate, anywhere in the world. From extreme cold, close to the poles to the equator. They allow you to live in harmony with the environment,with security, and modern amenities.

These homes are primarily constructed to work autonomously and are generally made of earth-filled tires, utilising thermal mass construction to naturally regulate indoor temperature. They also usually have their own special natural ventilation system. Earthships are generally OFF-THE-GRID homes, minimizing their reliance on public utilities and fossil fuels.

The original Earthships’ designs were at first very experimental, but with practice and evolution the houses began looking attractive. Earthships are built to utilize the available local resources, especially energy from the Sun. MATERIALSEarth filled tyresMud is pounded and filled into tyres. They are laid like bricks, with the top tyre spanning 2 tyres beneath it. The walls are as thick as the diameter of the tyres i.e 2 feet 8 inches, nullifying the need for conventional building material for support. The tyres are then set in place with cement mortar for a smooth finish.

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BOTTLE WALL CONSTRUCTION Although bottle walls can be constructed in many different ways, they are typically made on a foundation that is set into a trench in the earth to add stability to the wall. Bottle walls range from using one bottle as a filler in a thin wall to making walls two-bottles thick. Primitive mixture, such as cob or adobe, is made from a mix of sand, clay, and straw, is used as the mortar to bind the bottles. It is thickly spread on the previous layer of bottles followed by the next layer which is pressed into the mixture. Typically two fingers of separation are used as a means of spacing although any kind of spacing can be achieved.

Bottles can also be duct-taped together to create a window-type effect. Two similar size bottles can be taped together with the openings allowing a light passage way. This also traps air and creates a small amount of insulation.

SALIENT FEATURES Earthships are built to utilize the available local resources, especially energy from the Sun. For example, windows on the sunny side admit lighting and heating, and the buildings are often horseshoe-shaped to maximize natural light and solar heat gain during winter months.

The thick, dense inner walls provide thermal mass that naturally regulates the interior temperature during both cold and hot outside temperatures.

Internal, non-load-bearing walls are often made of a honeycomb of recycled cans joined by concrete and are referred to as tin can walls. These walls are usually thickly plastered with stucco.

The roof of an Earthship is heavily insulated - often with earth or adobe - for added energy efficiency.

When the bottles are filled with a (dark) liquid, or other dark material, the wall can function as a thermal mass, absorbing solar radiation during the day and radiating it back into the space at night, thus dampening diurnal temperature swings.

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OF WINDMILLS, POLDERS, TULIPS,CHEESE AND STROOPWAFFLES Dr. Prof. Sangeeta Bagga Mehta (Faculty at CCA)

What images conjure up in mind when there is a mention of Windmills, polders, clogs, cheese, Stroopwaffles…? Unbeatably Holland, where the energetic and friendly Dutch grow the world’s finest wheat, brew it to generate Heineken, and sell it as the world’s finest beer along with the vibgyor varieties of tulips. The Netherlands is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles, and Aruba, the latter are Dutch Colonies in the Caribbean Sea. While its landscape is a maze of canals and polders with cows grazing and occasional stud farms, its technological feats are no less amazing. The flight into Amsterdam’s Schipol airport arrives as though landing upon a runway on the unending waters of the North Sea. Your arrival here is made even more exciting from the presence of a live alligator caught by its tail that escaped from the red suitcase.

Amsterdam, the touristic capital is an old medieval city lying along the canals of the river Amstel as it goes to meet the North Sea. Its picturesque houses representing the Dutch architectural style present a pleasant waterfront scene as one walks or takes a boat ride along the town’s numerous canals. Spaces being a premium commodity, canals serve as the major transport lines limiting surface transport to a few roads. Interestingly, each house has a ‘hook’, which serves to haul up furniture and heavy bulky goods in and out of the 2-3 storied houses. So when people move house, the keel is used to transfer household goods, furniture, straight from the various floors through the windows into a boat from where they arrive at their new destination.

The trip to Amsterdam is incomplete without the boat tour. Beginning this picturesque journey into Amsterdam’s glorious past, the boat moves to the Old harbour of Amsterdam where ships as large as ocean liners would come in from the North Sea bringing in Spices, silk, citrus fruits and slaves from as far as Indonesia, Greece, Morocco and India to name a few. As a symbol, the ship Amsterdam which was shipwrecked and then rebuilt providing employment to a large population comes next on the canal tour. A Chinese restaurant completely functional and built upon a big boat stands 022 Perspecta

docked. The tour moves through the various canals of the Amstel and at one point six successive arches containing six locks, one behind the other is a gentle yet firm reminder of the precautions needed to be taken when a settlement needs to be built on reclaimed land. The Dutch are amazing with their hard working and sunshine personalities and that is probably what has led to their Heineken enjoyment, mouthwatering Cheese and Stroopwaffles and water harnessing systems –the Windmills.

Compared to the touristic Amsterdam, Delft, the University town TU Delft as it is popularly known is a quiet, calm, cathedral town where occasional church bells chime, the belfry counts the hour, the blue water in the canal gurgles softly, the ducks bask in the a Sun, hopping onto the cobbled street on either side of the canal to pick a morsel dropped by a cyclist.

In the Netherlands, the drainage system is an important matter. A polder is a low-lying tract of land enclosed by embankments known as dikes that forms an artificial hydrological entity, meaning it has no connection with outside water other than through man operated devices. There are three types of polders: • Land reclaimed from a body of water, such as a lake or the sea bed; • Flood plains separated from the sea or river by a dike; • Marshes separated from the surrounding water by a dike and consequently drained.

The ground level in drained marshes subsides over time and thus all polders will eventually be below the surrounding water level some or all of the time. Water enters the low-lying polder through ground swell due to water pressure on ground water or rain fall and transportation of water by rivers and canals. This usually means that the polder has an excess of water that needs to be pumped out or drained by opening sluices at low tide.

However, care must be taken in not setting the internal water level too low. Polder land made up of peat (former marshland) will show accelerated compression due to the peat decomposing in dry conditions. The Dutch have created a well developed water control system to keep large areas from being flooded, because some parts of the Netherlands are below sea level. Large canals, called ‘weteringen’, were dug to get rid of the excess water in the polders. However, the drained soil

started setting, while the level of the river rose due to the river’s sand deposits. After a few centuries, an additional way to keep the polders dry was required. Kinderdijk , a UNESCO World Heritage Site is a village situated in a Polder at the confluence of the Lek and Noord rivers. Its system of 19 windmills built around 1740 is a major tourist attraction in The Netherlands.

The site illustrates all the typical features associated with this hydraulic technology – dykes, reservoirs, pumping stations, outlet sluices and Water board Assembly Houses and a series of beautifully preserved windmills.

A twelve minute train ride from Delft brings us to modernity-- Rotterdam centre city amid the soaring Siemens tower, close to the CoolSingel Strip, a redevelopment incorporating the concept of shopping malls, indoor and outdoor space indistinguishable as you pass through bookstores on multiple levels, through the Tourist office, it supports some of the largest works of Modern Movement by Rem Koolhaas, the Cube Houses. Bombed completely in WW-II, the architectural capital of the Netherlands, Central Rotterdam is an amazing engineering feat. Rotterdam’s importance also lies in the development of the Rotterdam harbour at the mouth of the river Maas, where it enters the sea. Thus it allows large ships from and to the hinterland to move along Rotterdam into the Sea. The newly constructed Maas bridge with its tensile structural members presents a graceful shimmering silver gesture outstretching into the waters beyond. The Tourist infrastructure is truly enhanced through the Spido Tour which takes you through a guided tour of the numerous ‘dams’ and quays such as Schiedam and its traditional windmill, the Orange Ship which is actually an orange juice plant fitted within the ship with a bottling and packaging plant!

Each year the ship travels to Malta to fetch Oranges,

which are brought back to the Rotterdam Harbour, and the juice exported the world over. Seems true that besides the wheat production, the indigenous power of the Dutch lay in their mindset, that they managed to successfully trade with the world and even established colonies as far as Indonesia and the US and continue to strengthen their economy till date with this attitude.

Spido Tour also takes you almost into the North Sea and on its way back, slows down as it passes by, the quay from where liners for New York used to set sail-the Hotel New York (1901 architect CB Van der Tak) on the River Maas’s west bank. From this quay the maiden Dutch voyage to America took off and it became an official landmark. Identified by its age old clocks mounted atop its blue green towers, the headquarters of Holland America, it opened its doors as a hotel to the public in 1993. It sits alongside the twentieth century City Hall, The World Port centre by Sir Norman Foster, and the residential Montevideo Tower. Well as all good things must come to an end, so does the trip of the land of windmills, stroop waffles and tulips, but it leaves its mark behind—an indefatigable spirit which has made the Dutch turn each polder into an opportunity and thus a force to reckon with the world over.

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He amazes us with his excellence in his field, astounds us with his humble and charming ways and gives marks even for late or the most ordinary submissions! Our Bheem sir is a genius, as is evident from the numerous prestigious awards he has won, yet so modest, he is an artist in the true sense of the word, breathing life into his creations and yet so practical.

Unbothered by the trials and tribulations of day-to-day life, he sees art in every form, all aspects of life, be it the hustle-bustle of a marketplace or the calm of leisure valley.

His achievements are too many to be name yet some of the most prominent ones include – Amrita Shergill Award by Punjab Lalit Kala Academy, Chandigarh (1987), Punjab Lalit Kala Academy Award (1985, 1995, 2004), Northern Region, Camlin Art Foundation Award (2002, 2003), Golden Jubilee AIFACS Award etc.

He has recently showcased his creations in Indian High Commision, Nehru Centre in London. The exhibition, named ‘The shades and tints of Indian landscape’, was hugely successful. Another of his famous and recent feats includes exhibition at Shridharani Art Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi. He displayed there paintings in water colour, a medium he especially prefers, and brought alive in the displays seemingly mundane daily life objects, making the extraordinary viewing experiences.

We are, without a doubt, extremely fortunate to have him with us. We love you, sir, and wish you all the success in the future!

Ishita Bhatnagar (Editor 2nd year)

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Versioning......Nothing is as persistent as change

V

Mohammad Shaique uddin (Final Year)

ersioning is an operative… shift in the way an individual uses to transform itself in time as well as in the territory.

Whenever we talk of anything object-related to our daily life, we always try to ask this simple question each and every time:

“Is this the latest one?”

his stuff to earn money for his/her survival.

Therefore, we see that we all are circumscribed in a world that is upgrading at each and every instance.

The same upgrading has been happening in the field of Architecture, since the time it came into existence.

Let’s see from the starting:

Nature has provided this amazingly magical power of plausibly transforming oneself according to the needs of the situation and the territory. To elaborate, let’s start from the scratch:

The very first time humans learnt to build a house, they have been trying to expertise that method and then started looking for new techniques and better ways.

When the Earth as a planet came into existence, the very first living form on it was a cell. As the time passed by and the cells had an urge for survival, they learnt to live in communities,that is what we call a molecule (cluster of cells) today and further into the very first aquatic creature and so on. But what we learn from all this is that it’s the natural tendency of the life forms to version (transform) themselves according to the time.

Initially, we used to build houses or any building with stone blocks and they took long time for construction as everything was to be done manually, for we didn’t have any machines at that time. Then people learnt about bricks, and started to build structures with brick, that made their work easy as they did not have to pull the heavy stone blocks. The next level was the introduction of steel and concrete, which led to the light weight construction methods making the construction of buildings even easier. This altering stage in the life of Architecture has come up only because of the introduction of new materials and techniques, and the agility of this profession to absorb these changes for its survival. For a very long period of time, we have been practicing the latest technique and were quite happy with it, until the need of new technique had risen for complex structures.

This was the time when architecture really needed a great versioning. Then this new digital method of construction came up which is very familiar to us by the name DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE. This digital method has actually helped architecture to simplify the complexities of a structure into very simple components which is readable to everyone and has made the work of architects very easy.

In our day to day experiences, we always come across the facts and figures about the different types of transformations in and around us. But, we are so busy that we almost don’t pay any attention to them.

Let’s say, you always go to the market, to buy your daily commodities. While, you’re on your way, you visit alot of shops, and see big banners hanging on their doorstep. Few days later, when you are again on your way to the market, you see that some new banners have replaced that old banner.

Now try to understand:

“Why the shopkeeper has to do this?”

The answer is simple, in order to get the attention of the consumer he needs to give new updates to his shop and spread the news in one or other way.

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The ideology behind all the text above is that the world is an ever changing process where every component is transforming to survive as per the requirement.

To Conclude, “Just like water, the purest form of all the elements, which transforms itself to move into the space in a very gentle manner and never stops its journey, for it always finds its way out, We should also learn to transform ourselves according to the time so that we don’t have to stop our Journey.”

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SOMEDAY…….

Someday I want to scream so loud, with all my talent I can pull the whole crowd…..

Anuj Sharma (Alumni)

Someday I want everything to be mine,

Someday I want to be that special guy, who spreads happiness and has no reasons to cry……

its my dream and not just a line….

Someday I want everyone around me to be proud, Someday I wish I have those wings to fly,

I could hear my name, clear and loud….

taking me out in the open blue sky….

Someday I guess, is so special a day, Someday I want to be that huge tree,

when my family, friends , my love, all come my way…..

be it a scorching hot sun or a heavy rain, its help is always free….

Someday I want to forget all those troubles, Someday I want the world to recognize me,

would want to be free just like water bubbles……

appreciate me for the work they see....

Someday I want to be so happy and high, Someday I want to have such a special friend,

no failures, no regrets, no....I don’t want to cry…..

who is so dear to me, on whom I can depend…..

It seems my list of wishes would run another mile, Someday I want those tears to roll down,

but it gives me reasons enough……to Smile…..

the pains, the sorrows which make no sound…..

Someday………. :)

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Photograph by : Samiya Sharma

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Dialectics - Cinema & Architecture Mayank Ojha (Final year)

Films and architecture are simultaneous in character. They both make use of sequential movements through space. These are strung together by memory. Bernard Tschumi in his work ‘The Manhattan Transcripts’ (1981) borrows the following analogous elements from the Film Theory: structure (or frame), form (or space), event (or function), body (or movement), and fiction (or narrative). Whereas cinema creates a virtual space, architecture creates physical space. But here, the virtual is not opposed to real but to the actual, to quote Deleuze, “the virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual”.1 These are places of events and movement.

Ideology may constitute of a myth or a belief for an individual, a large group or a society sharing a common set of relationships amongst the various factors (social, cultural, political, economic, geographic, etc.) influencing the idea itself, which represents its context. It is these factors which also determine the transmittance of the ideology over to various art forms and manifestations of the culture and society. Since the past century, cinema, owing to its mass appeal and comprising of an assortment of various arts, has emerged as the dominant cultural form, mirroring the same factors. Thus, it is this potency which enables it to impinge upon other art forms and hence, the society itself.

Dialectic2 is a juxtaposition or interaction of conflicting ideas or theories, which are discussed in simultaneity in order to pursue our goal. Rather than directly exploring the relationships between films and architecture, I suggest a dialectical approach in identifying the key issues common to both the fields which serve as a datum to, in turn, explore their relationships with the prevalent ideologies. Here, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) serves as a paradigm where truth about an event is sought through different 1 Gilles Deleuze - Difference and Repetition.

2 Dialectic (also called dialectics or the dialectical method) is a method of argument, which has been central to both Indic and Western philosophy since ancient times. The word “dialectic” originates in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in his Socratic dialogues. Dialectic is based on a dialogue between two or more people who may hold differing views, yet wish to pursue truth by seeking agreement with one another.

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co-ordinates (witnesses) of the event (the murder).

Content (aesthetics) vs. Technique (practice)

Montage was a technique developed and theorized during the 1920’s soviet era by Sergei Eisenstein and other film makers of his generation.

His view was that “montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots” wherein “each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other.”3

The most common type of montage one can recall from numerous movies across the globe is the newspaper one, in which there are multiple shots of newspapers being printed (multiple layered shots of papers moving between rollers, papers coming off the end of the press, a pressman looking at a paper) and headlines zooming on to the screen telling whatever needs to be told.

It was primarily a technique to condense information using lesser space and time. The objective was not to maintain continuity in the sequences or the individual frames to symbolize anything but to convey across the larger idea, passage of time etc. Eisenstein argued that the new meaning that emerged out of conflict is the same phenomenon found in the course of historical events of social and revolutionary change.

He used intellectual montage in his feature films (such as Battleship Potemkin and October) to portray the political situation surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution.

Theoretically, the montage is synonymous with ancient scripts or non-literary writings where we perceive a collision of shapes, pictures, etc. to convey a meaning. Amongst the art movements, it can be said to relate with Cubism where a collision of different perspectives occurs within the same ‘frame’ and thus contributing to the aesthetic on the whole.

Alfred Hitchcock was of the view that it is the technique which stimulates the emotions and generates the experience which the audience perceives. For him all arts are about the experience they involve and it supersedes the content, or the story.4

Also, it has been argued that changes in techniques enrich arts whereas, the content, more closely bears witness to the context, or the sociopolitical and cultural factors of the era, and thus is dependent on it. But Le Corbusier, for ‘purism’ stated 3 Eisenstein, Sergei (1949), Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, New York: Hartcourt. Trans. Jay Leyda.

4 ‘A talk with Htitchcock’ - Interview of Alfred Hitchcock was part of the CBC television series Telescope with host-director Fletcher Markle. (1964)

“Technique

is only a humble tool in the service of conception”.1 For him it

was the conception, or the idea and its precise and accurate execution, that was important.

This leads us to furthur explore the dialectic through the following questions: 1. Does the idea precede either of the content and the technique?

2. Do content and technique share a hierarchical relationship?

3. Is the idea manifested in the content independent of the technique?

A sequence of new s p a p e r - h e a d l i n e s montage from Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles

1 Published in Charles E. Jeanneret, Amedee Ozenfant, Le purisme, in Apres Le Cubisme, 1918.

Realism (Functionalism) vs. Spectacle (Formalism) “Negation of formalism results in formalism of a newer kind”. The early modernists eschewing all preindustrial and historic formal languages, unintentionally shared a formal vocabulary derived from the industrial architecture that they admired and from other styles such as Cubism, De Stijl and Constructivism.2

In the present society, we witness that experience makes way for the registering of impressions.

Although this reflects on the politico-economical and social changes, but the cultural and historical contexts have a larger role to play.

The influences on Indian cinema, justifying the orgy of the spectacle, include the impact of ancient Sanskrit drama, with its highly stylized nature and emphasis on spectacle, where music, dance and gesture combined “to create a vibrant artistic unit with dance and mime being central to the dramatic experience.” Also, the Parsi Theatre, which “blended realism and fantasy, music and dance, narrative and spectacle, earthy dialogue and ingenuity of stage presentation, integrating them into a dramatic discourse

5 ‘On Architectural Formalism and Social Concern: A discourse for social planners and radical chic architects’ - Denise Scott Brown, in Oppositions Reader.

of melodrama”, directly bears its influence on the Hindi film industry.3

The parallel cinema or the Indian new wave, inspired by the Italian new wave, is known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the social-political climate of the times. It saw its beginnings in the 1920’s & 30’s, while it was at its height during the Golden age of Indian cinema with the likes of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Bimal Roy, Mrinal Sen contributing to it and receiving worldwide acknowledgements.

Political and economic turmoil during the 1990’s lead to its decline but its resurgence in the past decade has met with success. Rather, the resurgence meets with the Hegelian spiral in a way that films such as Dev D (2009), Gulaal (2009) etc. not only experimented with the film’s structure set in the contemporary context and realism, but also contribute towards the ‘Cinema of attractions.’

A special mention here is the context and content of Jaane bhi do yaaron (1983), which was a dark satire on the rampant corruption in Indian politics, bureaucracy, news media and business. The concluding sequence of the Mahabharata enactment is an example of setting the content in a historical context and then desecrating the context itself. It constitutes a perfect example of the combination of realism and spectacle. Whereas this conflation remains satirical, Tschumi pursues the ‘distasteful’ and the ‘rotten’ in bridging sensory pleasure (spectacle) and reason (realism).4

Autonomy

The film director Sergei Eisenstein, who had previously trained as an architect, once said: “If it moves, it is alive.”5 For him, montage was the fourth dimension of film. The images stand in a dialectic relationship to one another, and lead through collision or conflict to a synthesis. The merit of Eisenstein’s montage is that it inserts an aesthetic transformer. The meaning of this is not located in the image, but it is a shadow projected into the consciousness of the viewer by means of the montage. This is a method of adding things to perceived reality that are not really there.

This subject was seen from a different angle by Andre Bazin. In “Qu’est-ce que le cinema” he criticized this montage because it leaves no room for ambiguity.

According to him, film ought to give reality back its

6 K. Moti Gokulsing, K. Gokulsing, Wimal Dissanayake (2004). Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural Change. Trentham Books.

7 Bernard Tschumi - Architecture and Transgression8 8 Sergei Eisenstein. Montage Het konstructie principe in de kunst [“The Construction Principle in Art”], Sunschrift 175, Nijmegen, 1981.

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original ambiguity. The director should not direct viewers but should leave them to give their own meanings to the film. Such qualities are perceived in the films by David Lynch.1 Indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction. However, they demonstrated how this creation intersected with people’s day to day lives in complex and interesting ways. The autonomous role was not explored in the typical hierarchical setup of the mainstream cinema where the Director is an employee, but the parallel cinema reflects some traces of auteurism.2 1. Does the Director/Architect have an autonomous control over his film/architecture?

2. Should he control the experiential relationships between the film/architecture and its audience/users?

3. Or should the audience/users be given freedom to perceive the film/architecture and thus, interpret it based on their own individualistic understanding, thus allowing ambivalence in the idea be conveyed?

In Architecture, the user is his or her own film director.3 This has a direct implication from the time taken to build up the memory space in the users mind, while it experiences the physical space. Rather, in both films and architecture, the Director and the Architect, the assumed authors of the works are disconnected with the audience or the users by the very means of their work themselves. The meanings, symbology, interpretations and experience rest with the audience or the user who naively autonomize this process. To quote Barthes refering to the writer, a text is “a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture”.4

Andrew Benjamin put forward the latent duality in autonomy - one which leads towards an emphasis on the aesthetic, the other which retains the critical impulse identified within ‘deconstruction’ as a philosophical project.

9 See David Lynch’s movies; Eraserhead, Mulholland drive, Blue velvet. “...his films are so packed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas” - Le Blanc, Michelle; Odell, Colin (2000). David Lynch.

Harpenden, Hertfordshire: Pocket Essentials.

10 See the auteur theory, François Truffaut and the cinema of the French new wave.

11 Roemer van Toorn - Architecture Against Architecture 12 Roland Barthes - ‘The death of the author’, from ‘Image, Music, Text’ - 1977.

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Individualist (Expressionist) Conformist (Situationist)

vs.

The autonomy dialectic further necessitates

to explore the role of the individual and the society.

Conforming to prevalent conventions homogenizes while individuality/autonomy explores the nuanced differences, latent in the society. Also, borrowing from biology, differences bring about diversity and thus evolutionary changes.

On the other hand, as a counter theory, one could argue that acts of individuals are also influenced by the prevalent social, political & cultural factors, so on what basis then can one differentiate between the individualist and the conformist…?

The preparatory text for the Third International Situationists Conference includes the following definition; “The solution to problems of housing, traffic, recreation can only be envisaged in relation to social, psychological and artistic perspectives which combine in one synthetic hypothesis at the level of daily life”.5 While Tschumi’s promotes his hypothesis that autonomy lies in the hands of the society, “each society expects its architecture to reflect its ideals and domesticate its deeper fears. And architects and its theorists rarely negate the form that the society expects of it”.6 1. Is the role of cinema/architecture that of social upheaval?

2. Or should the Director/Architect be free to experiment, subvert conventions and express himself without thinking of the output, audience/users, commercial aspects?

3. Would that constitute as individualist (expressionist) or conformist (as demanded by the situation/prevalent conditions)?

4.Should there be a deliberate attempt to relieve the film/architecture of its context and not to bear witness to the society?

5. Is it possible to negate/transgress the context?

14 ‘Constant/Debord Situationist Definitions’ - Amsterdam, 10 November 1958 15 Bernard Tschumi - Architecture and Transgression

4.3 Can architects’ concerns with form and its aesthetics be reconciled with their social concern and social idealism?1

the reflection, both in and out of immediate view; and this is a complicated task because architecture is more than criticism alone.

Conclusion

The above dialectical discussion is, by no means complete and the classification also is not perfect. While exploring through them, there is a constant cross-referencing to various theories which due to the chronological, linearity of a textual work cannot be pursued to its potential. The architectural faculties though, are better equipped to explore the dialectics due to the inherent simulataneity and an array of languages through which architecture communicates. This simultaneity allows us to make or experience a real space as well as to be able to question the nature of space.2 The ideals of architecture themselves need to be used to challenge the canons of the profession, and hence an experimental attitude is to be awakened,3 following the autonomous paths of Eisenman, Gehry, Koolhaas, Tschumi, Libeskind, Hadid.

The experimentation trend has began a gradual journey in cinema, thereby justifying the ideological shift or transition. It is a matter of time when the same shall be explored in other art forms and architecture will witness a new wave.

Before you realize it, architecture becomes nothing more than a mirror of its times. Making a mirror is itself not all that simple, but it is also necessary to investigate 16 ‘On Architectural Formalism and Social Concern: A discourse for social planners and radical chic architects’ - Denise Scott Brown, in Oppositions Reader.

17 Bernard Tschumi - Architecture and Transgression See Gianni Pettena’s - ‘Congruence and Consonance between 18 Architecture and Art’ published in the book, Architecture & Arts, 1900/2004.

Sketch by: Sannat Sachdev (1st year)

Our society today is witnessing a transitory phase, and it is confronted with a wide range of opposing forces. Solving them is not the issue, but progressing in agreement to the contradicting thesis remains a point of contention. Subvertion, of conventions, as in the works of auteurs Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Luc Godard, the Defamiliarization Movement, a theory presented by Tschumi precisely describing the works of ‘Deconstructivists’, are considered to be effective tools for rejuvenating the art forms.

The majority of current architecture does not experiment with the contemporary condition. It accepts the status quo by recognizing or denying it. Architects, however, must make experiments. They must dare to take the risk of opening up avenues in the urban reality towards other realities. “By passing judgment, one becomes slow and rigid,” says Koolhaas.

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For some, a building may be a protective shell, serving the needs of its occupants & its hard for them to relate soul/spirit with a building made of dead materials.

The ruling consideration for many would be matter/ tangible elements appealing to their senses. But there exists something beyond the threshold of materially useful & functionally satisfying aspect, which is the soul(non-matter) of a place which is responsible for imparting individuality to every piece of architecture.

In context to the college, it is one of the proven facts that most of us like to spend our time at the Stone Wall or Parking or Courtyard (particularly in winters) . Ever wondered why? As we are drawn to those places where the spirit of the place is strongest, which encourages interaction. Even without material infusions & artificial support (such as cushioned seating, air conditioners, plug points), these spaces are inviting because of their attunement to our souls.

The unique, intangible feeling (soul) may exist in a place or building due to many reasons. It may be because of its association with some historical event, or tragedy (Hiroshima & Nagasaki memorial).

Roles of designers: Take for instance, the designers of W.T.C memorial attempted to create a powerful sensory experience by proposing massive pools sunken 30’ into the footprint of the towers. Absence of oak trees near the pools and the depth invoke a sense of loss in visitors. In this case, place & idea symbiotically reinforce each other thus introducing soul qualities on the site.

Our every very own college, when perceived in depth has intriguing roof form which responds to the eye line of onlooker on primary elevation. The sweeping roof form was conceptualized by Le Corbusier, to draw the eye of a person along its profile, towards the sky. This very initial perceptual input facilitates & catalyses thought among students while they work on their designs in the studio without distracting the mind and yet providing a feeling of open and inspiring space.

In the prevailing scenario, where architect’s inspiration is ossified by contract documents and quantified in monetary terms, there exists a challenge before all designers & architects to bring soul qualities into their rational works, before this world gets saturated with rigid, life-less, storage boxes for people.

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Dynamism and ingenious sensibility are the underlying keywords defining the Words of architecture and fashion, the two terms eulogizing each other, everytime refreshing the identity of the other.

The inter-relationship between these two terms is greatly diverse in context to the perception of an individual towards the meaning of each term, varying from being a mere abstraction to a manifested concretion.

Abstraction The literary meaning of fashion with context to architecture can be defined as a symbolically outstanding building constructed with respect to its contextual sighting, re-defining the architectural vocabulary of the existing. For example, the works of Frank Gehry like Guggenheim Museum Bilbao or Marques’ de Kescal in Spain; works of Zaha Hadid that colic Paris, restructure the faces of the existing building fabric around.

In the world of fashion, the idea of making a mark; of creating an identity is synonymous to the prodigy of works of architects of the likes of Sir Norman Foster, Rem Koolhas, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry etc. who have very intelligently created bold fashion statements in relation to the urban setting of the city, by establishing a uniqueness in the interpretation of the usual.

Nowadays, the elaborate and the unparalleled fascia treatment to the buildings impart them with a complaisant and alluring modernity that have greatly taken to the architecture world, emerging as a global vogue.

On the international scenario, such beautified buildings have become a legitimate representative and embodiment of the international style prevailing nowadays.

Not only this, the co operative ideology of competitiveness has ensconced into architectural world. ‘The persuasive phenomenon of outdoing the existing building’- which is the sheer competitiveness of creating something better and innovatively different than the other, that sets up a world stage for the display of creativity at its best. Such iconically alluring and appealing buildings not only variegate the existing skyline of the city but also become global identification for the city or place of their construction.

Commodification

The word commodification means ‘to convert something into a product’.

The world of fashion is based on the concept of commodity capitalismcommodifying one’s creation and staging it in the capitalist world focused on branding, theming and identification, with an aim to sell.

With this scenario of capitalism modulated fashion industry, architecture pre-dominantly plays a passive role. Architecture as a figure doesn’t actively participate in such status games but acts as a backdrop to the theatrical endeavours of the same.

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Manifest Concretion Architecture and fashion become indigenous of the era they belong to. Whenever there is a new art movement or revolution, the art gets affected first followed by its incorporation into the everyday life and finally it trickles down to the world of architecture where that change is manifested into a concretion of the era.

As the trends change, new ideologies come in play, fading away fashion trends, but what holds a proof to the existence of history is architecture – the manifested concretion.

The experimentation with space within the private domains of the shop interiors offer a great variety of exclusiveness, native to the brand itself, as well as attracting customers whose sensibility is comprehensive to the spatial vocabulary of experiences created.

Vocabulary of Fashion Shops

DIFFERENT - Fashion shops are designed with a difference, exploiting the virtue of customers and unlocking a strange new world inside. This bold and vivid experimentation to create a spatial experience conducive to the line of fashion clothing or accessories draws forth people of similar type of sensibilities to take a plunge into experiencing the same in entirety.

HOMLINESS - The exact opposite of the above act of extreme experimentation is the intense normalcy projected by the homely yet modernistic fashion retail shops. The Marks and Spencer store, where the large expanse of clear glass and a line of gently swinging doors launch a very warm, inviting, familiar and subtle image, intrigue one’s sensibility to experience the serenity of the same.

Not only this, additives like minimalism, globalism, technology and material are there to create something different or ingenuous to the brand name. Thus, such a wide variety of diversification of fashion architecture ‘promotes’ the brand image as well as influences the act of commodity consumption.

In this whole process, architecture design informs the purchase and use of commodity, while being commodified itself.

Geometry With relation to architecture, geometry is the play of three-dimensional objects and voids in space to make the built form aesthetically pleasing to the human eye. On similar grounds, in the world of fashion designing, the word geometry is synonymous to the cuts, curves, drapes and layers of clothing that are designed as per the human body proportions, thus uniting the two worlds of designing.

Because of this, many architects are trying their hand in the field of fashion as well. Like the master architect Frank Lloyd Wright usually styled his own clothes. Frank Gehry designed a hat for the singer Lady Gaga.

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Shelter and Clothing The relationship between architecture and fashion may be reduced to basics: shelter and clothing.

With the newer inventions in technology and workability of new age materials like membrane structures, lightweight glasses and plastics in building construction, terms are shelter sweeping on the catwalks.

The advancement in textile developments has produced fabrics that act as both shelter and clothing, by the climate controlled sensors and technology installed for the same. Not only this, architects on the other hand are borrowing techniques of pleats, cutting etc. from tailoring to design buildings that are flexible, interactive, inflatable and even portable.

Media Apart from a handful of stars and one or two global firms, the bulk of the profession of architecture is anonymous to the people. Images are the real currency of architecture, often outlining the structures they commemorate, no less than that of fashion. Both are dependent on the traditional media of newspapers and magazines apart from electronic media.

This is evident at the beginning of each season when fashion giants showcase the new line of clothing and every newspaper, magazine and color supplement carries page after page of fashion news endlessly dotted with designer names. But to its contrast, architecture regardless of repeated efforts has nothing in comparison. Inspite of being valued and dominated, architecture never amounts to anything that the army of exotic models, which fashion can raise.

Moreover, nowadays big designer labels utilize iconic buildings as a backdrop to fashion shoots like Victoria Beckham. As such, it is by the means of images, which are relatively ubiquitous, that fashion and architecture use one another, not simply as backdrops or celebrity head counts, but also for cultural acceptability.

Cultural Shifts Pieces of cultural identity are based on the theatrical power of architecture exhibiting the pedestals of the socio cultural back grounds. On the other hand, boutiques or retail outlets were chapels of consumerism. But, with the present shift in culture, these definitions are beginning to change or modify accordingly.

Nowadays, museums don’t only stage art or history but also stage lifestyle and fashion. Signifying such a cultural shift on the international front was the exhibition celebrating the 25years of work of Giorgio Armani in the autumn of 2000 at the New York’s Guggenheim Museum.

Concisely, architecture creates an elite environment-the gallery .

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The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problems with education. He argued, “What’s a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?” He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about teachers: ‘those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’

To stress his point, he said to another guest, “You’re a teacher Bonnie, be honest. What do you make?”

Bonnie, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, “You want to know what I make?

Well, I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.

I make kids sit through forty minutes of class time when their parents can’t make them sit for five without a playstation, an ipod or a mobile phone.

You want to know what I make ?

I make kids wonder, I make them question.

I make them apologise and mean it.

I make them respect and take responsibility for their actions.

I teach them to write and make them write, I make them read and read more.

I make them show all their work in math. They use their God given brain, not the man made calculator.

I make my students from other countries learn everything they know in English while preserving their unique cultural identity.

I make my students stand, stretching their hand to say the pledge – ‘India is my country and all Indians my brothers and sisters’.

Finally I make them understand that if they use the gifts they were given, work hard and follow their dreams, they can succeed in life.

Then when people try to judge me by what I make, with me knowing money isn’t everything, I can hold my head high and pay no attention because they are ignorant.

Wikipedia says: “Teachers are the people who hold the candle of enlightenment, knowledge and prosperity.” These words might look very weak. But their true meaning is understood only by a handful.

Aristotle wouldn’t have been a great philosopher if Plato had not seeped in his heart, quenched his flurry of questions, and asked him to stand up to this world, than standing with it. The face of Mahabharata would’ve been something else if Krishna had not come up with the theory of karma, which purified the very inside of Arjun.

This enlightenment comes with knowledge. Our biggest library isn’t the books contained in a large hall. Our ‘huge library’ stands for our teachers, who with their experience, have amassed such potent knowledge, rocketing our college to the position and reputation it holds. If we students are the building blocks, our teachers are the very foundation of this building, responsible for binding us together and keeping us awake.

Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, in the memory of whom we are celebrating this day once said, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”. Therefore, wherever we go, whatever we become doesn’t matter. All that matters is that influence, which has always taught us to be a good man first and a successful one later.

Quoting an excerpt from “Within my power” by Forrest Witcraft: “One hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in or how much money was in my bank account.”

But the world maybe a better place because I was important in the life of a child.

Many teachers are exhausted from their workload and responsibilities. They have their own families, financial and life stresses that challenge them along with everyone else. But still, leaving every problem aside, they have set aside their priorities. And this makes them divine and Godly. I salute my teachers and seniors for carving us from very ordinary stones into precious ones, with the very magical touch of yours and with the very finesse of a goldsmith.

You want to know what I make?

I MAKE A DIFFERENCE. What do you make, Mr. CEO?”

Saluting Teachers

His jaw dropped, he went silent.

Nikhil Pratap Singh (1st year)

Indeed yes, these are our teachers, selfless, responsible, flamboyant, perseverant and caring, keeping their students above themselves, matching each tiny step of theirs, holding their hands, and shaping them into great citizens of this world.

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Photography--aabhas,akshay

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Since time immemorial, humans have had a tendency of classifying and basic organizational hierarchy.

The science of aesthetics has been no exception.

Since the time of the Greek Sculptor Pheidias, creator of the artwork on the Parthenon, there was a particular ratio which was given the abbreviation “Phi”. Leonardo is thought to have used the golden ratio, a geometric proportion regarded as the key to creating aesthetically pleasing art, when painting the Mona Lisa. The Dutch painter Mondrian used it in his abstract compositions, as did Salvador Dali in his masterpiece The Sacrament of the Last Supper.

Over the years the presence of this unique ratio has been more and more pronounced. Whether it is in our paper sizes or in the dimensions of the photographs, TV screens or the built form that surrounds us.

The process of glancing at an image (dia 1).

Consider now the area H × L (shown above). The shape of the image is part of the architecture of the information flow system, and it is free to change. The eye must scan the rectangular area H × L, and it must do it with the greatest ease, i.e. in the shortest time.

In the simplest description, to scan is to sweep the image completely, horizontally and vertically. The horizontal sweep covers the length L with the average 042 Perspecta

speed VL (averaged over several saccades). The horizontal sweep time is tL = L/VL. The vertical sweep covers the distance H with the averaged speed VH and time tH = H/VH. The total time required to scan the image is of order t = L/VL + H/VH. The area of the image is fixed (A = HL), but the shape of the image (L/H) is arbitrary. The total time is t = L/VL + A/(LVH), and it is minimal when L = (AVL/VH)1/2, which represents this rectangular shape: L/H = VL/VH (1) The first implication of this result is that the shape of the image matters to how the image is perceived understood and recorded. The second implication is that when the image is shaped according to eqn (1), the horizontal sweep takes just as long as the vertical sweep, tL = tH (2) The partitioning of the scanning time equally into tL and tH is a common design feature for flow access (e.g. it is found in the design of city traffic, river basins and lungs [11]). In the present case, if L = H then VL = VH, such that tL = tH means that the time to scan long and fast must be the same as the time to scan

short and slow.

Our perceived world is roughly a horizontal tableau. Our supply of images reflects the orientation of the landscape. Danger comes to the animal from the sides and from behind, not from above, and not from below .With organs for vision, the animal minimizes danger from ahead and from the sides. This is the link between vision and locomotion, and the fulcrum of the single design of animal movement on earth.

The third implication is that L/H must indeed be a number greater than 1 because the ratio VL/VH is expectedly greater than 1, as we will see below. We scan things easier on the horizontal than on the vertical. The reader can verify this by performing the following test: to scan horizontally is easy, while to scan vertically triggers the urge to tip the head.

The horizontal shape of our field of vision is approximated by the construction shown above. The length scale of the disc (R) is due to the distance between the eyes.

The superposition of the two discs is the binocular area. If one eye sweeps one disc horizontally (length 2R, time tL) and vertically (length 2R, time tH = tL), then, because of the superposition of the two discs, the horizontal length scanned by the two eyes is 3R. The horizontal and vertical speeds are VL = 3R/tL and VH = 2R/tH, and because tL = tH, the ratio of speeds is VL/VH = 3/2.

This is close to the Golden ratio of 1.618. As this is a process of constant streamling (explained below), this even shows our future visual evolutionary pattern.

The Constructal law It denotes: (i)The generation of design (configuration, pattern, geometry) in nature is a physics phenomenon that unites all animate and inanimate systems, and (ii)This phenomenon is covered by the Constructal Law: “For a finite-size (flow) system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve such that it provides easier and easier access to its currents.”

It simply considers design (configuration) as a phenomenon in time.

This also explains the constant streamlining of the architecture of the paths and networks in our brain which absorb visual information and transfer it from a range of tree shaped flow systems as it provides easier and easier point-volume and point-area access. The visual sensors and nerves in the retina are configured in the same way, as dendrites, in order to provide greater access between one surface (the retina) and one point (the optic nerve). It has paved way for Vascular flow information systems too.

Reference The Golden Ratio Predicted by Adrian Bejan http://www.constructal.org/index.html Research paper by Richard Pepper

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Solutions on Page 144 Perspecta

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The Film Architect

Ankita Dahiya (Final year)

When one thinks of crucial contributors to the film making process, the first profession to come to mind are usually the director, who is seen in overall control of the production; the actors, who embody and animate the fictional characters with which audiences will identify; the scriptwriter, who creates the story and establishes narrative situations; and the cinematographer, who is in charge of visually capturing the narrative and the actor’s performance. Audiences are of course mostly aware that in any production, a myriad of other personnel contribute to a successful production, even if the scope and nature of their work is often barely understood. One figure, however, which could be seen as one of the most crucial creative forces in a film, yet is someone who is regularly forgotten or neglected is the person in charge of the sets, who is billed under various names including those of set or production designer, art director, or film architect.

The defining art form of the 20th century, film,

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has a profound effect on both the way architects envision their work in this field and the way the public consumes it.

Are we in a ‘real’ location or a constructed set? Is it recognizable, or has been carefully crafted as to deny the audience that knowledge?

How to define such architecture? Here architecture has a two-part definition. The first part of architecture is a decomposition of the overall functionality of a production into a set of defined functions and the component parts of the production that are going to provide those functions. The second part of the definition is the specification of the interface between the components, in other words, how components are going to interact together in the production as a system. The specification of the interface is critical to the design of flexible architecture that allows substituting component variations within a production without having to make adjustments in other components. The profession of a production/set designer just like an architect demands a combination of courage, determination, and hubris that allow them to impose a personal vision on an often unreceptive world.

realism to stylization. In this context, “realism” should be understood as a particular style that seeks to convince viewers that what they are watching are events that will unfold in the real world. The approach a designer takes is usually strict realism, heavy stylization, or something in between.

Such a strict notion of realism, however, is just one approach to production/set design. Another, at the opposite extreme, creates thoroughly unrealistic, heavily stylized environments that make no attempt to convince viewers they are watching any real, lived-in or live world. These designs try instead to create an alternative environment with an internally consistent logic that lasts as long as the film’s duration. Films from genres such as fantasy, science fiction are often heavily stylized. Fantasy and science fiction require an extreme attention to consistent, self-referring design because of the extra difficulty of creating a world that by its very nature appears odd.

Production/Set designers can create an entire world from scratch. One is free to practice synthetic arts, where collaboration and compromise are rules rather than exceptions. At a very basic level, just like real life architecture, sets provide a film with its inimitable look, it’s geographical, historical, social, and cultural contexts and associated material details, and the physical framework within which a film’s narrative is to proceed and hence creates a virtual space for the screen. In more discreet ways, design can do much more than give assurances of time or place, contributing to the texture, mood and meaning of the work and is used to make statements about the built or unbuilt environment, to comment metaphorically on any variety of subjects, from the lives of the characters in their films to the nature of contemporary society.

In other words, the world on the screen has to convince audiences it actually exists in order for the realism of the story to succeed.

Sets have developed from painted backdrops to sophisticated multifaceted environments.

Technical advances have allowed the camera to break away from its static theatrical origins and explore spatial possibility. The options available to the designers move along a spectrum from Perspecta

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Biomimicry v/s Humanity Kashish Thethi(Second Year)

Biomimicry is a modern-day word which refers to the discipline that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve the problems faced by mankind today. Biomimicry compliments architecture in the fashion that it helps humanity save up on the limited power resources.

The term ‘biomimicry’ comes from the Greek words ‘bios’, meaning life, and ‘mimesis’, meaning to imitate.

In biomimicry, we look at nature as model, mentor, and measure.

Model: Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s models and then emulates these forms, processes, systems and strategies to solve human problems – sustainably.

Mentor: Biomimicry is a new way of viewing and valuing nature. It introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but what we can learn from it.

Measure: Biomimicry uses an ecological standard to judge the sustainability of our innovations. After 3.8 billion years of evolution, nature has learned what works and what lasts.

Life has had millions of years to finely-tune mechanisms and structures (such as photosynthesis, or spider’s silk) that work better than current technologies, require less energy and produce no life-unfriendly waste. The emulation of this technology is the goal of biomimicry, the art of innovation inspired by nature.

Almost all designers will benefit from studying certain aspects of nature. As buildings now face a whole myriad of problems that need solutions, it may be in nature that architects can find some answers. The operation of buildings represents 40% of all the energy used by humanity, so learning how to design them to be more sustainable is very crucial. Nature provides us with an amazing array of solutions for many complex problems that we face today. The quest to learn from nature in this way benefits architecture enormously, such as context specificity, multi-functionality, quantitative and qualitative ideas, etc. At times what may seem as ‘simple’ in nature can translate to better design solutions that are more efficient, sustainable and healthy. Yes, nature is inspirational but it is also a part of our world which we can study more deeply – 048 Perspecta

extracting creative solutions that we can apply today.

For example, spiders create web silk as strong as the Kevlar used in bullet-proof jackets. Engineers could use such a material – if it had a long enough rate of decay – for parachute lines, suspension bridge cables, artificial ligaments for medicine, and many other purposes.

Another example might be the termite mounds.

Whatever be the temperature outside, the temperature inside the mound is maintained precisely at 87 degrees F. They do it by venting breezes in at the base of the mound, down into chambers cooled by wet mud carried up from water tables far below, and up through a flue to the peak. They constantly dig new vents and plug old ones to regulate the temperature. The Eastgate Centre, a mid-rise office complex in Zimbabwe is built on similar lines and stays cool without air-conditioning, using only 10% of the energy of a conventional building its size.

Although it has been contended in the past that biomimicry promotes ‘lazy design’, which pulls directly from biological ideas, yet by delving more deeply into how nature solves problems that we experience today, we can extract timely solutions and find new directions for our built environments. It has also been argued that biomimicry devalues human design and idolizes natural processes, which may not be the best way of approaching a design problem, and that architects are being positioned through the use of CAD to generate form, and become strangers to the performance and practicalities of the construction of said form. Also, it was indicated that human artifacts are made, while only living things are grown. All these reasons have been pointed out keeping humanism in mind. Humanism is not a bad way of thinking, and in some respects we are still humanistically adopting biomimicry. Biomimicry has more possibilities for further exploration if it were combined with other methods of design. It is not ‘lazy design’ as long as it is used correctly.

As architects, we can benefit from biomimicry to make buildings better by pushing for more natural, integrated and healthy solutions. We also need to take a look at the role aesthetics play in nature – with the way function and form so synergistically merge.

Perhaps this is a way for buildings to harmonize with nature in renewed ways – making built environments more environmentally sound and healthy for occupants.

Rest we do not know what the future and biomimicry hold for us, but, as Buckminster Fuller said, The best way to predict the future is to design it.

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5years!!!...…5 years I spent in CCA and never once

did I even bother to write an article for the college magazine, and here I’m, doing it after I’ve passed out of here (yes, yes, even I managed to clear) I may be biased in my writing…biased because of my own thoughts and my experiences with my batch… but this is how I perceive it all.

When you enter college you are in this superexcited stage about the coming years, there’s zeal, exuberance and a thrill in you, after all one’s heard so much about college life.

The first day we entered, we were shown to our “Structures” classroom, L-8. A bunch of forty overenthusiastic students filled the room with the same intention, that of proving themselves to the world (a feeling that subsided as the years went by and was restricted only to the batch toppers). Talk about bad starts, the first lecture I attended was my most despised subject throughout college, though I was glad that I did not have the conventional engineering subjects that all my schoolmates wanted to do, and I was more than relieved to divorce my not-socompatible marriage with science and mathematics.

Slowly we started to adjust to the new environment, judging the entire setup, drawing opinions about this new place. In our first year, just like every batch experiences, we the 1st years were on one side and the rest of the college on the other, so naturally “the group” consisted of forty friends rather than small segregations.

Ragging or interaction, if I may be politically correct, turned out to be the most fun part of first year (you don’t acknowledge this in the first year but remember your time fondly after you’ve gone through it) Whatsoever “informal interaction” our college culture has, it basically is a sort of ice-breaker. You

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wouldn’t have otherwise gone and talked to the most terrorizing senior or for that matter even the hottest senior (I remember we used to request the male seniors to make us propose to our favourite female ones as a part of ragging…it was silly, but was equally heartening at the same time). Knowingly or unknowingly ragging lead me into making my closest friends in other batches.

First year passed off in a frenzy, there was so much happening…so much to absorb. We had our first trip, it was over a weekend so we missed no classes (we cursed our teachers for it), and it was our shortest one but probably the most memorable one. Very few of us had a digital camera back then, as opposed to the later trips where almost everyone had a digicam and everyone thought of himself/herself as a “Raghu Rai”.

Just before the spring of 2006, when we were to have our first Archo, I vividly remember that I wanted to join Kanishka, as my favourite seniors were in there, but I went to Kalinga. All my close friends were divided in the other two houses making me very unhappy with this change of tide. But as fate would have it, by the time Archo got over I was a die-hard “Kalingan”.

I guess as everyone might have experienced, during Archo, the sports, the cheering, the team strategies, the house meetings, the conspiracies, the fights, the laughter, the losses, the winnings, the couples, the movies and the night-outs…they probably get the better of you. Every year the buzz related to Archo would start with the beginning of every even semester. And as soon as Archo ended, this gloom, this “post-Archo Depression” would descend over college, classes would re-fill with unenthusiastic faces, the college grounds would get empty after 5-6pm and there was nothing to look forward to…until

of course the next “Dance party”Dance parties always rocked… throughout my time at CCA I’ve never witnessed a bad DP. DP’s were always so eventful.

I’m not aware whether other colleges in India have regular DP’s or not but I can say this for sure that my friends from other colleges were extremely jealous of our parties and trips.

Despite the initial excitement of becoming a senior and getting a high out of hearing sir/ma’am prefixed to our names, 2nd year turned out to be a dampener.

We were no longer the centre of attention; it had all shifted to the new first year. There was nothing new about the college anymore and we were a year old now. Slowly and steadily groupism began to creep in, everyone started having their own set of friends. Class bunking reached an all-time high which eventually lead to the entire batch getting a RE in Design (an achievement for some of us and a disgraceful stain for the others) 3rd year did change the pace of things, we were now in charge of NASA. Every batch is skeptical of its capabilities before the start of NASA as to whether or not they’d be able to handle it, but believe me, we guys at CCA know how to do it pretty well. Same was the case with our batch, we were infamous and labeled “no-gooders” by our teachers as well as seniors. As it turned out the useless were not so useless after all. Ask anyone from the 2005-2010 batch of their proudest moment and you’ll have a unified answer, it was when we won “two trophies” at the NASA 2007 convention at Bhopal (NASA 2007 had something special about it, it also turned out to be the Love season for our batch, that’s another story in itself) By 6th semester we were sick of college, of the same old routine and were raring to go for our training and prove ourselves to the world (refer to the first day of college..at our age every new beginning is about announcing to the world …ladies and gentleman, I’ve arrived) Whenever we look back at the time in CCA it’s always divided in two phases: Pre-training and Post-Training.

After six months of training we’d missed CCA so much that we were more than willing to compromise on proving to the world. When we came back it had already dawned upon us that what had earlier seemed like an eternity before training was now just one and half more years of college to go. That is when the real countdown began. And that is when every batch realizes the importance of the whole CCA experience. Whenever in life you know that the end

to something is near you start relishing and cherishing each and every moment of what you’re left with.

In our case, 8th and 9th semester were the most cherished times of college they were also the most “vella” time of our college. It seems we spent the entire semester on the green benches near the Geodesic, I remember there were days when we reached college at 9, spent the whole day idling around and then went back to our abodes having done nothing. (FYI..we never felt guilty about it) And finally came the tenth sem..the THESIS sem.

The best part about this sem, no attendance issues, and the worst, no regular college (It was a sort of buffer sem to prepare us to stay away from college after this) We’d a heard a lot of hulabaloo about thesis but believe me it’s not that hard, everyone manages just fine.

Life wasn’t all “Gachch” in college, we had our share of lows as well, the class politics, the fights, the submission deadlines and what not, which batch doesn’t??? But the important thing is that you have to take it all in your stride, ten years down the line all these issues will seem so trivial that you’ll probably laugh it all off, you’ll just remember the good parts.

My point of writing this article was to share my own experience with you guys, I know one day everyone of you will have your own little story about CCA but as of now I have a small piece of advice for you.

You are in college right now and have the opportunity to construct your own memories, so make the most of your time, you’ll remember it forever, do silly things, laugh out loud, play pranks with your friends, share silly jokes, climb the geodesic, laze on the stone wall, have gossip sessions on the canteen deck, enjoy the setting sun on the college roof, and breathe life in those corridors because you’ll live this time only once!!!

And one fine day, when I look back at my life in CCA, I’ll have a big smirk spread across my face and I’ll cherish the fact that I also once lived, beyond the brise-soleil….

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Great Spaces create great people Richard Van Der Wal (Student at UWM)

First and foremost, I absolutely must thank the entire program at the School of Architecture in Chandigarh; from the administrators and teachers, to the students, and of course to the smaller group of individuals to whom I owe so much for making my stay, and that of my UWM colleagues, an experience that was enriching, enlightening, and life changing. When I mention these words - enriching, enlightening, and life changing, I do not use them as a mere cliché for the experience of any student who travels abroad. Instead, I specifically chose these words because they accurately describe what I gained physically, mentally, and spiritually while studying in India. However, this was not a whimsical trip to some unknown, foreign land that is “exotic” and “strange” in comparison to my home in America.

India is far from it (not to completely downplay the differences in culture, history, and social norms, I simply mean to bash the stereotypes that India is an “exotic” land that is completely un-relatable to my “Western” homeland) and this is especially true in my case for I had already made a visit to Chandigarh mentally when I had a studio focused in Chandigarh with Dr. Manu Sobti, who was the head UWM professor for the trip. I positioned myself mentally in Corbusier’s spaces, the Capitol Complex, the southwestern Grand Plaza in Sector 17, and inside the arcades of the shops and businesses of Chandigarh’s City Center long before my visit; but my mental focus was inevitably no match for the knowledge and understanding that I gained when I physically stepped foot into these places.

The act of physical interaction with these historic spaces, however, was not what made Chandigarh special to me. I was already amazed by the architecture, history, and culture of India that I had experienced on the trip thus far and had an entire spring studio’s worth of knowledge on the city from my studies back in America.

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Instead, the experience that I found to be truly invaluable while in Chandigarh, was the week long charrette we had at the Chandigarh School of Architecture. I had worked on collaboration projects in studios and charrettes before in America, but to be truly “brutally” honest, my experiences were nothing short of terrible. In fact, I absolutely dreaded collaboration charrettes because the notion of “sacrifice” had become a recurring theme with them; sacrificing an idea because it clashed with another student’s, sacrificing more of my own time because other members of the group were lazy or didn’t care about the project. I worried that when we got to the School of Architecture in Chandigarh, I would run into these same issues, assuming that the idea of sacrifice was the only way to make a collaboration “work”.

However, after spending countless hours of work and conversations on investigation, research, design, theory, philosophy, culture, history, and personal inquiry throughout the week with the Chandigarh students, for the first time in my entire Architecture education I knew what it meant to collaborate in a design effort. The Chandigarh students were not only incredibly insightful, intelligent, and creative, but also intensely motivated, positive, and open-minded when the time came to put our heads together to extract the best design for our project. Not once in the time we spent together, did I ever feel like I was “sacrificing” anything and neither did the Chandigarh students I was working with.

We bounced ideas off of each other, questioned each other’s thoughts, changed theories and designs after further investigation, even though it meant some work would not make it into the final presentations; we were becoming one collective mind processing thought after thought together towards a common goal instead of a group of minds chopped up to make a “Frankenstein” project that utilized bits and pieces of ideas from everyone that, in the end, would never truly be “whole.” Before this, I would have never thought that it was possible for a group of designers to come together and create a successful design that everyone believes in.

In terms of content, I could never keep my pen

Photograph by: Aabhas Ahuja

moving fast enough to jot down the incredible wealth of information we had during our stay. The lectures given by Dr. Professor Sangeeta Bagga Mehta and Dr. Manu Sobti were academically intense in nature and the discussions that followed were “eye-opening”. The projects we worked on were incredibly memorable (I know for a fact that if you ask any one of the UWM students about their most memorable experience, all of them would eventually begin to tell you the experience that took place the night we went to the Golden Temple in jaw-dropping detail). The work produced made everyone go around the room multiple times scanning every detail in the pin-ups (everyone jealous of each other’s work).

Of course, my skills as an architect grew

immensely while in India, but these became secondary to the growth of understanding I gained about the design process and to how I

envision the role of an architect. I hope my fellow UWM classmates had a similar experience to mine and would praise the efforts made by both sides in the collaboration between the UWM and Chandigarh students as well as the efforts made by the teachers and administrators. The times shared by myself with Dipayan,Shaique and Tanay was so memorable that we still remain in good contact today, sharing and critiquing each other’s work, and is actually the reason I am able to have the incredible honor of writing this article in the first place. My only remaining desire from this experience would be to see that the two schools involved keep a close relationship and hold future collaborations such as the one I experienced so that more architecture students are allowed the same opportunity… and also to invite me back to show me more of the beauty of India.

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EUPHORIC...That’s how I describe my college trips in one word! A few days back I was going through my collection of trip photographs and I suddenly had goosebumps thinking that there would be no more such trips after I move out of this college. Our trips are nothing less than roller coaster rides. From travelling in local buses to air conditioned trains, from living in a Dharamshala to enjoying the luxuries of five star apatments, from eating at local dhabas to enjoying the delicacies of the city, we have done it all. From my first year till the final year each trip has been a golden memory. In these few days we are all away from our cozy homes and we are all friends leaving all the acrimony behind....we play together, we laugh together, we sing together!

Getting a little nostalgic, I remember my first year trip when we went to Dharamshala. Bheem sir took us out for a trek, according to him we were delicate fledglings and were supposed to walk on a straight marked path. A minute later somebody from behind murmured that this was not what he thought a trek would be and 31 minds started thinking of making it interesting (i excluded 2 minds of my batch because they were busy listening to what Bheem sir was telling, which in a way made our plan a success ;).

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We started walking down the mountain one by one without even giving sir an idea as to what we were up to, and till a count of 29, the whole class had disappeared in the woods and we had started with the most dangerous trek of our lives. After our stupid notorious act and an upbraid , the trek was named as ‘MISSION BLUE STAR. Apart from the fun part, our trips are highly educational. We don’t leave any nook or corner of the city untouched. As they say, ‘ you learn architecture more by seeing than by reading’ becomes our agenda. Teachers accompanying us on the trip make sure that we gain maximum out of it within these few days.These are the days when everybody wants to enjoy double as a result we end up having some amazing sleepless ‘playing cards’ nights.I can say this because when I entered college I hardly knew any card game, but today I am an expert, thanks to my seminal classmates. I would just like to pay my deep gratitude to each one who has made each trip of mine an amazing experience and i hope every student of my college enjoys every trip...go out there, do crazy stuff, learn a lot...because its just not a trip, its a journey which will stay with you forever!!

Nikharika Rao (Final Year)

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The Indian Workshop

Brittany Dunning (Student at UWM)

Before arriving in India, I was under the impression that I would be gaining exposure to the processes of globalization and the dramatic impact it would have on the making and un-making of the physical and cultural environments. I thought I would learn about the expanding cities and how they embody conflict, adjustment, and the ability to reconcile between the past and the present.

From what I understood at the time, the city of Chandigarh was designed by Le Corbusier to represent a modern structural city. With no previous knowledge of any sort of Urban Design, the research was quite intimidating. While working with the students of Chandigarh College of Architecture, our class was able to gain critical awareness of historical and cross-cultural environments. Interaction with the students made it possible to understand daily life in a bustling Indian city, while also providing an in-depth analysis of modern urban landscape and lifestyles combined with traditions of the old.

Students from Chandigarh College of Architecture were learning to battle these challenges in the forms of buildings, spaces, places and human interactions within these forms. By communicating with students from the college and learning of their own personal observations, our class was able to gain insight into the critical mapping and the built environment of a so-called Indian city. Learning from their behaviour and their interactions in an urban landscape, it was interesting in understanding the culture, the people and the differences they faced in the modern city landscape as opposed to traditional cities of the past.

It was amazing to see how temples, mosques and other places of worship were held in such high regard by the citizens of India. Although there were squatter settlements, poor villages and dirty alleys spotting India’s landscape, the entrances to these areas were lush green gardens, filled with tourists and local worshipers. These entrances were constantly cleaned by the people and a lot of respect was shown by them for these religious buildings. They were of a beautiful stature and the large scale of these buildings formed an imposing picture against the backdrop of the sky. The most breathtaking experience for me was the visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar. It was 058 Perspecta

the most beautiful place I had ever come across and a feeling of bliss and peace settled over me after entering the sacred premises. It was very intriguing to learn about the architecture and its relation with the history and society of India by comparing this temple to the congested streets of Amritsar city.

Historical cities were layered representations of the past created through human action and interaction throughout time. Comparing Amritsar, Delhi and Chandigarh was not easy for us as each of these cities represented distinct characteristics. Once we had travelled each of these by foot and were guided by the students throughout the cityscapes, we were able to really connect to the environment.

As we visited the different cities in the older parts of India, many variations cropped up. Not only did these variations relate to people, but also to the aspects of public and private space. In Chandigarh, private spaces were demarcated and restricted to a particular residence. The style of housing was set up in a manner of what we refer to as “gated communities” and closed doors in the west. In older parts of India, privacy was not such a big issue and people had their private spaces in the alleyways of their homes.

The affects on identity were evident in the style of dressing, and certain values and traditions that were lost over the last fifty years in this city. Not only were the individuals more modernized, they were well aware of the global situation and how individuals in western communities live and interact.

With the passage of time, the city of Chandigarh was influenced by globalization. Many changes in the identity of the individuals were caused by those processes. ‘Time-space compression’ indicates the relationship between time and distances.As time passes, the distances are shortened between individuals, and the way they interact in those spaces changes as well. Not only are distances shortened between people of a particular nation, but also between the citizens of other countries. The effect of globalization on the identity of the citizens of Chandigarh was evident by the interactions amongst the students and their inquisitive nature towards the western attitudes, towards architecture, and the lifestyles differences.

These students helped our group in understanding the local issues that the architects deal with when it comes to population growth, urban development and conservation of nature and historical settlements.

A huge challenge for these Indian students of architecture is not only to conserve the traditions and culture from the affects of globalization and tourism,

but also how to conserve while coexistenting with nature. By incorporating the past while designing for the present, these students will have to take into consideration that a somewhat lack of organization will almost create a natural organization, that takes into consideration evolution and ecological factors.

To meet the socio-cultural needs of the people using modern infrastructures and services within a historic environment is something I am sure these students will be able to achieve in their future and the future of their country.

Photograph by: Samiya Sharma

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‘People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped’ I have always enjoyed taking walks. They rejuvenate me and fill me up with a sense of tranquillity and calm.

What we see incites us to think about how everything seems so chaotic yet so beautiful at the same time. An iron bench next to a tree and the sound of the birds, come together to render a scene that is majestic and brilliantly natural. What I have realised now is that somehow I tend to absorb more than I ever did. I suddenly have, as I can safely say, ‘a vocabulary’ to understand and express things in a better way.

Scattered pebbles, were once ‘scattered pebbles’, but today are a composition. Colours never ‘collated’ or ‘blended’ with so much ease as they do now. Balance, rhythm, hierarchy never did jump at us with so much power that makes us stand still and let the scene sink in. Our cameras have now found, for themselves, better angles and lighting. Birthday collages somehow come out to be better and more ‘amiable’. Architecture has put in all of us, a sense to see, decipher and acknowledge everything with a mind that is focused and enlightened.

Are we poets? I wouldn’t disagree. Our emotions are linked with the tiniest of things. We do express our wonder when light from a lamp falls beautifully on a crystal glass, yet we do not hold back our contempt when a priceless antique is lit up by a piercing halogen. Ah lamp posts - a classic example of rhythm. What would we have called it had we not known our ‘words’? One does tend to ponder.

Are we artists? We do know that pink and blue are not the best of friends. Who doesn’t, right? Somehow we now have options of how pink and blue split into shades and tones and we are almost always able to reach for ourselves, a visual compromise. We are far past the image of Barbie’s and Hot Wheels!

Are we musicians? In a street that speaks of concrete, tiles don’t seem to fit.

The thought itself makes us flinch. Yes, we are thinking about notes. Sketching seems to take control after a while and we generate forms that fit into each other.

Music isn’t music if a note goes wrong. So is architecture. As put by Friedrich von Schelling, ‘Architecture, in general, is frozen music‘.

What are we then? Are we everything or nothing at all? I think our question was long before answered by the iron bench next to the tree.

‘What we see depends mainly on what we look for. ‘ - John Lubbock

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Reflections

Kamal Passi (3rd Year)

It’s been 2 years since I joined this college. I came here with high expectations, since I thought architecture is the mother of all sciences and arts. And from there began a journey, or perhaps a roller coaster ride, that has forced me to doubt myself.

I have received a lot from this college. Love, affection, hatred, etc. to name a few.

Without a doubt, my first year here was the BEST time of my entire lifetime. All the attention I got, the chocolates, the treats, my weight loss, some scoldings, etc, all these moments have turned into memories that I will cherish for my entire life.

And not to forget my most cherishable moment in college, MR. VALENTINE 2009. :D This college made a guy, almost the size of a baby elephant, feel on the top of the World. This college has made me feel special, very special. :D Thank you all my seniors. Love you all.

But yet there are some things that I do not like here. The first one being my over indulgence.

Out of the 16 hours I am awake, I spend 13- 14 here. My parents die to see me. And so do I. The worst part is that I have lost track of my family and all my friends outside college.

Next up is the NIGHT LIFE. According to our fraternity, we are born to work at night. How far is that justified??

Well, if I am not wrong, BRAHMA JI was the first architect, who created the world some 60-70 billion years ago. From then, till date, I have not read anything that states “ LATE TO BED, LATE TO RISE, MAKES AN ARCHITECT CREATIVE, WEALTHY AND WISE.” Then why do we so eagerly want to move away from our roots? I am still trying to find the solution!

Since its not even logically justified. We are wasting our resources, going against the daily cycle. I myself am not fully convinced by this, yet I 062 Perspecta

Photograph by: Arjun Goel argue over NIGHT OUTS with my parents.

“Night Out pe kya karte ho?

Kaam To din mein kya karte ho?

Kaam 24 ghante kaam karte ho? Itne padhaku kab se ho gaye?”

And it doesn’t end here. Most of my habits, which my parents and their friends feel proud of, my friends consider a curse (you know what I am talking about ;) ). Many times, I am the topic of a joke. I just laugh and forget about it. Since others don’t listen to me, I don’t pay any heed to them either.

Then there are some things that brought me equal joy and sadness. Like, being a SENIOR. Its

an amazing feeling when you are addressed as SIR. Totally unexplainable, but it makes you feel so proud.

But then comes the sad part.

You have responsibilities now, more responsibilities. You are no more the person who used to get all the attention, who can commit mistakes freely, ask for treats, cry in front of his Final Year. It’s the sad part. But that’s how it goes.

And I hope I will cope up with it. And thanks to my immediate junior batch, who have made me special as well, and helped me in taking up the new responsibility.

associate architecture with ART and AESTHETIC, but the engineering part is always neglected. And the worst part is that if someone makes an effort, it’s not even appreciated.

I still wonder how much these 2 years have changed me. From being a boy who woke up at 4 in the morning and read Mastermind, CSR, etc, I have changed to a guy who sleeps throughout the day. From being a person who never went against his parents to a person who keeps arguing with them on issues that are logically incorrect. I don’t know what the next 3 years will change in me. All I can do is sit back and let fate do its due.

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FORM follows FUNCTION FUNCTION follows FORM FORM follows FANTASY

“Architecture is as much a science as it is an art”,says one of the teachers. “Science induces a practical approach and hence functionality, while art enhances the form. Both need to go hand in hand to give a sucessful design. In the practical field, the end product should be used efficiently, hence form follows function”. Another teacher strongly opposed ‘Function follows form’, averring that this thought process depicts the necessity to fit functions in a form that was seen elsewhere.

It defies originality and gives the feeling of a plagiarised design. In agreement with the above views, financial status and strength were stated as necessary additives that encourage proclivity towards fulfillment of fantasies. Without the required financial backing, it is an impossible feat to design in accordance with ‘Form follows fantasy.’The genre of building also defines the design strategy. Citing an example, a teacher said,”In the construction of monuments and memorials, form dominates the design and the mind can be allowed to create and innovate.

However, in buildings like schools, creches, etc. the functionality has to be prioritised, as the users are not mature enough to relate the various functions, in the absence of interconnectivity.”

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pOLL-------rathi

A constantly increasing curve is observed in the responses supporting ‘Form follows function’ with the highest percentage crossing 70%, except for an anomaly when the curve dips at the third year bar chart. The aberration may be accounted as a result of the burgeoning enthusiasm of the students just prior to the training semester, ‘Winning a competition in architecture is a ticket to oblivion.However, it’s just an idea.99 % never get built.’

The sine curve crops up in response to ‘Function follows form’,the highest percentile quoted by the third year. The maximum percentage of students in support of designs initiated by fantasies, was from the final year. Most of these students belonging to the final year had recently completed their training semester from countries other than India, and hence were inspired by the architecture of the said countries.

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Photograph by : Aabhas Ahuja

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School Design Harpreet Singh (1st semester)

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[Re-flex] ANDC 2010 Team:

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Vinay Suri ,Gurinder Singh, Maninderpreet Singh Bajwa, Vikramjeet Singh

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Landscape Design Trophy Rhythm Kataria (4th year) and Ridhi Kanwar (3rd year)

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ecotel Samrat Chatterjee (4th year) Manish Choudhary (4th year) Vinay Suri (3rd year)

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The form of the buildings faces tilted at 45 degree to recieve maximum radiations from the sun provides for more ventilation options and projection of balconies. creating beautiful spaces for inside and outside.

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3star hotel

Diipayan Bhowmik (Final year)

green terrace

vertical circulation Wind circulation

corridor vertical circulation

lvl+21 m

swimming pool room

suite

lvl+17 m room

suite

lvl+13 m suite

lvl+9 m lvl+5 m

suite

ground floor

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room

rooms

entrance

Rooms are arranged in a manner so that every room member should have privacy to their neighbouring members.

the changing rhythm of balconies creates dynamic elevation from the east side of the hotel.

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Beautification of Durgiana Temple Complex Group Members

Ankita Dahiya Dhruv Bahl Dipayan Bhowmik

Mohd. Shaiqueuddin Purnesh Dev Nikhanj Tanay Swarupam

All the temples have been brought up to get the attention of the visitors by providing them with individual piazzas around for a better gathering.

The whole complex has been integrated in an easy manner allowing the visitor to roam about in a very efficient manner.

The site planning has been developed on the basis of the important nodes and a major axis directed towards the Durgiana temple. The districts for these nodes, created on the basis of voronoi system, allowing for a specific circulation system with the quickest possible route.

1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0

For better circulation and ease of access, the site has been penetrated from all the sides. Emphasis has been given on to the pedestrian movement in and around the site.

A Voronoi diagram is a special kind of decomposition of a metric space determined by distances to a specified discrete set of objects in the space.

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Temples Green Spaces Commercial shops Context Pedestrain Circulation Vehicular Circulation

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thesis in Brief

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Biomimicry Harsimran Singh Thesis Topper,2010

Community block is one of the first blocks which one will be able to see from the parking area and after crossing over to the island.

The block was conceptualized to be able to create a porous and perforated structure enclosing a space which can be open or semiopen depending on the type of function. The enclosure as defined as a community space will function as one even from outside. gradual slopes rising from the ground level makes the outer skin serve as a sitting space like in an amphi. overlooking the forest on one side and eco reserve on the other lets the green vegetation flow through its volume on the lower level. the flexibility of the structure permits it to mould itself in case of a tree passing through it the ribs modify as shown in a sketch on the left.

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The museum and library block is linked with the community loop with the library. The block of the museum lying next to the library showcases the relationship of humans with ecology. This block is conceptualized by arranging two circulation loops around a central forest area. The inner loop has its close proximity from the central forest and has functions and galleries which need to depict the close connection between the humans and nature.

The block is such that it lets the outer vegetation flow into the structure and stand without creating a barrier in the rich green ecology.

This block houses the research cell which will be used by a forest research organisation.

The organisation will carryout research on the local ecology and means to protect it.

They will also be doing consultancy projects for other govt. and private setups. This structure hence demanded a formal nature both in its arrangement and in its planning.

The plan is divided into 3 zones the first one is the reception and lib. zone which is accesseble to the visitors visiting the block. Second zone is the office and the adm. zone and the third one is the research zone with 2 labs.

The whole structure is divided into 9 ribs forming the framework for the building and they are further tied by metal cables.

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Mohit Vij, B-arch Thesis 2010

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Solutions on Page 144 Perspecta

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CCA Redeisgn Tarun Preet Singh Bhatia

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Namita Bamel House Caption

Purnesh Dev Nikhanj House Caption

Ravinder Singh House Caption

Dhruv Mahajan House Caption

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Graphic Design,3d modelling & Rendering 1

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1.Tanay Swarupam

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2,3. Samiya Sharma

4. Vinay Suri

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1,2 by Tanay Swarupam

3,5 by Ravinder Singh

4 by Shani Kumar 6 by Mayank Ojha

3 7.Cover Design for Nasa Magazine By -Varun Mohapatra

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Harpreet Singh (2nd year)

Photograph by Dipayan Bhowmik

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