The Indian Arch '09

IndianARCH’09

From the desk of the Principal Chandigarh College of Architecture

The TEAM EDITORS Apoorv Kaushik apoorvkaushik@gmail.com Jaskaran Chauhan jc.1124@yahoo.co.in

MAGAZINE CORRESPONDENT Shweta Sethi Surbhi Bharadwaj

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Apoorv Kaushik Varun Mahopatra

MAGAZINE COORDINATOR Tawish Tayal

SPONSORSHIP INCHARGE Rajat Malik

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Saurabh Vashist Dhruv Bahl Nishtha Bali Tanvi Mehta

Special thanks to Ar. Rajendra Kumar

It is an honour for Chandigarh College of Architecture, a founding member of NASA association, to be presenting this magazine to you, dear students, on the occasion of the 52nd Annual NASA convention being held at Chennai. I am quite sure that all of you would enjoy going through this edition of IndianARCH’09, just as you would enjoy participating in the convention, cheering and winning laurels for your respective colleges.

We must realise that architecture today, reacting to globalization, is giving up both its inexpensive energy saving juggernauts and simple environment sensitive techniques and expressions. We seem to be forgetting that our main purpose, being in this field, is to be able to contribute to the society and the world at large. It is evident that the need of the hour is the conservation of the world resources and our environment.

We are, no doubt, striving towards this same aim with the emergence of energy efficient architecture and sustainable buildings. But if we look back at our own architectural history, we will realise that we have been making use of environment friendly designs since time immemorial, then be it the mud cottages or rock structures. We need to recognise this rich culture and go back to our old principles so that we are able to help, not only ourselves, but also, the entire world.

The choice, however, lies with you, dear students.

The world of ‘glamorous’ architecture is forever present to attract those who are weak enough to get illusioned by it. It is sad to see architects practicing merely for the sake of fame or for satisfying their greed for material contentment. What we need to understand is that we have to use the opportunity presented to us by architecture to contribute to the world, or else, we shall fail miserably at our chosen profession.

So, it is for you to decide on which side you would prefer to be on. In other words, whether you would prefer hitting jackpots with “Slot Machines” or let the great Master Architects inspire you.

In the end I would wish each one of you a successful journey in your chosen future whether on your own or travelling along the “Garib Ratha”.

Once again, I hope, that you will find this issue of the IndianARCH09 up to your expectations as, we, at CCA aspire to inspire individuals to seek their true aim and follow it to the end.

Pradeep Kumar Bhagat Principal

Introduction

Message from the Convention Host University

Chandigarh College of Architecture

It is with immense pride that we introduce to you the annual NASA magazine-‘IndianArch09’. I express my gratitude to the Executive Council of NASA for giving Chandigarh College of Architecture an opportunity to publish this esteemed magazine, the souvenir for the annual NASA convention. It has been our endeavour to make the magazine highly informative and benefiting for our readers. Through the medium of this magazine, we intend to create a community that is innovative and harmonious, build a platform that celebrates intellect and individuality. And most importantly, we hope to design a walkway for preparing the young minds and future professionals to navigate the world of tomorrow.

Passion, intelligence and skill has been the key ingredients for creating wonders in architecture.

But the latest development in digital technology have further made it possible to give architecture a different dimension altogether. The magazine seeks to incorporate these attributes within students of architecture by the integration of artistic creativity and intellectual curiosity. Eminent architects have always modified and upgraded themselves by adapting to the changing needs of modernity. Today, graduates in architecture continue this tradition by acknowledging the challenges posed by contemporary society within a historically significant urban matrix.

I would like to thank the students of all schools and colleges of architecture from whom we have received an overwhelming response in the form of articles etc.

Also, I express my sincere gratitude to the architects who have provided us with some highly informative contributions.

I hope that you will not mind pushing architectural boundaries and design technologies and prepare yourselves to become Leaders in perhaps the most complex of all professional arts - The discipline of Architecture.

Sujay Sengupta Dean of Students Welfare Chandigarh College of Architecture

SRM University

I am pleased to learn that the 52nd Annual NASA convention is to be held at SRM University as it celebrates its Silver jubilee. This gathering of the architectural fraternity is an occasion to delve into the problems faced by the modern world and the role of architects in providing every individual with her preferred environment. I am glad understand that a publication of a magazine is planned to coincide with the event. I hope the convention would help inspire young architects and provide constructive and innovative solutions for a better future.

I take this opportunity to congratulate the staffs and students of School of Architecture & Interior Design, SRM University, and wish them success in all their present and future endeavors.

T. R. Pachamuthu Chancellor

I am delighted to learn about the conduct of NASA convention on the grounds of SRM University as it celebrates the 25th year of success. It is indeed an occasion to contemplate on and discuss the direction of development in the field of architecture and understand the need for better living spaces at the individual level as conveyed by the theme of the convention.

It is hearting to note the publication of a magazine as a part of the proceedings. I hope the convention emerges to be a hub of novel ideas to inspire and encourage the architecture community.

I take this opportunity to congratulate the staffs and students of School of Architecture & Interior Design, SRM University, for having made an excellent attempt to host this event to kindle and awake the students, fraternity.

P. Sathyanarayanan Vice Chancellor

Message from the Convention Host University

NASA & IndianARCH’09

SRM University

It is indeed an honour to address the students of architecture and architects participating in the 52nd annual NASA convention and on behalf of the students and faculty members of the School of Architecture & Interior design, SRM University, it is my great pleasure to welcome all the delegates to this convention. Since our university had hosted the zonal NASA conventions twice in 2001 and 2005, it was our dream to play host to the national convention and at the outset, I wish to thank the Executive Council of NASA for giving us the opportunity to host this prestigious event. At the same time, I also wish to express our gratitude to the management of SRM University for giving us the facilities to host a convention of this scale, where the logistics accommodating 4000 delegates for 4 days is stupendous. I would like to thank our Vice Chancellor, Prof. P.Sathyanarayanan in particular for his unconditional support, both morally and financially.

Most importantly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the students and faculty of the SRM architecture school, who burnt the midnight oil to make this convention a success. I also thank the students and faculty of the Chandigarh college of Architecture for bringing out this souvenir, which is befitting of the occasion.

It is our great privilege to host the 52nd Annual NASA Convention 09, wherein students of architecture from the other South Asian nations are also participating.

Apart from conducting the competitions for the 9 trophies and other events which are the mainstay of all NASA conventions, we feel honoured to have arranged the exhibition of the contemporary work of European architects and another exhibition highlighting the work of Bangalore architects. We are thankful to Ar.Durganand for arranging the European architects exhibition and to INCITE for the Bangalore architects exhibition. Moreover we have also arranged for the display of the portfolios of eminent Architectural practices in India and I express my gratitude to all the architects who had participated in this.

Over the past decade the SRM University had been emerging as one of the premier privately run universities in India, with campuses in Kattankulathur, Ramapuram (Chennai), Trichy and Modinagar in Delhi.

The Survey by Education times of India ranking SRM as the No.1 university among private universities offering multiple streams of education, in 2009 only confirmed the public perception. As a constituent of this institution the SRM architecture school has left no stone unturned to ensure the best in hospitality and to provide food for thought. We hope that the presentations & deliberations by the leading national and international architects will provide the much needed exposure to architecture students and their mutual interactions would be intellectually gratifying. We have also ensured various cultural events to entertain the delegates and I sincerely hope that all the competitions & events are enjoyed by the architectural community and paves the way for furthering the cause of architectural education in the country.

Prof. M. Thirumeni, Dean, School of Architecture & Interior Design, SRM University.

NASA

The Magazine

The National Association of Students of Architecture brings together students from around 120 colleges, to form a community that is the largest organization of the students of architecture in Asia.

The Annual NASA Magazine, The IndianARCH, this time around, is presenting its readers with an entirely new format. The aim of the magazine is to introduce the students to new concepts in architecture and to present the older ones in a way that is original and innovative.

The NASA community strives to provide a platform for the students to interact with each other and practicing architects and to share their experiences and difficulties. This approach helps students to not only gain valuable information in the field but also makes them aware of what all innovations and ideas are in vogue.

NASA organizes national level competitions to fulfill its motto. These prestigious competitions see students from various colleges participate and present their ideas and concepts with gusto. The trophies cover various aspects of architecture and are judged on the basis of practicality and innovation. NASA also endeavors to assist the society through the radical and excellent ideas that come up during the convention. The end product is used to help the economically weaker sections by providing technical advice.

This year, NASA has successfully made the event even bigger….

Celebrating 52 years since its conception, NASA has made the event a SAARC NASA event, with participation from colleges coming under the SAARC nations.

It is important for the students of architecture to understand the new concepts developing in the field.

We have included interviews of famous architects so as to acquaint the students with their theories and ideas. Contributions from students occupy a major part of the magazine along with inputs and views from teachers and practicing architects.

The Magazine has the cover story detailing out the various aspects of “Fractals”. The varied possibilities of the term and its applications in the field of application have been discussed in the section.

It is hoped that the Magazine shall help the students to gain knowledge and wisdom.

The NASA President’s thoughts...

‘A change was with what it began....and a change is what we still hold on to!

A change for us...a change for NASA...a change for BETTER!’ IndianARCH, the official journal of the National Association of Students of Architecture (NASA), India has come a long way since its inception. The aim was to act as a platform for architecture students of the country to bring out their works to the other members of the community and the general masses.

There are many journals available in the markets that talk of the professionals and their works in the built environment but none of them speak about the role of a student. ‘The period of Consequences’, as was described by Churchill, can definitely be altered, if not shaped, by the works of the students of today, who shall be the architects of a better tomorrow.

It was thus envisioned for a journal that highlights and promotes the role of students in the built environments of the future. This gave birth to the IndianARCH! Being a student association, we had to face many problems as for the necessary finances and also for that the journal was to be handled along with our academics.

Things were never always smooth but with the last year, we were determined to change the face of NASA and IndianARCH! The vision is to transform the current, yearly IndianARCH into a monthly magazine by the year 2015!

And with this aim, we present to you the IndianARCH ’09. I would like to congratulate CCA-Chandigarh to have come up with this excellent publication. As I had mentioned earlier, a lot of changes have been brought about in the past one year- the Louis I. Kahn Trophy documentation, Introduction of three new trophies, the SAARC initiatives- to name a few. Some of our friends were sceptical about and feared the pace with which we moved. I would like them to recall Nelson Mandela in that: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

Thus, with the belief that the light of NASA shall never fade and with a vision that it only grows, I would like to put my pen down.

Thank you all for your support.

“Let soaring high be NASA’s nature....always!”

Vidhu V. Saxena President NASA, India

Messages by the Convention Co-ordinators

When the most hectic months of my student life have finally come to an end, it’s a bitter sweet moment to bid adieu to those sleepless nights and mind whirling days. The thought that ‘we make the event’ has been taken over by the ‘event makes the best of us’. Never has there been an interaction so huge, so beneficial, so unifying that has made us amalgamated. Pride and Pleasure is what everyone from SRM University feels now. Adding to our zest is the fact that hosting the event on the occasion of 25th anniversary of the University gives it a special feel.

The theme of the event, U2, has made us only believe stronger that improved quality of life is precisely what is required at the moment, and we as the future of the industry can contribute more than what was initially thought. The learning has been the most important part of the event.

Yes, it has definitely taken our slumber and comfort; but it has rewarded us immensely that the fore mentioned seem regardless. I am more than proud to be the convenor of such an event, the 52nd annual nasa convention.

At this juncture I am extremely exhilarated and proud just by the very idea of my close relationship with the 52nd Annual NASA Convention 2009. With the coming of such a huge event, comes a big responsibility especially when themed on the quality of life, and to fulfil it I hope we haven’t left any stones unturned.

No other platform would deliver then importance of rejuvenation of the value of human beings in a better manner.

When we look back, we come to understand how much we have progressed, the tremendous learning experience that we have cultivated while hosting this event. And to be a part of such an event, it’s a pleasure beyond words. I would like thank all the faculty members, CCA editorial team & friends for their enduring support. I’m sure that the journal and the convention would bring the required change and keep up the spirits of NASA. I would like to conclude with quote by our father of nation,

Abhishek Convenor NASA

Shiraz CP Magazine Coordinator SRM University

“Be the change you want to see in the world” – MK Gandhi

Notes from the U-Secs

NASA has come a long way since its conception. And, today as we look forward to a new and exciting future, we realise the importance of change. With this as our aim we present to you IndianARCH’09.

A lot of effort has gone into the making of this magazine and it would not have been possible without the invaluable help and inputs from a lot of people...

I would like to thank the NASA authorities and the EC members for giving CHANDIGARH COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE this opportunity. I would also like to acknowledge my college authorities, Our principal Prof. Pradeep Kumar Bhagat and magazine in charge Prof. Sujay Sengupta for guiding us at every step and supporting our ideas, and the practising architects for all their suggestions and advice.

Making this magazine has been a great personal advantage for me as it has enhanced my skills of time management. All challenges faced while making this magazine have polished my abilities which will surely have a good impact on my career. My team and I are highly obliged to every individual who has shown his concern and contributed. We really appreciate the contributions from various colleges and students.

They are as important as my team who worked on this magazine.

National Association of Students of Architecture, being a 52 years young body has undergone a massive growth within itself during the past years. The present structure, being known as one of the largest communities of architectural students in Asia with over 120 colleges of the architectural community as members of this organization holds a great value for us. The NASA in the approaching duration has a long move to step to win a highest grade challenging its own history.

SRM University, celebrating its 25th anniversary have designed a numerous events in the forthcoming days.

And NASA being one among them and also being the prime among them, SRM senses enormous pleasure to host it.

I show gratitude to all the EC members for being with us all the way through the preparation for the convention and giving us the helpful and appreciative implications. I also give credit to the General Council for cooperating with us for various subjects.

On behalf of School of Architecture and Interior Design, SRM University, I feel privileged to welcome every single member of the gathering for the Annual NASA convention 2009.

Welcome to U2. . .

We hope that we come up to your expectations.

Tawish Tayal U –Sec Magazine Co-ordinator CCA

Kunal Patel Unit Secretary School of Architecture and Interior Design, SRM University.

Editorial Page

“I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.”

There are moments, as we contemplate our mortal journey, that seem so overbearing and fatiguing that one wonders if he would ever be able to break away. Then there is the strain of unending work, of responsibilities and of the necessary competition that one cannot afford to neglect. As we forge into the future, these moments seem to lengthen and become almost overpowering. But have we ever wondered what could be the reason for such instances.

The cause is not hard to decipher, if one but stops and thinks…

Man is, constantly and simultaneously, being pulled in all directions by forces that “thoughts” impose on him.

These thoughts are not his own but those of others around him; of the various people who influence and, supposedly, inspire him. Yet, the fault does not lie in these forces alone.

An individual is free to choose what he wants and by this freedom of choice, he also chooses the “thoughts” he wishes should motivate him. They act on him because he wants them to.

He lets chaos rule and prefers to follow the normal “flow” and makes no effort to seek an order---- the order that is all prevailing and eternal. For if a man must, he should seek inspiration from himself.

All along the history of man and architecture, “eras” have been defining the growth and progress of times, then be it modernism, neo- classicism, gothic or post modernism. Each era was inspired by one singular spirit and idea of man. Even though the beginning of each era was bound to cause conflict, it ultimately led to the triumph of the immortal soul of the individual.

We are lucky enough to live in a world that accepts new ideas and gives us the freedom follows a no particular style or order. Each individual idea is respected and given life to even though such ideas are, for the moment, rare and still in the process of

Editorial Page

growth. But we still have a long way to go. Open mindedness and acceptance of ideas that might seem alien but are true is the dire need of the hour.

The whole idea is take charge of one’s own self and to appreciate those who, by their individuality, are trying to give rise to a new era. It can be surmised in the following lines...

“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

Jaskaran Chauhan Editor, IndianARCH’09 Fifth Semester CCA

“Knowledge we ask not Knowledge Thou hast lent But, Lord, the will – there lies Our bitter need Give us to build above the deep intent The deed, the deed” - John Drinkwater It is not mere knowledge resting in a mind, that makes one reach out to achieve something, but the will that emerges out of a heart thirsting to achieve and accomplish.

It is not just brick and stone that are needed to build mansions, but hands with unwavering strength and refined skill.

Architecture is an art that involves the intricacies of scientific principles, but does not depend on the advancement of scientific technology. Centuries ago, when technology had not reached its present form, man created architectural masterpieces like the Pyramids, the Colosseum and the Taj Mahal, which still leave us awestruck and shall do so till eternity. It was not technological resources that created such wonders but the will that sprang forth from the souls of men, that was enough to empower their hands to build impeccable reflections of ethereal dreams, in form of solid and real structure.

Every deed done originates in one mind, but needs tremendous effort from various sectors in order to be accomplished. Every single person involved in any effort, big or small always has something unique to offer in terms of creativity and knowledge. The publication of Indianarch’09 reaffirms the fact that we are endowed with the power to conceive, create and change. Conceive with originality, Create with novelty and Change for the better.

Architectural students from all over India have been a part of Indianarch’09, and thus this issue includes ideas and visions of people with different fields of expertise and varied opinions about the present form of architecture and the future prospects.

IndianARCH’09 is a reflection of the will of the

community of architectural students all over India, to bring about a change in the perception about architecture presently prevailing in our country. It is an anthology of innumerable radical ideas originating every moment in the minds of young architects, who are all set to change the common outlook toward architecture. It is our endeavor to propagate the idea that architecture is not merely a convergence, but a confluence of science and art, abridging the distance between two seemingly different disciplines where human intelligence finds its expression and application.

Indianarch’09 has been a great learning experience, as it has served not only as a means to bring together the ideas of various young architects in the making on a common platform, but has also been an opportunity to interact with many renowned architects and professors of architecture from all over the world.

The conversations with the big shots of the world of architecture will indeed usher us into an arena where we can see things in a different light and from a new perspective. It is a rare happening that such a vast number of people ranging from students to professionals, and belonging to different areas and levels of specialization, are brought together to put forth their views, as has been done on FRACTALS – our main article.

I find great pleasure in presenting IndianARCH’09 to the architectural community.

Apoorv Kaushik Editor, IndianARCH’09 Ninth Semester CCA

Chandigarh Where freedom finds form: CCA Chandigarh: The City of Sun Space and Verdure

Interviews

inside

Christopher Charles Benninger Massimiliano Fuksas Javier G. Pioz Stefano Boeri

Works Studio AMA: India Forum Tower - India’s Peak Morphogenesis: Nullah Proposal Harry Sir

Articles Manu Sobti: Global India B. Banerjee: The Master’s Reminiscence Anil Laul: The Do or Die of the Financial Crisis Philipp Rode: Mumbai the Compact City Vikramaditya Prakash: Fractals and the modern Hindu temple KaranDev Mankotia: Architecture and Religion Deepika Gandhi: Good Servant, Bad Master Durganand Balsavar: Sustainable Urban Ecology Aparajithan Narasimhan: U2 and the Indian city Medha Gokhale: Traditional Indian Streets

Student’s Section Articles Graphics Works Short Messages

Where Freedom Finds Form: CCA CHANDIGARH COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE

Richa Sarin graduated from CCA in 2009 with a Gold Medal for topping all ten semesters Writing this as a fresh graduate, I am tempted to indulge you with an insider’s account of what CCA is and where it is headed. The Chandigarh College of Architecture still emanates the creative energy with which it was built, fifty years ago. The rich legacy of Le Corbusier, the essence of the dream of Chandigarh, the thought of where a modern Indian city should be headed, blended to generate a concept. The physical manifest of this concept is the campus of CCA. Visited every year by numerous students, architects and tourists from all over the country and the world; its corridors have witnessed many a wide eyed on their personal quest to piece together the teachings of the great Le Corbusier. While the design philosophy is etched in stone (concrete) and expressed in the built form, you might be surprised to know that Le Corbusier’s philosophy is not spoon fed to the students. It is wisdom that just hangs heavy in the air, for whoever is ready to breathe it in. It is omni present, to be absorbed gradually into all those who walk through its colourful corridors. The volumes are fascinating and the perfect dimensions of the courtyard are appreciated in every gathering held

Facing Page: The CCA entry foyer Below: The Courtyard; The backside

there. The building stands humbly, waiting to awe a student in the third year who’s felt an awakening within. It is there for the first years, who once were lucky enough to measure the periphery with their footsteps.

on you; will notice the impending and ongoing repairs and maybe hear the consequent conversations about the legacy of Le Corbusier. But stay in longer for a closer look and you’ll notice the subtle passion of the students towards learning and excellence. With the internet and with intense global impact, studying architecture has never been more stimulating. It surely is the best time to be a part of CCA. If the alumni are sending their children to CCA, it has to be doing something right!

The USP of CCA is amazing because it imbibes the essence of Le Corbusier’s teachings. He wished to imbibe the spirit of true modernism which, in the words of Tagore, ‘is independence of thought.. ’.

The design philosophy at CCA encourages thought process empowered by knowledge but never caged by restricting ‘isms’.

The College has gone through various paradigm shifts, largely because of change in Principals, all of which have been for the better. The ideologies of these exemplary educationists have been imbibed in the program, one at a time. Consequently, the curriculum is a wholesome amalgamation of various activities. With a compulsory educational tour every year and a two week long college fest, ‘Archo’ and active participation in NASA, all - round development is ensured for the students. These activities are backed

by a flexible design philosophy wherein each student has hundred percent freedom in discovering and developing his/her own design philosophy. This initiative by the faculty that encourages design driven learning is having multifaceted consequences.

The undercurrent at CCA is of change, is of growth, is of self motivation; the best motivation of all. In each batch, students are discovering the latent talent within them. The most noticeable recent trend is the increase in the number of students who are going abroad for internships. The number was a mere three in 2006 that jumped to ten in 2007 and is at nine in 2009, all from a batch of forty students. This is helping CCA retain and expand its intellectual footprint. It is a joy to discover the melting pot of global influences that the College is turning into. The winds of change are blowing softly in its corridors and studios. The day is not far when there will be group discussions and enlightening conversations, where students will share the rich repertoire of their experience with the whole college. In addition to the obvious benefits, these students are becoming an inspiration for their juniors as well. Students from CCA have bagged internships with contemporary architects like Thom Mayne, Daniel Leibskind, Zvi Hecker, Gerrard Melling, Zavier Pios, to name a few. The persistent success of the well knit CCA alumni family settled all over India and the world, cannot be highlighted enough.

Surely, when you are in the campus you will notice the Corbusier imprint, will experience the spaces grow

It is true that at fifty, it is an unsettling time at CCA, but nicely so. The energy is changing its form and it will reach you, make no mistake. The initiative of this magazine is only an indicator. The ever evolving system is headed to take off in a big way. It might become the only educational setup to produce master architects.

Chandigarh

The City of Sun, Space and Verdure Sangeeta Bagga Mehta Senior Lecturer, CCA

Envisioned as the most charming capital of the world, the last word in beauty and simplicity, Chandigarh symbolises India’s independence and faith in the future. The partition of 1947 saw Lahore, the historic capital, ceded to Pakistan whereby, there was an emergent need for a new capital to administer redefined Punjab as well as regain the lost confidence of the displaced, refugees. Chandigarh, a harbinger of change, chosen from among thirteen other existing towns was proposed to be the new capital and finalised through an aerial reconnaissance survey. The near vacuum of indigenous expertise to handle such a bold experiment in urban planning brought on the

Below: Principal V2-Madhya Marg; Extensive Landscape along city roads and roundabouts; Sector 17- The heart of the city

scene two visionaries; Le Corbusier the French architect as the ‘spiritual director’ of the capital project and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister . Utilising western skills a new conception was developed which originated from the exigencies of the project itself, suited to the local climate, deployed local materials and methods to realize Chandigarh ‘the City Beautiful’.

Ideally nestled in the foothills of the Shiwaliks, the lower ranges of the Himalayas, 333m above sea level, Chandigarh’s chequerboard plan is laid on a gently sloping site, whose eastern and western boundaries

are marked by seasonal rivulets- the Sukhna Choe and the Patiali ki Rao. As a socialist utopia too, it had a mandate to fulfill-- to provide the best of amenities to all classes of citizens. So the city had many first to its credit, including being the first Indian city to have a fully underground waterborne sewage disposal system.

Aptly hailed a city of convenience and comfort, Chandigarh occupies an area of 70 square kilometers, whose places of residence, work and recreation are easily accessible from all parts of the city. Beginning in 1951, Le Corbusier played a significant role in ordering the present urban form of the city. The city has been developed in two phases sectors 1-30 in phase one and 31-47 in phase two. Designed for a population of 1, 50,000 in the first phase and 3, 50,000 in the second phase, its present population has crossed the one million mark. Presently phase three comprising sectors 48-57 is being developed. The key elements of the master plan are the well ordered matrix of the generic ‘neighbourhood unit’—the Sector and the hierarchical street system of the ‘7Vs’- the Les Sept Voies.

Recognising the dual role of trees as elements of cityscape and microclimatic amelioration, Le Corbusier devised a comprehensive plantation scheme, specifying the shape of trees for each category of avenues- the Vs, keeping in view their potential for cutting off the harsh summer sun.

These plantations have lent an imageable character especially to the sector level market streets the V4s which display a riot of colour during the blossom time.

A protected green belt, the ‘Periphery’, girdles the town, which was introduced to set limits to the builtmass of the city and as a measure against unsolicited sprawl.

The two principal avenues- V2s are the Madhya Marg (V2 station) and the Jan Marg (V2 Capitol), at the crossing of which lies the City Centre --Sector 17. It is the city’s commercial, cultural and civic hub , providing an address to branded international chain stores, hotels , restaurants offering exotic cuisine as well as a hawkers market offering toys, trinkets, water balloons , and the like.. With the demand for entertainment rising, and an accelerated spending power of the people, three of the four cinemas in the City Centre are in

the process of being converted into multiplexes and shopping malls. The other important areas within the City Centre are the Bank Square, the General Post Office, the Central State Library, Gallery of Portraits, Town Hall, District Courts and other office buildings.

Traversing north south along the length of the city, adjacent to the City Centre is the verdant Leisure Valley, the single largest parkland of Chandigarh, the City of Sun, Space and Verdure. Along it are laid out

Below: Boat Club at Sukhna Lake; Open Hand - The city’s mascot; The monumental High Court at the Capitol Complex

Below: Leisure Valley-Nature in the city; The Rock Garden

administrative capital, occupies the geographical head, symbolizing the celebration of democracy in a newly independent nation-state. Comprising monumental buildings flanked by the ‘Rajendra Park’ and the ‘Sukhna Lake’ on each end, the complex stretches across the entire width of the city.

open air theaters, sports and leisure activities as well as theme gardens such the Zakir Rose garden, Asia’s largest rose garden with more than 4,000 rose varieties, the Bougainvillea Garden , Moonlit Gardens, Terraced Garden to name a few. Summer evenings and Winter afternoons witness the citizens enjoying nature’s bounty, amidst numerous views of the azure blue Shiwaliks in the north. The Leisure valley also contains the “Cultural Complex” lying across the City Centre comprising The Museum and Art Gallery, the Government College of Art , the Pavilion for temporary ‘Itinerant Exhibitions’, and the ‘Miracle Box’ (cyclorama). The museum is part of a series by Le Corbusier at Ahmedabad and Tokyo, Japan. It is based on the theme of the never ending spiral utilizing the effect of natural sunlight for illumination from its roof lights, for its various interlocking floors which are accessed through ramps. The City Museum initially designed for temporary exhibitions depicts the history and development of the city. Sculpted gargoyles, white pebbled pools, a cast iron manhole cover inscribed with the map of the city and the Corbusian Modulor, interspersed with native bamboo plantations are the other interesting elements of this cubic ensemble in exposed burnt brick and reinforced concrete set against the free flowing landscape.

A counterpoint to this is Nek Chand’s world famous Rock Garden. An epitome of an individual’s perseverance to fashion art out of industrial waste and throwaway junk items, it grew parallel with the constructions of Chandigarh, yet unattended by the public eye. Today, the Nek Chand Foundation USA works in raising awareness of the Rock Garden and

support for Nek Chand and his work which continues to boost tourism in the city. The fragility of the environment, the need for conservation of the earth’s natural resources, and the importance of balancing industrial development and sound environmental practices are the lessons it reveals. The visit to the Rock garden on the double decker Hop on Hop off bus, ferrying tourists between the city sights, continues eastward to the Boat Club and the Sukhna Lake. The boat club was deliberately designed by Le Corbusier three metres below the lake promenade so that its view would not be obscured from the road. Credited to PL Verma, the Chief Engineer of the Capital Project, realized by building an earthen dam over the Sukhna Choe as early as 1958, the lake was dedicated to the citizens. The lake continues to be the citizens pride and each summer prior to the Monsoon, “Shramdan” through city level participation helps prepare the Sukhna to receive the catchment from the Kansal and Nepli rivulets .The Sukhna wetland is also a home to the migratory Siberian seagulls and other fauna.

The lake promenade 2341metres long, presents a spectacular view of the rising sun to the morning walker and the sailboats and paddle boats are a colorful evening sight once again with the mountain blue backdrop! So important was the lake view to its designer , that every single detail such the lighting fixtures, entrance gateway , stone wall along the promenade was sensitively designed so that it would not detract the view of the lake. The promenade also offers a silhouette view of the Capitol edifices in the setting Sun. The Capitol Parc -la raison d’ etre of the enterprise representing the think tank of the

The group represents Le Corbusier’s largest and most significant constructed architectural creation where the architect put in his heart and soul for over 13 years, painstakingly designing and monitoring the realization of its ingenious layout, its major ‘edifices’, its ‘monuments’ as well as pieces of furniture, lighting fixtures and works of art, including the famed enamel door for the Legislative Assembly, monumental tapestries and low-relief sculptures cast in concrete.

The Capitol Complex represents the plastic inventiveness and sculptural qualities of Le Corbusier’s works in ‘beton brut’—rough textured exposed concrete. Le Corbusier’s Capitol for Chandigarh comprises four ‘Edifices’ – the High Court, the Legislative Assembly, the Secretariat and the Museum of Knowledge (not realized)– and six ‘Monuments’, all arranged within a profusely landscaped park-like environment. While vehicular circulation was arranged, and dug out where necessary below the esplanade.

Among the monuments, the Open Hand adopted as the city’s mascot, stands as the material symbol of the city’s ideology — …open to receive the created riches …open to distribute them to its people…”

The 12.50m wide and 8.86m Hand, is sculpted out of beaten iron sheets. A metal structure, designed to work as a wind vane, holds it 27.80m above the “Trench of Consideration” at its base. Another element worth mentioning are the tapestries or ‘woolen walls’, which expanded their earlier definition beyond framed pictures to cover entire walls. Ostensibly created for their ‘psycho-physiological’ properties to adorn as well as acoustically treat the courtrooms of the High Court, depicting different motifs drawn from nature, in vibrant colours, these tapestries were designed as structured compositions of several rectangular units whose standard width was 140cm. (approximately the length of the indigenous loom). Proposed to be woven locally each of these nomadic murals was to provide

economic opportunity to village households, since each unit was awarded to a family in contrast to benefit to a single industrial house. But later the idea was discarded and the East India Carpet Company, Amritsar was assigned to deliver the consignment for the inauguration of the High Court in March, 1955.

Below (Clockwise): Information Technology Park; Tapestry – Woolen Wall; V4 Shopping Street in a sector

Envisaged as an organism the other accents of the city were the Industrial Area in the east (close to the railway line) and the Panjab University, PGIMER (Post Graduate Institute of Medical Research), Punjab Engineering College and other institutions in the west.

The head and heart were symbolised by the Capitol Complex and The City Centre respectively, the Leisure Valley was its lung space, while the rest of the matrix was to be filled in through the residential sectors.

The sector surrounded by fast traffic V3 was conceived as a self sufficient introvert unit, linked to the adjoining sectors through its V4 shopping street, along which are located the daily shops, and utilities. Vertical green belts with the pedestrian V7s, schools, sports facilities provided similar links in the opposite direction and views of the hills in the north.

Often called the horizontal city, Chandigarh derives its urban form from the low-rise cubic forms in exposed

brick, plastered, painted surfaces using locally available building materials. This design vocabulary generated from the exigencies of the prevailing extreme climate and the constraint of a shoe string budget, was enriched by elements such as sun breakers, courtyards, verandahs, brick and terracotta sunscreens. Another lesser known facet of the Chandigarh experiment, yet a prime determinant of the Chandigarh Style of Architecture are the city’s Aesthetic Legislations prescribing volumes, facades and materials for the constructions.

The City has turned fifty five plus years now and continues to be a most favoured destination in the country for tourists and settlers alike. As a modern socialist utopia which has fulfilled the aspirations of its citizens, Chandigarh continues to grow with new developments such as the Information Technology Park, Film City, Botanical Garden, a second lake in its periphery and a mass rapid transport system along

Below: Enamel Door for the stately Assembly; The Assembly Building, by Sumit, First year, CCA

the V2 Jan Marg to regulate peak hour traffic. The City has also been acclaimed internationally. Its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List of Modern Heritage is underway and it is likely to be realized by June 2008.

Embedded in its history, an icon of the Modern Movement in India and abroad, it is second to none and continues to grow, ever evolving in the process of change. Last but not the least the epicentre of this great experiment in city planning has been the ‘think big’ attitude of its visionaries which is why the greatest experiment in urban planning of the twentieth century’s greatest architect has been realised on its verdant plain.

interviews

A dialogue with Ar. Christopher Charles Benninger On his journey into the Indian architectural scene, Le Corbusier and Bhutan (Ar. Benninger lectured in CCA on Le Corbusier Day) Facing & Below: Tshechu Ground, Thimpu, Bhutan Born in America in 1942, Christopher Charles Benninger has lived and worked in India for the past thirty-three years.

He studied City Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Architecture at Harvard University, where he was later a Professor of Architecture. A Fulbright Fellowship brought him to Ahmedabad, India in 1968, and he returned as a Ford Foundation Advisor to found the School of Urban Planning there in 1971. He founded the Centre for Development Studies in Pune, India (1976) involving him in rural development and poverty alleviation work. He has prepared plans for the Governments of Bhutan, Nepal, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. He has designed institutions, residential schools, business and luxury hotels, corporate headquarters and large scale housing projects.

IndianARCH: In your lecture, you spoke about the megalomaniac trend of iconic buildings. Do you attribute this to increased competitiveness to provide a more attractive idea or to the ambitious needs of clients?

Christopher Charles Benninger: this has a lot to do with the clients also. I think it’s not just the architects, but companies and individuals as well. For example, in Bombay, some of the houses that people are building for themselves, which are twenty storeys tall, are a rather bad architecture, just to show-off. I think there’s a general ego maniac, particularly in the richer families because a lot of people have made quick money.

They don’t understand they have money because they have quick business ideas, not because they are particularly brilliant Michelangelos and they are unusual in their energy and ideas. Suddenly you find people writing books, it’s sort of the Mahatma Gandhis of the 21st Century.

I think there’s a huge egoism in business people who, overnight, become billionaires and this architecture in a way, expresses their desires as much as the architects’. But I just think the architects are really into the packaging and the imagery and into the glitter of the facade.

IA: Our politicians often declare their aspirations to convert our metropolitan cities into the Shanghais, Dubais and Singapores of the world. Do you think that Indian cities may soon tread the path of other Asian economies ignoring urban infrastructure and celebrating iconic architecture?

CCB: I’m afraid so. You look at Bombay, there are so many new buildings coming up. I think there are plans for the tallest building in the world. It’s bound to do tall buildings. I think, probably in Bombay, there are thirty tall buildings now, which is going to change the face of the city. As it is, we don’t have enough roads to take the automobiles, we don’t have enough water, we don’t have enough sewage treatment and now we’re going to cover it with towers, which is going to generate more and more density and traffic, when actually, Bombay should be dispersed. I think you’re right, I think politicians make a lot of money clearing these buildings. So, there is a nexus between megalomaniacs, politicians who make money and architects who are prostitutes, who would do whatever people pay them to do.

IA: You addressed the idea of placing Corbusier and his ideals on a pedestal being a mistake. Are you of the opinion that campaigning for Chandigarh to become a world heritage site is a folly?

CCB: I don’t think Chandigarh should be a heritage site at all. A city is a machine for living—that’s Le Corbusier, and machines don’t become heritage sites. They’re supposed to keep on living and keep on changing. It’s almost an insult to Corbusier to say that his city would become a heritage site. You might make his buildings or the Capitol Complex a heritage site, but not the city.

IA: How challenging and daunting did you initially find the task when the Government of Bhutan came to you with the project of the National Ceremonial Piazza in Thimphu? Did you do a background workshop on the architecture? Did you conduct workshops with the Bhutanese worksmen?

CCB: On a daunting scale of 0 – 100. I would say it was 99 % daunting. I was actually wrapping up my office after I had done the structural plan and I was going to say goodbye to the Director General of the PWD and he said – “You can’t leave, you have to sign a contract because, don’t you know that the cabinet passed a resolution that you have to design our new secretariat, which is a very large project.” I said I don’t know anything about this, my contract is over and my guys want to go back to India. He said— “No, you have to do this.”

So that was a big shock to me. I didn’t even know there was a structural project, though in my master plan I had a precinct for the site to become the future Capitol Complex. And then we started working on it.

We actually spent months meeting people and having

conversations, particularly with the manpower planning with civil service commission about what were the future projections of the people who would use it. Then yes, we had some public consultations.

We even put things in the press. Unfortunately that was a mistake.

When you’re doing a project like a Capitol Complex, even when le Corbusier was doing this project, i.e. the headquarters in New York, there was a huge amount of backbiting and harassment in the progress, so that wasn’t really terribly successful.

But we interacted with a huge number of people and I must say that there were three other architects who had done plans for the Capitol Complex and they were all rejected for various architectural reasons and mainly His Majesty and I saw these plans and I agree that they were like monk’s quarters.

I actually went up to Bhutan in my mid-thirties and that was some thirty years ago by a jeep on gravel roads because there were no airlines, no telephones, no electricity, I mean we had small generators around the whole town and I worked with them on some projects at that time, so I’ve been involved with the context for let’s say at least three decades. So it’s not like I’m not fluent in Bhutanese architecture.

It’s a place that I, for example the prime minister, we had him on screen at noon, he and I worked together in 1970s so I know these people through my contact and that’s much different from Zaha Hadid coming into

Facing Page: Tshechu Ground site photographs, Thimpu, Bhutan

the tender and putting up buildings in the middle of the city. So I’ve actually worked contractually with them. A lot of things have nothing to do with buildings.

I’m also a planner so I worked on micro-level plans or clusters of settlements and how you do micro water shed planning, some small irrigation canals and tanks to get inputs into agriculture inside. So I’ve been involved with them on a range of issues related to nutrition, healthcare, agriculture, food policy and all kinds of things like that in the 70s and 80s. Only, out of the blue, they say – Why don’t you come and make a presentation? We have three contenders to do the structural plan of the city. So I said – Why not, it sounds like fun. So I went up and made a proposal and then I was fortunate enough to get that plan. And they liked it a lot, they liked the way I did the plan because it was very efficient.

And then they asked me to do this. You see, I’ve done actually three town plans for existing towns in Bhutan, the Capitol complex being a new town, it’s so small I’d really call it almost a village plan. It’s only about 120 acres or something, but in Bhutan that’s big because settlements are very small. So it’s not at all that I came into a strange place and started working.

IA: Are you involved in transportation planning also?

CCB: You have to be, if you’re designing a city. But then, you don’t have to do all this computer modeling.

You know, like in Thimphu, if you look at the aerial view, I had planes fly over the city and take photographs so that we could do a ground coverage check of the existing land use in buildings. And if you look at the streams and the topography, you can pretty well imagine that the city’s going to work and need some sort of an urban core, a corridor that runs through the city on which you can have mass transepts, so why not save land? A kind of a 200 foot wide sort of a thing goes through the middle of city and preserves the land now. Then, within a year, we started building an expressway on that.

Previously, to get into this area, you had to come along the tops of mountains because streams came down those routes, you’d go up, then back down, where the

streams came in, then back around the edge and then back where the next stream came and it took forever to get into this city, and then there were a lot of accidents on these roads because people couldn’t see around the corners or at night, they just went off the edge. So we put a kind of a 6 lane expressway right down the middle of the valley and it made every thing so easy for people, particularly buses. And they didn’t have any buses. We introduced that, small buses into the city. All these kind of things really changed the way people moved in the city.

There are people who do Ph.D.’s in transportation planning. You can do transportation planning. Just like you know we should really have a workshop and just take plans of Chandigarh. May be get some data like what are the densities, what are the land uses for of them, like which one of these long roads can be turned into an urban porter? Do we want subsidiary porters or do we just want one? There could be 4 groups working and they can come with 4 different answers to this whole thing.

IA: You came initially to Ahmedabad to teach, but what made you stay back?

CCB: Why did I stay back? To me India always was a frontier. See, first I came on a Fullbright Scholarship and while I was just a student, I was asked to teach urban planning. From someone I got to know about a very dynamic politician who wanted to do housing for the poor. So I went in and did some sketches, we needed growing houses and we needed narrow blocks because we wanted the networks to be cheaper and the plots were narrow. We got involved but nothing happened and I went back and taught at Harvard for 3 years. I had instantly made a new proposal to start a school of urban planning, while I was a 24 year old student. Then I got a letter saying the school is going to start. Now, in America the option of founding an institute at such a young age (I was 28 then) was not possible so it was frontier. Here you could do things which you can never do there. So I came back and started that school. And a month after I started the school, this politician that I had met 4 years earlier, became the minister of Housing and he called and

Below: Tshechu Ground in the evening Facing: St. Peters Dome by Dhruv Bahl, Fourth Year, CCA

said – I would like you to do 2000 houses in Jamnagar as well. I actually built 600 houses, not 2000, but again, I was just 28 and I was given a commission to do low cost township for people. And it just kept on growing on like that till now. Every time I turn around, somebody’s asking me to do something interesting. I came here and gave a lecture 4 years ago and the Government of Haryana asked me to design this Cultural Centre in Delhi. So, I came to give a lecture and then it turned into a project. I came here to do this Le Corbusier Day Panel discussion and this morning somebody asked –why don’t you design an international school in Chandigarh.

So, it’s like a roller coaster. I’ve never had to look for a project; people keep on coming and asking us to do very interesting work.

I also found another institution in Pune called centre for development studies which does development research, like watershed-planning and work in slums and villages and what not. So, it’s just terribly exciting.

Whenever I go back to America, everybody is sleeping out of work and they’re grumbling about the society and I say- why don’t you get off your asses and change things yourself? Why are you waiting for somebody to give you a job? Why don’t you plan for something in America since you don’t have any work? Why don’t you use the time and do something interesting?

architecture has to be very contextual. In fact I think in each region in India, students should be looking for a sort of contextual language in architecture. I’m not saying a style or imagery like these digitals, but like, probably in Punjab, Haryana and UP, up here, right out of history, you can find some very contextual ways of handling ventilation, entrances, windows, walls and spaces and start developing some sort of a regional architecture, which can be very contemporary. It should not be ethnic architecture, but I think I’ve learned that architecture, like you see the Bhutan work; I’ve used all local craftsmen, local motifs. I haven’t even bothered to try to design new columns. I’ve said –okay, they know how to make these columns. So, I’ll just put it together like a logo, say. But they’ve never made a big space like that. You see they’ve never, in return, made a space which is, given its not a stadium, its not an amphitheatre but it’s a dance and singing plaza where twenty thousand people can participate interface with His Majesty and the Dalai Lama and all these people. So, it’s a very modern and new space but built out of a local set of Bhutanese architecture. So, I think that’s really fun.

And it’s a very contextual building. Everybody can say its traditional Bhutanese architecture, but there’s never been a space like that in the whole Himalayas for the last thousands of years, so its fun.

IA: What have you learnt from architecture in India?

CCB: I think one of the things I’ve learnt is that

Interviewing Team: Jaskaran Chauhan, Saurabh Vashist, Apoorv Kaushik

Rendezvous with Massimiliano Fuksas An interaction on art, architecture and education with Massimiliano Fuksas while on his short trip to India Below: Hagia Sophia, Istanbul; Church of San Paolo, Foligno Massimiliano Fuksas was born in Rome in 1944, where he graduated in Architecture at “La Sapienza” University in 1969. In 1967 he created his own studio in Rome, followed by studios in Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt in and Shenzhen, China. From 1998 to 2000 he was Director of the VII Biennial of Architecture in Venice “Less Aesthetics, More Ethics”.

Since 2000 is the author of the architectural column founded by Bruno Zevi in the weekly magazine “L’Espresso”.

He was Visiting Professor at several universities, such as the École Speciale d’Architecture in Paris, the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna, the Staadtliche Akademia des Bildenden Kunste in Stoccarda, and the Columbia University in New York.

Apoorv Kaushik: What is the importance of good teachers in architecture? Can architecture be learnt only through education?

Massimiliano Fuksas: Referring to my personal experience in Italy, an Architecture High School does not exist, there is only the University. A law dating back to the fascist period established the creation of a faculty of architecture, somewhere between Engineering and Fine Arts. The sum of the two disciplines resulted in a course that was ferociously difficult. There were 39 exams. 19 of these had to be passed in the first two years, otherwise the student was not admitted to the third year. To keep my mother happy, I took all the exams which was crazy.

Despite all this I knew nothing which shows that one can do anything without knowing anything. There are hundreds of useless exams. I finished them all, before the scheduled time too, so I spent 6 months in Denmark. I visited Jorn Utzon’s studio where I went back to work the following summer and, at the same time, I began to look very carefully at contemporary buildings. On the whole, I didn’t think they were that bad. When I came back, I wasn’t so in love with architecture anymore, but I began to do some work on the subject. I read books, copied plans and cross sections. I was simply trying to understand. The only subject I was really interested in was the History of Architecture. Contemporary art, on the other hand, was my life, my real love. I have always refused to revere any master, but there have been some people in my life that I am thankful to and to whom I could dedicate many of my projects. The first is Jurgis Baltrusatis, an art historian, known mainly for his studies on anamorphosis and the fantasy world of the Middle Ages. He was Lithuanian as well and, when I lived in Paris, we used to meet frequently. I really liked seeing him as he reminded me of my roots and I could speak to him using the few words of Lithuanian that I

still remember.

The other person I would like to remember is Giorgio Caproni, one of the most important Italian contemporary poets and one of the greatest translators of Celine. His works have been translated all over the world. He was my primary school teacher and I often used to go to his house in the afternoon when school had finished. We have always been very close. He played the violin and adored electric trains that we often assembled together. We built landscapes, while I read him my poems, which were clearly those of a ten-year-old child. I was mad about poetry and his world. Another person I owe a lot to is Giorgio Castelfranco who I have known since I was a child. I met many artists through Castelfranco including Giorgio de Chirico who I worked with for a while, in his studio in Piazza di Spagna. At the time I did not feel alive if I didn’t paint every day. Anyway, I am sure that all my projects show that my reference points certainly do not come from architecture. My interests as well as my training have always been closer to art. I love Burri, Fontana, Fluxus, Gordon Matta Clark, Beuys, ArtePovera and Land Art, the world of violence and poetry, the world of Krzysztof Wodiczko and Pierpaolo Pasolini. In other words, I am interested in becoming part of a process that is different from the architecture in which we live every day.

AK: You have often emphasized on the importance of youth in architecture…comment.

MF: If I should give a tip to young people naturally they must use all the means possible without exception.

The real ability is to find the key of the problem without fall in love of own work, that is of own painting, model or virtual images for example. Forgetting itself every moment and finding itself is being able to evolve!

AK: What are your views on spirituality and its relation with architecture MF: Architecture is strictly correlated to spirituality because it is concerned with feeling and giving emotions. For example in one of my last project the church of San Paolo in Foligno, spirituality has to do with the light. Light has always been a synonym for spirituality and it has always been like this as we see in the art of the past. Great architectural masterpieces have to do with spirituality in the larger sense of the term. In my opinion the architecture I admire most are Santa Sofia in Costantinopoli and The Sidney Opera House by Jorn Utzon.

AK: Art, Architecture, and Poetry: is there a greater art?

MF: All the arts have equal dignity and I firmly believe that architecture is a contaminated art with cinema or sculpture. We see again for example architecture evolving in sculpture and vice versa, as it was centuries ago with great architects as Bernini.

AK: Where do you think is architecture headed now?

What does the future look like to you?

MF: Now that we assisted in the fall of the dreams of modern architecture which firmly believed that architecture could change the society, there’s a big chaos, the sublime chaos, as I referred to it more than once but this doesn’t mean we are not looking ahead.

We always look ahead as architects.

AK: How do you think architecture is related to the society?

MF: There isn’t architecture without care for Ethics and for intense engagement in society, the creation can improve general conditions, and along with environment can be the future ‘fuel’ of the history.

In my job I hope to produce more ideas for more people as possible. Because I believe architecture is a democratic art and it should find again her popular dimension and involve more people in the life of buildings and cities.

AK: What are you views on digital architecture?

MF: The virtual technology is very useful. Virtual reality affects realization of my projects and it allows to have more control on the project and to imagine it better before it is finished and takes a definitive shape. About digital architecture I don’t have a definitive opinion. It depends on the project.

AK: What do you think of Fractals? (You once said you are against nature, and fractals is (in a way) learning from nature) MF: The theory of quanta and fractals clarify better than anything else the strict relationship between the nature and the mathematics /geometrical models.

Over a Cup of Coffee with Prof. Javier Pioz An interaction with Prof. Pioz in New Delhi of CERVERA & PIOZ , discussing projects and varied interests from ‘Bionics’ to fractals and the new era dawning on architecture Prof. Javier G. Pioz holds a PhD in Architecture from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura in Madrid, and a Master of Science in Building Design from Columbia University, New York. He has been Professor of Architecture at the Polytechnic University in Madrid since 1987, and lectures at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura.

Prof. María Rosa Cervera holds a PhD in Architecture from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid and holds a degree by the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid. She has been Professor of Architectural Composition at the School of Architecture of Alcalá University since 2001. She was elected Dean of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura of Alcalá University in 2004.

CERVERA & PIOZ was founded by Javier Pioz and Rosa Cervera in 1979, the Firm has, since then, devoted itself to the creation of unique and emblematic buildings

IndianARCH: The field of bionic architecture has turned out to be a fast emerging branch, yet there is a need to educate people regarding the opportunities and possibilities in this field, so how would you like to describe this upcoming branch?

Javier Pioz: We are living in a world of 6.5 billion people right now and growing very fast (it is very serious). Thinking architecturally, to pass from 6.5 billion people to 12billion people would require to build at least 4 times more, 4 times more skyscrapers, 4 times more single housing, 4 times more highways, which means to spend at least 8 times more energy.

However, in the next 50 years the world should be prepared to spend and use 8 times more energy than today’s consumption and if we are scared for the energy today, then imagine the situation in 2050!

As you can see during the last few years there is a reason behind these new emerging ways like green architecture and sustainable architecture. Sustainable or green mainly means saving energy, and lately you’ve seen that flourish. Now, Bionic was born before the green concept, in 1960, but bionic was like a multidisciplinary, scientific procession to change different aspects of natural science. Bionic is a philosophy, it’s a new way of thinking and also a new look at nature.

If we are thinking that we need more efficiency or more sustainable architecture, Nature is a best book, because everything in nature is sustainable. From the very beginning, the structures, the shapes in nature are sustainable. When we had started working on bionics in 1994 in Colombia University, our main question was- ‘why every given building is built with columns and beams? And why nature never builds with columns and beams?’. If columns and beams would be sustainable, then nature would also use it.

So, Bionic architecture is learning from the way in which natural homes are built in order to get the knowledge to build a human home.

Taking the example of grapes in nature, each grape is like a module, and in nature this is the way shapes are formed: many modules working together. Now there’s a difference between Bionics and Bioneumatics.

Bioneumatics is getting inspired from nature and copying it, copying the module; Bionic questions why nature is using a module. The answer is because it turns out to be the most efficient tool to make shapes!

(Discussing Santa Isabel Health Care Centre, Zaragosa, Spain) To build a hospital is very expensive, and so is its yearly maintenance. The problem here was to create a hospital which is cheaper to maintain annually. The bills of the hospital for the air-conditioning and heating were very high so we decided to make a structure in which air can move fluently. In nature this kind of structure (image) is very well known with its capacity to move the air smoothly inside, this inspired us to create a structure for the hospital.

Below: Numancia Hospital, Madrid; Santa Isabel Health Care Centre, Zaragosa, Spain

we can create a much more comfortable space inside polygonaly. This is what bionic means, learning from nature, but you need a research first. I’m practising such knowledge accordingly.

IA: How exactly do you think that fractals contribute to sustainability?

JP: Well yes! What is a fractal? This is a real fractal (image). Fractal is like a chain of modules. Fractal is a law. It is the most deceived law. This is mathematics, you can create these with algorithms. But it it is in nature, not by calculations but by logic. The term ‘Fractal’ was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot dating back to the 19th century. Mathematics is very closely related to fractals as it is the repetitive nature which derives these algorithms and makes its place in development of form with the use of fractals. Most mathematic and geometricians at that time were concerned about how to put a curve in a square. How to complete a square with a curve? Which seems impossible! Many mathematicians have tried to make an algorithm with repetition able to re formulate the structure, and are still working while success comes closer.

Fractal is like the most copious tool to understand nature. You not only use fractals to know how nature performs, but you also use fractals for other purposes.

But in fact we can say that nature builds its forms using fractals. Understanding that fractal is a human expression not a natural expression, nature does not know anything about fractals. Nature is logic.

(Discussing Numancia Hospital, Madrid)

(Discussing Xi-Xi Wetland Museum, Hangzhou, China) The challenge was to create a museum completely self sustainable which required no energy from outside, rather creating its own energy. Upon researching, we found the water lily leaf. (Water lily leaf has an enormous capacity to catch sunlight and to convert it into energy) We used this capacity to catch sunlight and to convert it into energy, creating a full-on machine for converting energy. We believed that 100% sustainable is not possible. But maybe we can reduce about 70% of the load and at the same time

In this hospital, each louver is in a different direction and is of a different size. This is larger, this is smaller. (refer drawing) Depending upon summers or winters, the sun changes its position. In winters the sunlight goes inside. In the summers it cannot. It moves along the way in which each one is placed, we can say its a fractal, it is the logic of a fractal. If you can analyse how the sun moves in on this particular space then you can create the fractal, the law for this purpose, the purpose of keeping the sunlight inside in winters and outside in summers.

Facing Page: Xi-Xi Wetland Hotel Villa & Museum, Hangzhou, China; Intercontinental Twin Towers, Kolkata, India Below: Bionic Tower

IA: You have a couple of projects going on in India.

Do you find it challenging (interesting) to work in India?

Keeping in mind the ideologies you have of bionics.

JP: For me it is a challenge you know, when I talk about Bionics, people pop their eyes out and are like “WHAT?”!! I believe in India very few people take care of bionics, but a lot of people take care of nature.

Bionics is a like a net where you can put in the ideas of respective nature. It is quite easy to explain to Indian people how to use Bionics, however, it is a challenge because when you don’t know something, you feel scared about it sometimes. It is a challenge but it is also easy because in India (and also in China) what happened is, it is developing very fast. And it’s very important when you create any architecture you need an industry. With time industry will progress and become open to all kinds of technologies, but at the moment we are introducing the ideas, maybe some years later we will have the proper industry.

Unfortunately we have to change a bit in accordance to the technology in India, but we can change. We have the future open because nobody takes care of Bionics here. The same happened in China about 10 yrs ago. So we still have a way to go.

IA: It took a long time for Bionics to come to the forefront. Do you think that now it’s time to move into a new era of architecture?

JP: It is compulsory, we have a lot of people living in the planet and we are bound to fall short of space. Bionic Tower, the centre of Shanghai, is an appropriate example of the present day requirements.

And its advantage is evident. (Drawing) There are 9000 skyscrapers in Shanghai, 100km wide, 9000 skyscrapers! Now Shanghai is a very rich city, maybe you can build another 1000 skyscrapers. But there are 15 million people living there, and are moving towards 25 million. What it needs is a city in vertical, instead of skyscrapers.

Now, under conventional models of ‘horizontal’ and ‘low-density’ town planning, 100,000 inhabitants will occupy a space nearly 4km in diameter, with the

consequent impact on the environment. By contrast, the Vertical City Bionic Tower can accommodate 100,000 inhabitants using an area only 1km in diameter, allowing the unoccupied land to be returned to nature. (See image) Most people say that one cannot live in this kind of a space. Yes, maybe they’re right. It is much better to be in a single house, facing the sea with a garden and lawn, much better option. But 12 billion people cannot do that!

IA: But a lot of people feel sky-scrapers destroy nature…

JP: Now the question is ‘which option do you believe destroys nature more?’ I believe the other (conventional planning) option is a lot more harmful to nature. People feel that a sky scraper will destroy nature. But once you know what Bionic tower means, you’ll realise it is not destroying it, it is preserving it.

IA: I agree with you. Rounding up, what advice would you give to students who want to pursue Bionics in architecture?

JP: My advice is ‘open mind’. Keep an open mind, when you finish your studies, you are quite open minded but eventually, on the professional scene you start closing your mind, 2-3 yrs into work, your mind is completely shut.

The challenge for young starters is to keep an open mind, always. Secondly be curious. Do question. Why the tree this shape? Why the scio? Why the sound...

WHY?

Interviewing Team: Apoorv Kaushik, Tawish Tayal

Walking down the street with Stefano Boeri On architecture studies, Italy and India (Ar. Boeri was in CCA on Le Corbusier Day)

STEFANO BOERI was born in 1956, studied architecture in Milan and in 1989 received his PhD from the IUAV, in Venice. He is a Milan-based architect and founder of the research agency Multiplicity participating regularly in architecture, urbanism and art projects. His professional studio, Boeri Studio is involved in several architectural projects and urban transformations. Since September 2007, Stefano Boeri is the editor in chief of the international magazine Abitare and from 2004 to 2007 he was editor in chief of Domus magazine. He teaches urban design at the Milan Polytechnic and is a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, Cambridge.

Apoorv Kaushik: As a student, did you have any initiation towards architecture or did you develop it later? How did you start building your style as a student?

Stefano Boeri: Well I have a mother, who’s still working as an architect. So, I remember very well that I did my best to screw architecture. But I finally understood that it was stupid. So I decided to lecture.

At that time in Italy and Europe, in the beginning of the 80’s, politics was very important. So, 80% of my time went into politics, more than studying. And I really started to understand architecture when I started to do some small jobs myself. So, I think, it doesn’t matter if you start with designing an apartment or a small house or a public space. The point is that at a certain point, you understand that your profession has some resources, some values that are absolutely exceptional. To be more precise, what I think is exceptional in our profession is that we always have to deal with two spheres- one is, we need to be open, and at the same time, be closed because we have to decipher what is happening around us. And for this reason, we have to gather material, suggestions, ideas and opinions.

Someone may ask you to produce a design for a garden on a particular place. The first thing you have to do is to think clearly of the possibilities of the future of that space. So, this way, all work can be done interestingly, and questions like: what could be located here and how; which kind of material can be used; what kind of environment, can be answered.

And that’s why, the other part of our profession is that you have to be exclusive. This is because at the end of your work you have to define one, unique, single, individual configuration. You cannot go & say – “Well I’m going to propose six versions”. While you can do like this in initial design steps, in the end you have to

propose one.

And so, from one side you have to include, to be open, to be generous, and from the other side you have to exclude, to select, select, select until the end. On one side you are a part of a larger group of people, you are always teaming as a collective sphere, and on the other side, you are totally in solitude.

AK: We have these two spheres in other professions also. How do we combine them?

SB: These two spheres are not practiced as strongly in other professions as we practice in architecture.

The idea is that you don’t need to establish a logical convention between these two spheres or to be precise. I think that these two spheres have to work together from the beginning, without a too rigid structure or connection. So it’s really more a sort of a process of changes, random changes. Then, sometimes, you have to do some unpredictable synopsis at the time you are designing something and then, as it happens, while you’re observing something, you could, immediately, imagine that that space could become another thing because you see another possibility in that space.

So that’s architecture and that’s so extraordinary.

It’s something that really is amazing. But my opinion is that in any case you should try to keep these two dimensions separate as much as you can. I think the best architects are schizophrenic. They have to be a little crazy. They are schizophrenic because there is a conflict between generosity and solitude, between openness and exclusion and this conflict is pretty strong. They should be capable of accepting this conflict, as it is something that is a part of us and let oneself generate through the facts in our life and our profession.

The profession is something that you do not necessarily learn here, in the college. The college is useful, it’s very important, it gives you a lot of good material, but it’s important to understand and to learn there is a very specific approach to use inclusion and exclusion together. And this is something that you learn only when you start working, when you start to design something- a chair, square, a building or a loft.

AK: There has been an enormous support in some European countries for architecture. In UK, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have championed the Olympic park design and Nicholas Sarkozy & Jacques Chirac have supported a lot of projects. Similarly in Spain too.

To what extent have projects been supported in your country, in Italy?

SB: Well, in Italy, the situation is quite different. To be honest, only a few times the government has supported architecture. An exception was the Venice biennale architecture, what happens in Milan triennale, when we don’t have to publicize or show we’re following the evolution of contemporary architecture in Italy.

Besides, we should say that there are no laws, which for instance, require the developers and the real estate companies to compete when we have to decide something regarding architecture. The one law we have is about public construction and that’s all.

AK: Do you think that the architects of Europe and America are not sensitive in the context of the sites they chose and in projects they take up in Asia and the rest of the developing world?

SB: No, I think there are architects who have been considerate towards the kind of project proposed in relevance to a given site in contrary to some other architects. We should be careful because I do strongly believe in designing not only to the human requirement but also considering the capacity of the place.

If we refer to Mario Botta, Mario Botta is someone who is capable of repeating his personal obsession everywhere. And for me he has nothing to do contextually. There are architects who maybe are considered enemies of conservation and of concepts, like

Nicholas, which are indeed probably more sensitive designers because they are interested to deviate and variate the language in relation with any specific place.

So, Nicholas is, in any place, doing something different and, in my personal view, it is a very interesting way to deal with the context. The architects, whom I consider extremely sensitive to the context, are those who are more or less repeating the same kind of language, the same kind of style which is totally self-referential in every place.

AK: You have often mentioned the importance of urban spaces in city planning. How do u think can this ideology be accommodated in the planning of Indian cities, where space is a scarcity.

SB: I think there are some crucial steps we need to take together, not only in India, but also in China and Europe. The first step is to stop the expansion of the city. So, first we need to understand the different ways of the evolution or the development of the city which are not necessarily related to extra physical growth and physical expansion of the city.

Second part is that we have to create new, more and more public places, in terms of what they call the Public Sphere. Public sphere is simply part of intense life where the social behaviors are not predictable and not planned. Like in Indian cities, nearby the temples, and the European piazzas.

AK: Italy has a lot of rich heritage and history across its cities. So, while handling your projects, how do you relate to that? Do you conserve…

SB: Well, heritage is also a constraint. It’s something which obliged or supposed to have a special relation with the history. From a certain perspective it is also a chain. Sometimes there’s excess of cultural restraints which have not allowed the architecture to be more creative, to develop new idea, because to do the new, sometimes you have to tackle the past. Except this, I totally think that the history of heritage is a testimony for the entire humanity. So we should be careful and not destroy it.

Below: Ex Arsenal at Maddalena Conversion, Stefano Boeri Facing: by Sanyam Bagha, Third Year, CCA

AK: You just said that you need to relate to the past…

SB: When we have a heritage which is everywhere, in every small city, in every village, like, you have a historical church, or a square, or a design of some powerful, exceptional past, it’s very important to understand what to do because, as I told you before, the best way to respect the past is not to avoid the new. It is to become capable of adding the new as a contribution to the old, not as a continuation. So, sometimes the new is the best way to balance the past. The history of architecture in the fifties of last century with the architect like Rogers and Moretti, were capable to add new architecture in historical context. Not destroying the past, not simply lemmatizing the new into the past. So, accepting that there is a challenge of a new presence with just a dialogue. This dialogue could be interpreted in many ways. Some times you know that to have a dialogue with the past, it is better if you are completely different from the past. At other times, it is important to establish a certain connection. So it depends upon a specific context. That is a why it is a complex language.

There are no set rules.

In any place you have to understand which kind of relation you have to establish with what is present and what is past.

AK: If we get specific to a country like India, then on your way you have seen the so-called post- modern buildings, the glass ones coming up in cities around Delhi….

SB: That’s horrible. I think that is really a sign of mediocre globalization which is killing, in this context, the modern architecture. That’s the reason I’m so fascinated by seeing your heritage, here, in Chandigarh. Modernity in India, modernity in Iran, modernity in Egypt, is very important, because it is a global combination of something that is born in Europe, then went on to the United States and, ultimately, came here, together with something that was born in Japan. So architecture is an amazing tool to establish company nations. But this kind of global post- modern, international combination is simply a repetition of two or three mediocre ideas.

AK: Would you like to say something to the students of architecture here?

SB: I think that to run a school or to be a student in such a school in such a city is really complicated and difficult. Because you are surrounded by the history of architecture, the myth. And at the same time you are surrounded by the day-by-day erosion. So you have a heritage here, but at the same time you have to take distance from it. And sometimes the best way to take distance is not to cancel the principle, but to transform.

works

India Forum Tower India’s New Peak Studio AMA, Spain; Ar. Rajendra Kumar, India

Studio AMA: Ar. Jesus Marco llombart graduated from Slocum Hall School of Architecture, New York, did his M.S. in Architecture & Urban Design from Columbia University, New York. He is practicing from Zaragosa, Spain and is currently handing various scale projects in Europe and Africa. His profile includes a large number of hotels, cultural centers, schools etc. and a long list of awards.

Skyscrapers are rapidly transforming cityscapes as developers with lofty ambitions put up a growing number of high-rises to give shape the nation’s identity.

Today, skyscrapers are an increasingly common sight, where land is scarce, as in the centers of big cities, because they provide such a high ratio of rentable floor space per unit area of land. But they are built not just for economy of space.

Like temples and palaces of the past, skyscrapers are considered symbols of a city’s economic power.

Not only do they define the skyline, they help to define the city’s identity. Many skyscrapers were catalysts for giving nations a world identity and witnessed rapid growth of real estate prices and other commercial aspects.

In today’s context skyscrapers are considered to give one of the fastest investment returns in real estate sectors. Group of investors from North Spain are planning to have a landmark skyscraper in each of the continents. In this series Europe’s skyscraper is Poznan Forum Tower in Poland which has been designed by Spanish architect Jesus Marco Llombart from Studio AMA in Zaragossa. The Poznan Tower will be 240m tall, 285m including the spire and will have 55 stories. It is scheduled for completion in June 2012.

Ar. Rajendra Kumar is gradutade from Chandigarh College of Architecture and did M.S.Arch from Politecnico Di Milano, Italy on Italian Government fellowship. He has worked in Spain, China and Italy and is doing projects of various scales in India.

Apart form architectural qualifications; he is also a trained pilot.

words, it will try to create a new icon for modern India.

An emblematic building - 400m high with 155,600m2 of built-up area. The building will have an international standard commercial centre, hi-tech offices, hotels, high-end luxury residential apartments, and a private club to accommodate more than 20,000 people.

India Forum Tower is a true reflection of our nation’s identity with a planning concept of designing a facade and creating spaces to which we, as individuals can relate to. The biggest challenge for the architects was to inculcate India in their design and portray its perception internationally.

Since, India Forum Tower is not a conventional skyscraper, it cannot be enforced at any other site.

It is designed specifically for India. “User says, it is my unique building and building says, India is my unique place to be in.” Architects believe that we look at buildings and buildings look at us.

The cultural centre and the museum are one of the main parts of the building which will draw visitors to the building who are not occupants. It will be one of the first of its kind of experiment in India. The sky deck will be the main attraction for the people.

The India Forum Tower project is next in the same series. The project is designed by Studio AMA, Spain in collaboration with Ar. Rajendra Kumar of India. This building is designed to become a national symbol, and its design, shape and form shall express the spirit, character and nature of India.

According to the architects, this building is going to mark another milestone for development in India.

It will be a new landmark, not to be missed by any international or national visitor and also the place where all international commercial ventures, would want to have a place.

The state-of-the-art technology used in its conception and in its construction shall also show the advanced political and economical mentality of Indians. In other

India Forum Tower will stimulate a revolution not only in the field of architecture and real estate but also act as a ladder for India in its development.

Nullah Proposal Morphogenesis, New Delhi Morphogenesis is a design practice founded in 1996 engaging in architecture, urbanism and environmental design Overall Map - Nullah Proposal

The Proposal To use Delhi’s neglected Nullah network to fundamentally transform the city. Delhi has 18 main nullahs with over 15,000 branches, which were constructed 7 centuries ago by the Tughlaq dynasty.

The nullah network is 350km long, contiguous and criss-crosses the national capital. Currently, the nullahs are just unhygienic drains that are seen as a problem by the citizens of Delhi - they smell, breed mosquitoes, pollute the Yamuna and so on. However, a relatively small investment can turn the nullahs into a valuable asset for the common citizen. The necessary changes are: Alternative Transport Network Create walking/cycling paths on these nullahs to provide commuters with last mile connectivity to public transport (buses and metro). This will significantly improve the effectiveness of the existing public transport. Furthermore, people will be able to walk/ cycle for short distances (and it will be an enjoyable experience). Since the nullah network is 350km long this would be a very important contribution to the lives of the common citizens.

Alternative Environmental Network Use a system of micro STP’s, organic reedbeds and aerators to clean the sewage entering the nullahs at source. This is a well established system and it is both environment-friendly and cost effective. This will dramatically improve public health in the city as well as help replenish aquifers. This will also reduce the need to spend large sums on building large sewage plants and interceptor canals.

Alternative Cultural Network The new network could be used to trigger a number of new urban activities ranging from tourism to sports.

For instance, some of the nullahs are 700 years old and were built to provide water to Delhi’s old cities.

Thus, many of the city’s famous archaeological sites are situated on the nullah network. Most major cultural venues in the city can be interconnected through this network, including Commonwealth Games venues, historical monuments, museums, theatres, stadiums, etc. to create a new walking network to drive next

generation tourism.

The initiative aims to reuse the neglected water drainage system of Delhi; the ‘nullahs’ to progressively bring about sustainable change within the city. These nullahs can be transformed to enhance the social, cultural and transport (pedestrian and cycling) networks of the city as well as restoring the River Yamuna. This can be done by using the existing waste and underutilized land to recycle and re-create. Water and green being natural attractors; the condition would be set to weave an eco-sustainable system through this network. The nullahs restoration project presents the hidden opportunity that lies within Delhi by establishing a green and sustainable network as an alternative and democratic source of engagement within the city of Delhi. www.delhinullahs.org www.morphogenesis.org

Private Residence Line of Force Architects, Panchkula

Ar. Harendra Singh was born and brought up in a small village called Chinnka, district Chamoli, Uttrakhand. After completing his Bachelor’s in Architecture from Chandigarh College of Architecture in 1999, he exhibited his works on product designing especially furniture design. He established his professional practice as an architect with his own enterprise named ‘LINE OF FORCE’. He is a national award winner in sculpture making by Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi. He also won a national award for a Police Memorial in Jammu. He is a specialist in sculpture making, interiors, institutions, hotels and residences.

Site Area: 1 Kanal Built up Area: 2735 sq ft Cost of the project: Rs. 25 Lakhs Team: Ar. Sukhjeet Kumar, Ar, Naresh Kumar, Trainee Tawish Tayal

Architect’s vision As far as the planning was concerned, it did not take much time to finalize the concept. Yet the main challenge was to attain an environment of peace in the interior spaces.

White has always been the peace of mind a person wants. Here is an architectural example proving the same.

So, we decided to play with white in the exteriors as well as the interiors.

The project was made with the aim of giving the inhabitants so relaxed etmosphere that all their tensions get vanished.

This seems to be a dream but is a true experience in Mr. Bhanot’s Residence in Sec-2, Panchkula.

Client’s requirements: The ground floor initially accommodated a bedroom, dining room and kitchen.

But the clients, however, needed 3 bedrooms, drawing room, lobby, sitting area and study. As the requirements were less according to the ground coverage that could be attained, it was preferred that the structure should look different from the ones already present in the vicinity. It was felt that a modern look could be incorporated and at the same time, it was required for the house to have a peaceful outlook.

As our site was North facing, we decided to use masses and lines, since, light could not be made use of. Glass usage was avoided in the front facade.

Solid planes and masses were used to ensure a lively facade.

The entire house is a congregation of irregular geometric lines. This irregularity breaks the monotony of the facade. The front door in timber serves as the visual focal point of the observer.

The interior spaces have a dynamic quality that seems to stem from the way the interior elements have been placed.

Sky lights have been provided for better lighting.

articles

Global India

Provoking Narratives on ‘Other’ Urbanities Prof. Manu P. Sobti

Urban Design Studios (2008 – 10) School of Architecture & Urban Planning University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA

INTRODUCTION In his two classic meta-histories on the urban artifact, Spiro Kostof emphatically argues that urban form is read correctly only to the extent of our critical familiarity with the precise conditions that served as its generators. On similar lines, Clifford Geertz – the so-called purveyor of small things – in his prolific writings deliberately chose not to formulate grand, overarching theories, instead found meaning in the thick descriptions prevalent across culture, time and space. If Geertz’s definition of culture as “the stories we tell about ourselves” in fact resonates true with academics and intellectuals around the world, to what extent have we actually written the stories that patiently await recording and writing? How often have we stepped outside the comfortable confines of our own geographical settings to objectively view the settings of cultures that are far removed in intent and content? How critically have we viewed ‘unfamiliar’ architecture and cities through pedagogies that negate clichéd bipolar opposites, and instead employ methodologies emanating from thick descriptions?

and served as residences for the extended recognition of ‘global events’ and thematic context.

In continuation, the Western world is seldom viewed objectively, its star architects and signature buildings effectively show-cased as passing fads within the larger scheme of things. In bland terms indeed, most discourses in architecture schools today worldwide – both at the building and urban scales - simply do not engage thought-provoking scenarios beyond their own shores! Researchers have frequently pointed to the paucity of ‘appropriate’ and critically-conceived text-books as instrumental to this prevailing scenario – the West ill-equipped for the non-West, the East for the West. It seems more likely, however, that this is not so much a predicament owing to the unavailability of textbooks and source materials, as it is reflective of how this knowledge of the ‘other’ is still effectively ‘unconnected’ to an ongoing and mainstream discourse on design.

Even today in most architecture schools situated within the United States and Europe, few (if any) options exist for students to examine the non-West via specialized architectural and/or urban electives offered on a regular basis. The stock Architectural History Survey course predictably skims across Islamic, Hindu, Arab, and other exotics through the confines of a single session, leaving the design student seemingly perplexed. While the so-called non-Western world is already several steps removed from comfort zone of most students, their instructors’ perceived ‘unfamiliarity’ with the subject matter is no further encouragement. Rudofsky’s claim about chroniclers presenting us with a full-dress pageant of formal architecture, conveniently skipping several centuries and cultures, in his brilliantly provocative Architecture Without Architects, still rings true today.

Schools beyond America and Europe are no different.

While their curriculums arguably view architectural and urban history course content as the essential backbone to the design studio sequence, these courses still remain predominantly organized via chronological and dynastic categories, versus any

Similarly, invigorating research on urbanism of the ‘other’ – cities, urban fabrics and legislative processes – has not fared any better. Few urban design studies in architecture schools encourage broad debates on the intrinsic nature of urbanities in Asia, the Middle East or the new, if entirely characterless cities of China.

For all practical purposes, schools in America and Europe perceive Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkata as urban conundrums, Dubai as an anomaly, and Chonqing alongside the Three Gorges Dam as the creation of an aggressive state. Meanwhile, at schools in Asia, particularly India, where visceral reaction to the pressing issues of urbanity would have been predictably expected, the usual scenario is either one of ‘impotent’ pragmatism, or ‘micro interventions’ which cunningly remove themselves from the grips of the larger context. Meanwhile, within this latter setting, any critical review of Western urbanism is virtually non-existent, although ‘opportunistic’ references to curtain-walls, morphed volumes and ‘embryologic’ space abound in student and professional work.

THE GLOBAL INDIA URBAN DESIGN STUDIO SERIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSINMILWAUKEE This nature of discussion on the compelling issues in

global urbanity lies at the center of a new doctoral research concentration involving active collaboration and resource sharing between the faculties of the School of Architecture & Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Art History Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the first year since its formal inception in 2008, Buildings-LandscapesCultures (hence BLC) faculty have pushed students into thinking about buildings and space as inherently connected to social, political and economic networks that contain these constructs. Research thinking and design learning are emphasized within the BLC, as dual areas that reinforce and inform each other – in other words, the historian must develop the ability to read the physical attributes of the city and ‘map’ it out, while the designer must come to term with ‘seeing’ an artifact. On these lines, and given the interests of some of the current BLC faculty, the Asian (read ‘Global’) city has figured prominently as a tool to learn from, with and about.

In fact, the physical structure and complexity of the quintessential Asian city has often presented an incomprehensible tabula rasa to the student researcher and designer. For one, its plethora of urban conditions seemingly defy ‘normative’ logic, especially traditional descriptions of so-called rational space making, At a second level, new forms of accelerated urbanization in such developing global contexts, frequently embody radical innovation and profound change, producing an unprecedented urban place where architecture is no longer high art, and is often produced beyond the singular control of the designer. Architecture and building interventions are then, merely the means to an end, positioning their designers as inconsequential components manipulated by a larger framework of politics and economics. Therefore, as cities modernize beyond professional control, no longer is the architect, urbanist or landscape architect able to sufficiently describe, let alone influence, large areas of the urban realm as even in the recent past. How must the designer then begin to engage with the urban artifact of the Asian world?

It may be argued that this double crisis of disciplinary paralysis with respect to the Asian city warrants the urgent need to study the complexity of the urban

artifact on its own terms, through its multiplicity of evolving agents and actors, relationships and consequences of relentless urbanization. Most importantly, and to the dismay’ of the old-fashioned scholarship, no longer is architecture and city-building about conceiving ‘beautiful’ and ‘complete’ buildings – rather it is about ‘opportunistic assembly’ or ‘bricolage’ in the manner described by Levi Strauss.

This myriad of issues have framed provocative student design and research investigations initiated within the GLOBAL INDIA Urban Design Studio Series held at the School of Architecture, University of WisconsinMilwaukee USA between Spring 2008 and 2010, problematizing how conflict, contestation, adjustment and reconciliation between the past and present are embodied in the making of architecture and urban form in the Indian city. In sharp contrast to the ‘static’ notions of architectural and urban artifacts presented in the History Survey, these design studios suggest that designers shall have to prepare for a future wherein the Asian city will challenge our prevalent notions of space with non-space, the specific with the ordinary and transient, memory with opportunity, and permanence with impermanence. Not all shall be as exotic as the beautiful Taj Mahal – for long the bench mark on how far the non-Western Survey would extend. Instead, students now consider how the Taj is but situated in close proximity to the intensely crowded city of Agra. What kind of design choices must then be considered?

Within this prevailing scenario, the first of UWM’s exciting GLOBAL INDIA Studio Series (2008) examined the traditional marketplace at Madhavpura (Delhi Darwaza), located on the northern fringe of the traditional organic-accretive city of Ahmedabad in Western India. Established four centuries ago, and tenaciously surviving in the midst of urban legislation that cares precious little for history, memory or the elements of place making, this marketplace struggles to come to terms with the need for new infrastructure, and the subsequent loss of ‘familiar’ space. Yet the merchant guild and its mahajan (guild leader) see a future where they can reinvent themselves as successfully as in the past. How aggressively would

their aspirations then transform the urban space contained within the traditional commercial block?

How radically would new storage blocks and trade infrastructure cut into residential urban fabric that has accommodated Madhavpura’s activities for centuries, and served as residences for the extended families of its many merchants? How casually shall traditions of the past be removed to make way for the future? Such was the nature of questions the students confronted in the process of thinking about Madhavpura’s transformation.

While an intensely historical context, Madhavpura’s view into the future was never contemplated as a slavish imitation of the past. Instead, pre-existing building typologies were systematically ‘excavated’ for elements that would facilitate invention, recombination and enhancement. At a second level, the kind of urban space contained within the ‘ring’ of commercial establishments at Madhavpura was capitalized as a ‘commodity’ which lead students to devise diverse uses for it across their suggested time-lines. Even more so, the twin acts of demolition, building and re-building were envisaged as deliberate stages of growth and ‘un-growth’ wherein ‘historical change’ was enacted as an ‘urban spectacle’. When students realized how this had been similarly choreographed at the St. Peter’s Piazza under Bernini, the great fire of London, or the un-making and making of Haussmann’s Paris, Ahmedabad’s accretive urbanity seemed to suddenly fall into place within the framework of David Christian’s ‘Big-History.’

The GLOBAL INDIA Ahmedabad Urban Design Studio was done in close collaboration with students and faculty at the School of Architecture, CEPT Ahmedabad. Dialogue with CEPT students was initiated through a two-week elective workshop and an Urban Mapping charrette that looked at the artifacts and structure of the city in January 2008.

Following upon this success, Spring 2009’s GLOBAL INDIA Chandigarh Urban Design Studio was yet another opportunity for SARUP-UWM students to closely work with their counterparts and faculty at the College of Architecture, Chandigarh. This focused study on the city of Chandigarh was initiated via an

intensive, two-week Urban Workshop, accompanied by a series of lectures.

As one among the few ‘designed from scratch’ cities of the Indian sub-continent, Chandigarh held special significance for participating students as being the work of the iconic architect Le Corbusier, who endowed it with several important works of architecture. At another level, Chandigarh presented a unique tabula rasa viewed in radical contrast to Ahmedabad’s historical urbanity. If Ahmedabad was seemingly formed by the collective, Chandigarh was based on one man’s vision, and fed by the growing aspirations of a newly-forged Indian democracy.

Fifty years after its inception and eventual inclusion among UNESCO’s World Heritage List of Cultural Icons, Chandigarh therefore remains a provocative enigma in its successes and failures. How does it connect to the past, present and future? How ‘Indian’ is it’s embedded Indian-ness? What shall the city become in the decades to follow? These were among the plethora of questions that the enrolled students encountered as they developed a series of interconnected design interventions in the heart of Chandigarh’s bustling urban core.

Students first produced a common document that examined the city and detailed out its need for change.

Individual design projects then engaged the urban fabric both within and without the site - one chunk at a time, or as critical appendages that extended the meaning of activity and place. The task at hand was to propose a public, commercial center for the city of Chandigarh positioned strategically within the precincts of the existing Sector 17 market. This center was in the vicinity of/along the footprint of Corbusier’s yet unrealized PTT building. Owned and built wholly by the Union Territory of Chandigarh and leased out selectively to commercial enterprises and retailers, this commercial center served to invigorate the City Center, exponentially expanding its current commercial and retail space needs, and creating a nexus for diverse activities that found expression in the heart of the city.

Most importantly, this commercial center was avowedly public and urban in its many manifestations – it provided unlimited accessibility and guided freedom to the public in terms of activities and the scales of usage (specifically within its ‘public-designated’ areas).

The city center also enthusiastically embraced the scenarios of change, based on how commercial and public spaces would potentially transform in the decades to come – therefore entertaining design possibilities that recognized this continuous process of change (a prospect also examined in Ahmedabad).

Given the high commercial value ascribed to property in all of Chandigarh, and especially this part of the city, the City Center explored the specific possibility of vertically expanding upon the prevailing urban guidelines. Much to the surprise of the local design professionals, who have viewed Corbusier and Chandigarh with kids gloves; this studio recognized that Corbusier’s original proposal for an eleven-storey PTT building was a suitable starting point for the design proposal, especially given the fact that all of the buildings of Sector 17 are based on a consistent urban design code. This project, in its unique set of requirements, was therefore viewed as demonstrative to the urban future of the city of Chandigarh, and how its making could thereby critique the urban legislations.

Sector 17 was a unique urban space within the city of Chandigarh, conceptually linking to the Capitol Complex and the adjoining sectors. It was also the sector positioned closest to Corbusier’s magical Leisure Valley – a ‘river’ of green stretching north-east to south-west through the urban fabric. This valley was located to the relative west of Sector 17, and accessed via a street crossing. Would the proposed City Center’s possible proximity to the north-western edge of Sector 17 and its pronounced proximity to the Leisure Valley give it an opportunity for special character? Would its commanding position within the plaza of Sector 17 be communicated by its volumetric monumentality or alternatively, through the interconnectedness of its diverse parts? How would the complex public-private interactions work within the intervention ‘envelopes and cores’? Finally, how would the language of the Commercial Center critique the surrounding works Corbusier, Drew, Fry and

Jeanneret, yet respectfully state variation and change? Finally, how would the nature of the plaza itself change, in how it deliberately entered within and without the interventions?

LEARNING In effect, SARUP’s GLOBAL INDIA Ahmedabad and Chandigarh Urban Design Studios provided two kinds of critical lessons for participating students. At the first level of urban mapping, examining the Asian city was an opportunity to come to terms with the limitations of normative approaches to urban layouts, in effect opportunities to devise other ways of looking at the urban fabric. It was highlighted that physical ‘measure’ gave way to Lynchian imageability, interpreted and fathomed through multiple cross sections that revealed activity patterns, experience and the sense of place.

At the second level of design language, this understanding leveraged itself into thinking of public place-making in the Indian context, as an environment literally created through building fronts (versus buildings) – identified as ‘soft edges’ elements adaptable through the vicissitudes of time, transforming in each epoch – frequently modifying the intrinsic nature of the building core embedded within these edges. This was most critical to understanding the rigor yet indeterminism of urban typologies that have prevailed through history, lending readily to radical change. Also insightful was the realization that the Asian city is an iterative process creating a palimpsest, fertilized by piece-meal additions. Large scale or mammoth projects would therefore disrupt this process, artificially modifying the traditional typologies and structures. Finally, those successful built interventions within the Asian city were not monuments extraordinary, rather frameworks for later development.

Through the successful avatars of these two design courses over the past semesters, the students within SARUP-UWM’s Building-Landscapes-Cultures Research Concentration – researching cities and enacting scenarios of change, observed that the pedagogical value of both was greatly enhanced

by a preliminary study/component that introduced students to self-discovered ways of looking at the non-Western world, and thereafter uniquely mapping this ‘new and unfamiliar’ world using discourse and methodologies particular to the discipline of architecture. In 2008 & 2009, we attempted to make a modest foray in this direction, employing an INDIA Winterim Project (as a preliminary threeweek visit to India) to introduce students who would later continue into each of the two mentioned courses. While working closely with local Indian students in four architecture schools in India, each participating student was encouraged to maintain a set of logbooks, which initially served as a canvas of observations, and later developed into a complex, very personal system that encoded their many observations. Most importantly, these logbooks were not seen as albums or collections of images, rather as opportunities for self-dialogue and interrogation. In summary, these did not seek to provide easy answers to negotiate cultural differences, instead addressed difficult questions.

This nature of interventions within the structure of the Asian city also complemented looking at global architectural production via a second BLC course entitled “Signature Buildings in Geo-Political Context” – offered to students from UWM’s Milwaukee and Madison campuses. Taking off from where a typical history survey ends, this course sets the ‘big-picture’ of architectural production. Versus the design studio, it posits that the history of world architecture should be viewed as the evolving product of catalytic interactions across and within cultural boundaries.

Buildings conceived through time and space, especially those that guide the elements of memory, have seldom evolved from within the confines of a single culture. It is therefore critical to look at building and design traditions from both within and without, especially in terms of how architects and designers synthesize diverse, cross-cultural influences. In its detailed, ‘thick-descriptions’ of selected buildings conceived across time and space in every continent and culture, from the ancient world until present-day, this course evolves a comprehensive model that effectively transcends traditional categorizations of

chronology, politics and style, producing a synthetic, interdisciplinary understanding of history within the rubric of an overarching architecture history survey. In its labeling of special buildings across time as ‘signature buildings’ it focuses on how these structures are seemingly endowed with pregnant symbolism and meaning, often including the superlatives of scale, form and function, and setting the tone for important developments in each epoch.

Likewise, their architects are often ascribed special status within the specifics of cultural contexts that vary greatly in their socio-cultural, economic and political content.

Within the purview of this course, Zoser’s architect of legendary fame – Imhotep - is examined alongside Marcus Agrippa’s Pantheon, Sinan’s Sulaymaniye, Jefferson’s University of Virginia, Mies’ Farnworth House, Gehry’s Bilbao and several more.

Presentations demonstrate provocative episodes within the longue duree of world history - the grand framework where the theater of architectural history plays itself out. Meanwhile, the knowledge of the Western and non-Western worlds that is imparted to the students, makes the retrieval and re-combinations of ‘connecting stories’ particularly rewarding. Legends of Alexander’s expeditions and his meteoric rise to fame, for example, serve to connect the momentous events of antiquity, while the foundation of Byzantine Constantinople or Chingiz Khan’s Mongol onslaughts serve yet another. In ‘filling the spaces between the pebbles’ we are also concerned with how the meanings of terms such as monument, designer, urban and the suburban constantly change with geographical and cultural shifts.

Stepping ‘outside’ the confines of ones own shores has therefore been a valuable learning experience for students within the BLC research concentration at UWM. The GLOBAL INDIA studios, given their extensive travel, experimentation and design charretting, are extremely popular. The India Winterim Program is over-subscribed, and average enrollments in the ‘Signature Buildings Course’ have doubled since its introduction two years ago. It is time more schools begin to relish the idea of ‘unfamiliar’ terrain!

The Master’s Reminiscence Ar. B. Banerjee Faculty SCOA, Pune

He shared the memory of his fascinating walks in the meandering hilly roads of his native town La Caux de Fonds with all and, wherever he got the opportunity, in different scales and proportions.

Writers express their memories with pen, artists with brushes and architects with their buildings.

A walk in the curving, twisting roads of a small town in the midst of woods in the Alps region in Switzerland was an experience where nature revealed its surprises for him.

Born and brought up in the sleepy Swiss watchmakers’ community, the picturesque nature could not offer the aspiring young man opportunities to explore his potentials.

He saw the world, explored what he saw, absorbed the essence and experimented throughout in his long architectural journey.

Opportunities and aspirations brought him to the big city, away from nature. It was there that he dedicated himself to find rational solutions to the problems of

Facing: The Getty Center, Los Angeles,

by Apoorv Kaushik, Final Year, CCA

the emerging urban community of the Machine Age. His concerns extended to the global context for the society as well as for the Architectural fraternity. He anticipated the future needs of the urban people and suggested several model houses suitable for modern lifestyle.

He changed himself from Charles Edouard Jeannerete to Le Corbusier.

He was commissioned for urban houses in cramped site areas, where he used vertical circulation to link all the spaces inside the building.

He orchestrated the sequence of spaces for this inner journey from nature to nature or from the ground to the sky. He introduced ramp inside a concrete box where different levels swinging in and out were called “promenade architecturale”. His fascination with ramp could be seen in many of his buildings where interior and exterior spatial events were linked using ramps.

All four of his creations in Ahmedabad are composed using ramp in different ways, making the vertical journey an experience in relation to the surroundings.

The DO or DIE of the Financial Crisis Anil Laul CEO and Principal Architect - Anangpur Building Centre

Much as the ideas expressed below may seem absurd and utopian, please read this over a few times with an open mind. Pass this on to decision makers who you feel are ready for change and want to think outside the Box. For those who may not have heard this before the quotation below may be of interest.

are targeted towards “Tweeking” the Interest rates and making for easier Credit only to once again feed the system that caused the collapse in the first place.

Major International Economists and Heads of State are talking about the need to revisit the Banking System but no tangible direction seems to be emerging.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” - Albert Einstein.

We talk about the GDP (Gross Domestic Produce) of a Nation. The key word here is “Produce” and land value cannot be termed as Produce. That which is generated from the land can be a produce and added to the GDP but mere land transactions of land for Value cannot and should not form a part of the GDP of a nation. Toady even Governments are dependent on land transactions as a major source of revenue. The land did always belong to the people of the nation and not to the individual and the Government technically does not have a fundamental right to part with this in favour of an individual.

Call it the RECESSION, call it the DEPRESSION, call it what you may, it’s just a matter of terminology. Job loss, lost homes, industry closing down, are the order of the day. Banks post losses of Billions of Dollars, get bail -out packages and come back for more. Much the same holds good for other trades and revenue generating activities. Stimulus packages worth Billions of dollars are being doled out to boost production and Banks are being encouraged to lend more only to boost consumption in order to curb layoffs as industry has no option but to cut production or simply close shop. It’s all the proverbial “dog running around the tree trying to catch it’s own tail”. President OBAMA will, one hopes, wave the magic wand and America will help save the situation and all will be well in a year or so. Or so we would like to imagine. And yet the source of the problem is being over looked.

The source of the problem The root of the problem lies in the concept of treating “Land as a Resource and it being the main Driver of the Economy”. Study the base of any traditional economy.

Land was never a tradable commodity and could not be bought or sold. However the asset built upon the land had a tangible value and could be traded and transferred. The concept of “Mother Earth” was based on this ideology. A false notion of wealth has been built around the concept of value of land as an indicator of ever increasing wealth. This is the single largest reason for the Subprime Crisis and therefore the tumble down of the entire economy. Even the thought of re-examining this concept is seemingly absurd, but it is here that the corrective actions would need our attention. Much is being said about the need for change in the Banking System but the directions

Problem 1 There are two basic components in the value of property. One is the cost of the land and the other is the cost of the asset built on the land. The two need to be delinked. If the land was leased by the state for a period of say 50 to 99 years, (as was the case until the recent past), one of the main components of the installment or EMI would be reduced. The asset built on the land could attract interest as is the usual practice. The lease components would be paid to the state directly with the installment of the asset or the built form being paid to the bank or the developer, as the case may be. In the present day practice the bank finances both the Land and the Asset on the land. The bank only finances 75% of the value of the asset being built on the land and holds the land as an additional security or collateral. This amounts to the bank admitting that the 25% margin money is fictitious and the valuation of the project has not been done accurately. 25% as cautionary holding should be considered more than adequate if honest valuation of the project was done in the first place. Holding land as additional collateral fuels the tendency to forward trade land, thus adding to rampant speculation in property.

The additional collateral is in turn is shown as an asset

held by the bank thereby shoring up the on books net worth of the Bank artificially. This in turn gives the bank additional leverage for borrowing more money from the open market and /or the Federal/Central Banks. The Developer comes into the picture here and borrows considerable amounts for projects by using land as collateral, then building expensive dreams to unsuspecting buyers who see profit in much like the builder seems to be floating in. The underlying assumption here is that land value will always increase and therefore the risk taking ability of the bank is enhanced. The willingness to lend is enhanced and in order to feed the viscous cycle that has come into play, monies are lent for risky assets.

There is an artificial market that comes into play and the unsuspecting borrower sees money and growth of his net worth in the future and ends up borrowing well beyond his means much as the banks have done from the financial system. With the amounts borrowed having become larger than the ability to pay, defaults occurred on a massive scale and the land values dropped. Often the monies borrowed were more than the value of the property inclusive of the interest factor.

The banks suddenly found that the value of assets reflected in their balance sheets dropped dramatically.

As is the case with all bubbles, here too the bubble of the ever increasing value of land had suddenly burst. With defaults on payments by the borrowers, the lending capacity of the banks almost came to a standstill as the borrowing capacity of the bank and it’s net worth is based on the asset value held.

These are now termed as toxic assets. If the banks continue to hold these properties any longer and with the continuing drop in property values, the losses that would be posted by banks would grow even larger.

The choice now is between “the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”. So the need for further Bail Out Packages.

The question uppermost in most people’s mind is whether the Bail Out Packages being doled out would help turn the economy around. President Obama may state that he has inherited the problem, but then he is now in the driver’s seat and must therefore provide the solution. It has to be one that would not repeat the mistakes of the past. Other Heads of State have much the same problem but as usual we look to the

perceived “Most Powerful Nation” to take the lead in these matters. But it is here that the problems originated in the first place. The US today is the most “Debt Ridden Nation” so it is obvious that we are looking in the wrong direction.

Possible solution 1 The solution therefore lies in not feeding the system that has failed, but to make a complete turnaround.

The change needs to be a Radical one. One such solution lies in breaking up the Toxic Assets into two distinct parts. One would be the Asset Component on the Land and the other would be the Present Booked Value of the Land i.e. the reduced value as per the prevailing market rates which are far lower than those during the boom period. The banks would be responsible for the recoveries on the Asset Component. The Land Component would stand transferred to the state which would attract an annual lease amount directly payable by the homeowner to state, with the lease amount being paid on a monthly basis. The lease period could be say 50 to 99 years as was the case not so long ago. It would be a great idea to use the term “Custodian of Land” rather than the “Owner of Land” in all future documents. One recalls a famous statement made at various Conferences on Sustainable Development which states that “We have not inherited the Earth from our forefathers, but hold it in custody for the future generations”. Suddenly makes sense and could be practiced in spirit and deed.

Repercussion or Advantage No 1 On the face of it and at a first glance, one may perceive the leasing policy as a huge loss of revenues for the state as Tax on property transactions are seen as one of the major revenue earners for the government.

But this is not so. Most importantly the state would not have to dole out the huge packages for the failed economic institutions and the industry. This is tax payer’s money and they were not responsible for the present crisis. This may be in fact be a huge earning that may be far higher than the state expects to get from the anticipated dividends from the monies being invested in the Banks. Even if the lease amount were to be more than the dividend expected from the bank,

not having to pay the huge installment plus interest on the principle land cost would enable people to move back into their homes. A further Bonus for the state would be that the continuous rate cuts being made may also not be required.

Repercussion or Advantage No 2 The state does not have to part with considerable amounts of the so called bail-out packages. The funds required, have to come from some source and these are often being borrowed by selling bonds to the people or from other countries. This amounts to further debt only to fight the present debt ridden system. Borrowing from other countries by selling bonds is a very short term and myopic view and seen as a quick fix solution. What happens if the economy does not recover as anticipated and the countries that have bought the bonds, insist on the refund of their monies lent or invested. (One suspects that the economy will never recover to the levels of the recent past as it was based mainly on land values and not the tangible product of the Nation). In such a situation should they fight a war to recover their dues and simply invade the borrowing country to recover their wealth? For the countries that may float their own bonds for the public, the situation would be equally dangerous. How would they repay their debt to the people, should their policy fail? These countries would have a rebellion on their hands.

Repercussion or Advantage No3 UK is exploring the other option of simply printing more money, close to 75 Billion Pounds. It is the beginning of the same mistake as made by Zimbabwe, though not at the same scale. The British Pound would fall in the International Market and they would have to pay more for the goods they import thereby coming a full circle without having moved forward. Much the same is expected of the US. When and if the British Pound or the US$ diminishes in value and if their International Debt increases, countries may begin to ask for their payments in Gold, much like India had to pay a few decades ago. Would the world declare the country that demands their money in Gold as a terrorist state like as was the case in Iraq when Saddam Hussein refused to trade in the US$ ? The excuse was

“Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Daring to threaten the US$ or the British Pound? Iran is threatening to trade in any currency except the US$. Much the same allegation is being made for Iran as a dangerous Nuclear State. Iran has delayed this action and so has the US delayed it’s attack on Iran. Of late, China has more recently been making much the same threat even though put in a veiled and diplomatic manner.

A rather long explanation but a brilliant analysis may be seen at the link may be seen as below: video.google. com/videoplay?docid=4343898391323537541 Repercussion or Advantage No 4 In using land as a source of income by giving it on lease, the state has a continuous flow of funds for all times to come and can plan development projects accordingly. Anyone can simulate this and tweek income as in this proposal vs the present day system of outright sale and the results would stun the diehards of economics. Continuous and balanced growth as opposed to sporadic development is infinitely better and more sustainable.

Repercussion or Advantage No 5 In taking over the value of land as a state asset, the government does not part with any money. This process would also bring down the unaffordable EMI payable by the home owner thus making his debt payable. Business transactions would commence and the economy would get a boost. Banks would be compelled to indulge in efficient banking transactions rather than those that they have been practicing.

Repercussion or Advantage No 6 Many have stated that this would be against the “Great American Dream” and the “Free Market Slogan” now touted all over the world. But this is not so. In fact the results would be quite the contrary. The present dream has turned sour and it is time to make a fresh start.

What good is the dream, if when you open your eyes one finds that it was only a dream and one is standing at the end a precipice. The reality, when you wake up, is that you are left with nothing? It’s great to have a dream and chase it—but with feet firmly on the ground and the willingness to adapt to the need for change.

Repercussion or Advantage No 7 So what happens to people who own their property and are not in debt against their property? Would they become poorer? On the face of it ---Yes. But since property prices would drop dramatically, the amounts required to lease it (purchase as in the present sense) would be lower. Therefore in effect, since the differential purchase power would be the same, the rich person would still be as rich in comparison. Wealth is a comparative concept and is not a mere numbers game.

On the other hand those who believe in the “Free Market” they could continue to do so. This corrective action is for those who suffer this economic turbulence. Those who believe that value of land and it’s tradability makes for good sense, it can be business as usual. Their concept of passing on their wealth by way of Land can very well run alongside the proposed corrective action. Since many people would choose the more economical and affordable proposal, the race for property would slow down and gradually find it’s even pace. (This would not in any way affect the housing market, the main driver of an economy after agriculture since construction would be termed as the asset and not the land). Banks would reduce the lending against Land Values and forward trading would gradually get phased out. This is a self regulatory process and would require no major law enforcement and we do know that the best laws are those that come from within rather than those that are enforced through a legislative process.

Repercussion or Advantage No 8 What happens to the builder’s game? They would get properties from the state on lease, build on it with business as usual and transfer to the homeowner as the asset value plus the lease value. The speculative aspect of Land as a tradable commodity would be a History. Efficient building systems and management would become the determining factors for a successful business enterprise. Never in the history of man has so much artificial wealth been generated by trading on land. The Governments of today are more dependent on sale of land for their working rather than product or the produce of the Nation. GDP is a term

which measures the wealth of the Nation based on the Gross Domestic Product. It is the “produce” here that is the prime consideration and not the notional wealth of trading in land.

Problem 2 -The one that got away One set of businesses that seems to have got away is the Insurance sector. Where did all the excess money come from? One believes that the Insurance business exists to protect one in the eventuality of natural or manmade calamities or distress. Premiums paid are invested in bonds and businesses so as to generate further revenues so as to help generate more revenues so as to reduce premiums that people are expected to pay. This perception has people pay large sums so as to protect their properties.

Let us examine the basis of the premiums paid for protection of one’s property. As pointed out earlier there are two components in any property. One is the value of the asset built on the land and the other is the perceived market value of the land itself. When a property burns down or collapses as in the case of natural calamities, the land is intact. Why then is the value of the land taken in the determining value of the property and thereby the premium payable for the purpose of insurance? The land would be intact. It would not disappear. Apart from the high EMI being paid by the homeowner, he or she is also expected to pay a high insurance premium. Much is being made of the EMI’s that homeowners are finding impossible to pay, but the Insurance Sector seems to have managed to evade attention.

It is this excess money that found it’s way into the Mutual Funds and the Wall Street fuelling the fire and inflating the balloon that has now burst. With the state being the owner of the land, and the likelihood of the land not catching fire or disappearing, the Insurance premiums could be slashed. This in turn would reduce the EMI’s and making property and a decent roof over one’s head available to all. Terrible for the Insurance sector as also the Wall Street and other financial fantasies, but we are looking for corrective action and is these sectors are the proverbial “Sacrificial Lambs” so be it.

On the one hand we have the AIG coming back for more after four bailout packages and on the other hand there are the over optimistic finance experts raving and ranting about the smallest upward trend in the market. The few up trends are only hiccups before the final death knell unless some drastic actions of the nature as proposed above are put in place. It’s now DO or DIE.

payers money in the first place. The G20 threw up no tangible direction but concluded with the need to make way for raising One Trillion US$ to feed a failed system. And of course one more round of discussions at another venue.

Pessimistic - NO, being realistic - YES All of the above corrective actions and proposals sound too simple and common sensical and they are. But then the stakes of the decision makers, who make the most profits from the misery of the common man, would be threatened. The perceived risk, on the face of it, would seem are very high. The government would lose the revenues generated through transfer of the properties when they change hands. The Developers responsible for the bubble and the dreams they sell, would be threatened. But one would look at the upside. There would be stability. Less bailout packages which come from over taxing the people that the system was trying to save in the first place. The wealth of the rich would grow because the productivity would increase with stability and deflation.

The purchase power of people would increase and demand would grow. There would be more investment in tangible production. Wealth is a relative concept and is a comparative term. (Whereas 100 US$ may mean nothing in the US but is a tidy fortune in some of the developing nations. It is because we are fed information from institutions like the World Bank that the per capita income of a particular nation like Cuba is US$ 2 per day, that seems a pittance, alarms us. But US$2 per day is a comfortable income for that family in Cuba. Why is the World Progress measured in US$ which has no bearing on the living cost index of the particular nation being commented upon?)

The Developing Nations The problem emanated from the US and has found it’s way into the other developed nations as a consequence of their Over Consumptive ways. The Developing Nations on the other are caught up in this downturn because they are heavily dependent of exporting to these Consumptive Nations. The developing and more so the underdeveloped countries need to consume at the domestic level but work to produce for those who consume more than required. The solution for this imbalance would therefore require an additional perspective. Most developing Nations are located within the Tropics. It is here that one has the largest amount of Flora and Fauna and it is here that you have the maximum produce from the land. It is here that you have the most disease and it is also here that you have the maximum anti dotes to the disease. It is in these regions of the world that you have the maximum dependence on Nature but it is also here that you have the most Environmental Degradation. Myths and Religions in these areas are woven intricately around respecting the Elements and every aspect that helps Human Survival is worshipped in one form or another.

Be it the Sun God’s or the Moon. The water or the Air we breathe. Be it Fire or the Herbs and Plants that the Earth produces or the manner and Celebration of Life and the bounties of Nature. They are all woven intricately into the daily lives of the people. And yet, strangely enough, in today’s world, it is here that we have the most hunger and Poverty. It is these regions that are considered the most backward.

With speculation on Land being contained, the rentals would decrease. Inflation would be contained and so would the need for protests for increase in salaries and allowances. Utopian, may be, may be not but worth a shot. This is more likely to succeed when compared to the huge bail out packages which are illusions of the present day. Even the so called Bail out is the tax

The developing nations which produce and feed the voracious appetite can hardly afford to feed their own population that produces the product for export. So how does one bridge this divide and abnormality?

Most Government programs fall short of their objectives even though the good intent may exist.

Much is made of lack of infrastructure being the main

reason for the disparity between the rural areas and the developing areas. One main aspect that needs immediate attention is the ability of the rural areas to store their produce and hold for better value at a later date. Just prior to the elections, hundreds of promises are made to the Rural poor and the dire need to increasing their income. These are usually proposed by dole out which never reach the very poor or the marginalized. These are hard working people who end up getting the least for their toil.

a prototype and signed the required documents one had to forego this deal as no Bank was willing to honor their Letter of Credit and I was discouraged by many.

The long and short of it that the problem identification was bang on and one did for the first time understand International Trade and Food Espionage. We now see much the same situation within countries at the State vs Farmer levels. With Sudan having made strides in oil exploration, may be this aspect is history but there is a lesson to be learnt here.

The main reason for this imbalance is their inability to hold their produce for some time so as to get a better price for their product. As and when they harvest their crop, they are under pressure to sell at the local Mandi’s (whole sale markets) to enable them to pay their debt for the seeds and fertilizer that they had bought on credit at high rates of interest, for their agricultural product. If the state funded Grain Silos and storage systems at the village level, the farmer would be in a position to take loans from banks against the stocks he holds by way of the produce stored in the Silos. This could be done at the level of groups of farmers or even at the village level. As and when the prices rise, it is the farmer who would get the benefit of the produce. As it is the state is doing much the same in the grain silos that are built at the state level.

However in the case of the state the produce is bought through agents or wholesale buyers who pay a pittance to the farmer.

Much is being made of good infrastructure being the main driver of the economy by way of roads and connectivity. This may be good for the industry but it is not true for the farmer who needs the most help and is the main economic driver. He does get his produce to the local wholesale market even now. Yes there is the need for improvement of these roads but cannot be the main focus. If the grain and the produce is stored at the village level then the smaller wholesalers can come into the village and buy what they need.

Chances are that the wholesaler would want partial value addition, such as cleaning and small packaging, to be done at the village level itself. This would add further to the economic growth of the village. Essential food products such as grain, pulses onions, garlic and a whole lot of spices etc can be stores for long periods. Nature has designed that essential food products are available to man around the year so as to provide a continuing income to the tiller but the faulty market systems have it otherwise. This then is the root of the problem and this should be our area of focus.

One visited Sudan several years ago. The main problem facing Sudan was poverty and hunger even though it has both the Niles flowing right through this country. The land is fertile and the produce of this country fed most of Europe. At one point in time one Sudanese Pound fetched more than Two US$ and yet in the early 90’s One US$ gave one more than 450 Sudanese Pounds. So what went wrong? When this grain bowl had a bumper crop, the Europeans bought their harvest at low prices as they had the storage facilities. And yet when the Sudanese had a bad harvest, they had to buy back grain at several times the price. Over years, this country became impoverished. With my expertise in Geodesics I was invited to design efficient Grain Silos. Having designed

At the state level, the produce is often badly stored and 10 to 18% is lost owing to this. A large amount is contaminated with pesticides and rodent droppings.

In India 4 % mouse droppings in the food we eat is considered an acceptable standard. This was approved by the High Court some years ago and made it to the front page of a daily widely read newspaper. This land mark decision was taken after it was averred that the presence of mouse droppings had hit more than 10 %. Stored at the local level, the farmer would ensure that this is contained as to him, every grain matters. At the central or state level, callousness creeps in and responsibility cannot be

Facing: Colour Riot at the Dilli Haat, New Delhi

pinned and people are none the wiser. It’s a losing situation for all and more so for the farmer who gets a pittance. It all boils down to conserving the produce of the land and getting wealth down to the man who Produces rather than the Trader (the Government being the largest culprit in this game in most cases).

With more wealth at the village level one would uses a newly coined term RUBURBANISATION. The race to get to the Trade Centers where the perceived action is would cease and so would the pressure on the land in these urban centers. The advantages far outweigh the few losses to some vested interests.

The developing nations have one other corrective action that needs attention. The mania of speculation through property trading with the government being an accomplice in this lopsided perceived progress is still in the incubating stages and this disease and be nipped in the bud. Take the elections in any of these countries. The moment a minister is elected to power, the first rung of officers that report to him in confidence are the Land and Revenue officers. The first and most important information required from this level of officers is the potential land development areas and how these could be rearranged to suit the convenience of the Minister newly elected. It is here that all monies spent on the expensive electoral process that the money is to be retrieved and remade in anticipation of the next election.

Until the recent past the Land and Revenue were from the village and maintained the records on behalf of the residents of the village. These officers now report to the local government bodies for the convenience of revenue collection. This is a British legacy left behind by the British and is cited as India Specific but this has a direct on how the Banking Industry as practiced Internationally wove this into their financial fabric. The officers such as the Collector etc from the Local bodies which are at the Town, District or State Level are beholden to the political bosses.

Development plans are drawn up at the highest levels for the convenience of the political bosses as Land as an asset is perceived to be the best form of a quick buck. Often development plans go awry as the consideration is not the need of the influence area but

the greed of the decision maker. This cancer took root when developing nations were asked to Use Land as a Resource by the International Funding Agencies such as the World Bank etc. The concept was that land values will and can never drop and therefore the risk taking ability of the bank amounted to No Risk.

This is the root of the problem and the solution must therefore target a corrective action in this area of economics.

In the final analysis, we must get back to using the Produce of the Land as a resource and measure our GDP on this basis. Land was not and cannot be used as a tradable commodity and be an indicator of the wealth of an individual or nation. The economic order, as we have it today, requires a serious revisit.

I am not an economist, but I do respect and study traditional wisdom and practices. I hope this would stir up a debate and somewhere down the line some lateral thinking would emerge.

Anangpur Building Centre

(The ABC of holistic human settlement design) Faridabad, Haryana - 121003 (India) Telefax: +91-129-2512364 Mobile: +91-98100-59691 email: anillaul@vsnl.com, anillaul@rediffmail.com URL: http://www.anangpur.com

Mumbai: The compact megacity NEWSPAPER ESSAY

Philipp Rode, Executive Director, Urban Age Programme, and Associate, Cities Programme, London School of Economics and Political Science

In Greater Mumbai, the equivalent of more than twice the population of Denmark shares 450 km2 of land.

The key driver of Mumbai’s compactness is its physical geography. There are only a few places where the composition of land and water demands the creation of a city. The natural harbor of New York, the bay of Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro are prominent examples.

So is the opening of Thane creek, the largest natural harbour on India’s west coast. Protected by a 650 km2 island extending into the Arabic sea, the bay is now almost entirely urbanised by present-day Mumbai. About a third of Greater Mumbai’s population lives on the southern ‘finger’ of the island, with more than two-thirds of the jobs located there. Attempts to shift jobs to more accessible areas of the region have initially failed; Navi Mumbai on the other side of Thane creek remains a ghost city and its vast amount of housing and office buildings are only slowly beginning to be occupied. This is largely seen as a result of real estate speculation and greater interest in developing South Mumbai, where the chronic shortage of office space promised far higher returns.

Implementing transport infrastructure and organizing mobility while sustaining a strategic vision for development of the city is one of the most critical pressure points of urban governance in Mumbai.

The exceptional densities of the city result in similarly unusual transport patterns. By far, the largest group of commuters in Greater Mumbai, about 55 per cent – walk to work. Most of them are able to reach their workplace within 15 minutes or less, making the most significant contribution to the city’s extremely low average commuting times of 25 minutes, a sharp contrast to the London average of 42 minutes. The distribution amongst other modes of transport is less surprising. Twenty-two per cent use trains and 14 per cent use buses as their main means of travel. Two wheelers account for 3 per cent, motor rickshaws and private cars each for 2 per cent of the commutes.

Access to the city is not a mere question of modal choice. In Mumbai, it dictates location, proximity and daily routines more than in most other cities, particularly for the urban poor. The enormous value attached to city access is expressed by the

compromising living conditions. Personal living space of less than 3 m2 is accepted as long as it keeps the promise of employment despite residential densities – in some cases of just two-storey slum houses – higher than the vertical urbanization of Hong Kong or Manhattan.

City access further relies on a high degree of urban mix. The fine-grain topography of urban environments cater best for the enormous need for constant exchange, not least due to physical proximity allowing for inexpensive and flexible non-motorized travel. In India ‘the poor need to live close to the rich.’ However, higher housing standards, whether in terms of living space or amenities, are traded for ease of access.

Ironically, centrally located informal dwellers are often re-located to allow for new transport infrastructure, further increasing the overall demand for mobility.

Each family will be offered a 20 m2 apartment at no cost. However, the new housing units built at the fringes of the city do not reflect any of the cultural and professional requirements of those being resettled.

And the long and expensive trips to the centres of urban activity have deprived them from city access.

Mumbai has inherited the most extensive urban rail system on the Indian subcontinent. About 300 km of suburban rail served by 95 stations make use of the city’s linear geography, moving 6.4 million people daily. However, the railway’s success has become its greatest enemy. Passengers suffer a degree of overcrowding unknown on any other rail system of similar size. Each minute, trains arriving at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Churchgate Station inject 2,000 people into the city’s historic core during rush hour.

Nine-car trains designed to hold 1,700 passengers travel with up to 5,000 commuters, with an average of 13 people per day killed in rail related accidents.

Regardless of Mumbai’s density and compactness, the city experiences a massive increase in motorized vehicles, generally following the same pattern of most cities in developing economies. Between 1991 and 2005, the number of motorized vehicles more than doubled from 0.6 to 1.3 million. With a total of

6 million cars, motorization in India is still relatively low and almost exclusively an urban phenomenon. And while no city in India is prepared to accommodate this growth, Mumbai’s dense urban environment proves particularly vulnerable to the flood of vehicles. The city’s streets cover only about 11 per cent of its surface, compared to 21 per cent in Delhi and 22 per cent in New York City. And while the number of vehicles multiplied 37 times over the last 50 years, the length of the Mumbai’s road network only doubled. Congestion is severe and due to the high stress levels of driving, the lack of parking and the overall affluence of the owners of those cars, about 70 per cent of private cars on the street are driven by chauffeurs.

The most significant road expansion programme is a controversial multi-million dollar off-shore ring-road, the Sea Link. The first segment, the 5.6-km BandraWorli Sea Link, is currently under construction. This US$350 million project boasts an eight-lane bridge, promoted as a new landmark for Mumbai. Built exclusively for fast moving vehicles, it is limited to four wheelers and above, thus catering to the city’s 2 per cent of the population with private cars. In one hour it will serve just about the same amount of people as two trains arriving at and leaving from Churchgate Station. Although not designed to accommodate mass transport, recent political pressure may require two dedicated lanes for buses.

The latest plans for the city assumes that the total population within the metropolitan region will increase to 34 million by 2031. Within 25 years, an additional 12 million people will need to navigate the city’s territory.

Strategic planning for the location of homes, jobs, retail and other activities will end up as the single most significant transport strategy. Of similar importance will be the recognition of the fine grain, mix-use urban legacy that has made Mumbai such a unique mega city. Mumbai has the ne-time opportunity to merge a strategy that improves the standard of living while maintaining its valuable compact urban form.

This article appeared in The urban Age India Newpaper

Fractals and the modern Hindu temple Dr. Vikramaditya Prakash

Professor of Architecture, University of Washington Seattle, USA

While there is ample precedent in modern interpretations of churches and synagogues and mosques (by well famous modernists such as Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn), new and modern interpretations of the Hindu temple are seriously lacking. Unfortunately, the Hindu temple is so completely trapped by expectations of an ‘iconic’ image – stereotypical shikharas and ornamentation built by rote -- that it seems difficult to conceive what a modern Hindu temple might even begin to look like. Perhaps this is because the temple’s clients, and even the worshipping public, likes to make sure that its expectations regarding what a temple must ‘look like’ is satisfied, rather than trying to investigate what a contemporary Hindu temple should be. And given that issues of religion are considered to be so sensitive

in India (you can’t even improve a road just because a small temple might be on it) most people, advisedly, shy away from broaching the topic of modern interpretations of the temple. In addition, there is the fact that the language of modern architecture is so closely aligned with the modern Indian nation state and its ideal of secularism, that it has become anathema to take on an explicitly religious topic from within the canons of modern architecture. Such were the convictions of modern India of the 20th century.

Yet, I would submit, that the work of re-thinking the Hindu temple has to be done, and it has to done by the new 21st century generation of Indian architects and thinkers – all us student readers of this NASA magazine. If you don’t take on this task, the space of

religious architecture will continue to be dominated by a narrow minded vision of what a a Hindu temple is, and it will remain eternally shrouded by the politics of religion. You cannot simply rest on the expectation that somewhere, somehow there is a class of pundits who are maintaining the ancient canon of temple design and construction, intact and secure. This is much too serious a responsibility to be left unexamined in the hands of pundits. Their job is to keep tradition intact – that they do well. Ours is to invent the future. In thinking about the architecture of the new India of the 21st century, of a self-confident player on the global stage, surely we should be able to dig into the heart and soul of Hinduism, of Hindu temple design principles and philosophical propositions, and having understood and digested them, re-interpret and re-express them

in new light, in a new way, with new forms.

Temples are not repositories of dead tradition; they are not, in other words, places of superstition that are put together with ‘magical’ formulae that have no real rhyme or reason. There is a vast body of modern literature – and a vast amount of that is in English, for those of us who cannot read Sanskrit and other ancient Indian languages – that amply documents, describes, analyses and critiques the very many complex, and indeed fascinating and persuasive, concepts that go into the design of a Hindu temple.

Unfortunately, most of this literature remains confined to religion studies, anthropology, philosophy, and other disciplines of humanities. It rarely makes its way into schools of architecture, or essays in Indian architecture. In schools of architecture, we are largely

still taught with colonial period textbooks that categorize temples simply according to their ‘style’, with little or no understanding of the conceptual basis of temple design. And, so, unfortunately, our understanding of the principles of the Hindu temple tend to remain confined to thin diagrammatic facsimiles such as ‘the nine-square mandala’ or ‘northern style temple vs. the southern style temple’. All this has to change.

There are many concepts that can be used as beginning points to investigate the Hindu temple.

There are notions such as ‘bindu’ and ‘samsara’, ‘prakrit’ and ‘purusha’, ‘atman’ and ‘Atman’, ‘maya’ and transubstantiation, ‘shunyata’ and ‘aakar’, and, of course, ‘moksha’ and the more Buddhist ‘parinirvan.’.

And so many, many more. I am not a scholar of religion, but I like to read. I am an architect and an architectural historian. I am currently writing a new History of the Architecture of India, trying to sketch out the ‘story’ of the Indian architecture, as the story of competing ideas in Indian architecture, and of the people who supported those ideas, and lived and died for them, and, of course, turned them into the stones of architecture. As I study these, I read books from every disciplinary background and I try and digest them as best as I can. I rarely look at the old colonial books on Indian architecture; I can’t stand the discussion of ‘styles.’ But I do look at the buildings themselves, in real life or in print, and study them from an architect’s perspective. I ask myself: how is the plan organized?

How does movement and circulation occur? What kind of light comes into the building? How do shade and shadow articulate the exterior? What materials are used? What are the formal principles that are used to organize all the elements? And so on. Just to wit: faith is not the issue here; whether you believe or not, the point here is to understand the temple from the perspective of a professional. It is no different than any other building program.

These kinds of questions motivated me recently to conduct a studio on the modern Hindu temple, in the institution where I teach in Seattle, at the University of Washington. The occasion was that the Hindu community of Seattle is organizing itself to build a

grand new temple for themselves, and although they put me on the planning committee of the temple, I was dismayed that they wanted to build yet another rather stereotypical conception of a Hindu temple.

I was even more dismayed, however, that I could not point them towards any good new modern interpretations of temples. So I decided to teach the studio, to at least open the topic academically. Seven Masters level students signed up – none with any background Hinduism or the Hindu temple, but all with great talent and insatiable curiosity. They have each produced a work that is as passionate as it is interpretive. Separately, we have made a publication that documents all the projects. Here, I am presenting one of them, Nathaniel (Nate) Gilberts, simply because this student’s interpretation gels with the topic of your publication: fractals.

When Nate saw the shikhara of the Kendariya Mahadeva Temple at Khajuraho, he saw fractals. If you look at it closely you will see that the shikhara is, infact, composed of a lot of mini-shikharas. What this means is that no matter which scale you study the shikhara at, it appears the same. This self-similar pattern of organization is what we call fractals. Now, a shikhara is conceptually a model of the universe and so if the organizational pattern of the shikhara is fractal, what this implies is that according the core principles of Hinduism, the universe is organized fractally!! This is an amazing and inspiring idea.

Setting aside ideas of astrology and superstition, my student Nate, decided to investigate how he could re-use the principals of fractal geometries to imagine a new contemporary temple, without resorting to stereotypical Hindu temple imagery. The results are given in the accompanying graphics. I hope they are self-explanatory. I would welcome questions, queries and comments on Nate’s project.

Dr. Vikramaditya Prakash http://faculty.washington.edu/vprakash vikram.prakash@gmail.com

Architecture and Religion Karandev Singh Mankotia Senior Lecturer, CCA

Images: Mayan, Egyptian and Japanese Architecture

Architecture and religion has been at good terms with each other throughout the ages. It appeared religion was the moot point in architecture for inspiration and guidance in how it should go about. Both these factors had so much depended on each other that they became imminent in talk of all the erstwhile civilizations.

They registered themselves in folklores and day to day events of their people.

Architecture as a free vehicle in giving its form having de-linked from religion had very little role. Architecture never had such a role as free from such clutches as most of the time architects imagined themselves to be. Yet world over we have so many examples of architecture as form giver to religion that the role in itself was quite in abundance of variety, sensibilities and whatever people could gather from it that architecture in itself became religion. Whole galaxy of architectural forms from the past which people engage so well in so many ways and thoughts that it seemed there was some kind of freedom in architecture available to exercise in mind and action to fructify.

People term architecture in relation to religion and then other socio-economic attributes to it would emerge in natural sequence.

So religion gets freer picture, more intelligible, more characteristic of its function through architecture.

Phenomena such as the great aura of monumental pyramids, Buddhist serenity in form and expanse planning in various routes in the Deccan India and elsewhere in Central Asia created role of architecture more permanent one. It emerged as real focus of activity in all ages to come, be it medieval times, classical period, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Mayan, Buddhist in Kyoto and many places in South Asia, there could be innumerable icons coming into forms in every nook and corner of the world. The process is ever progressing.

The role of architecture in taking course to other functional derivation manifested in multiple forms each contributing to new beginning. Their histories dating back thousands of years so were the doctrines, myths, and methodologies in worship were so

varied, yet they reached out to universal truth of ethical tolerance toward others. Their creators were exemplary folk who attained a mastery of selfknowledge that bent them to kill evil and seek the highest examples of good.

Also emphasized are the religions that revealed the genesis of cultural icons and having decisively formed world civilizations order put on differing, but not exclusive, views of ultimate character to each of say mercy and benevolence in Buddhism, morality and ethics in Confucianism, respect in Shinto’s, devotion and mystical unity of divine Self in Hinduism, obedience and perseverance in Judaism, love for the Creator and one’s fellowman in Christianity, and submission to the will of Allah in Islam.

Now these universalities on much profound basis, testament of early truth whatever form resulted in architectural manifestation.

People world over go to places and respect those sensibilities enshrined in authentic structural form, icons adding meaning to very existence.

Architecture thus becomes more potent force as do the religion. Idea of its becoming such is further sign of what direction people will move in, whether to negate it or digress from it or whatever. It is the question that sets people in more creativity, in search, in motion. The roles in universal leadership require more comprehensive approach, whether it is shaped by climate change or any other issue which may come about in future. Whether architecture will be the force to suit that ideology it is for people to think.

Availability of resources and human longevity would be combined factor in the realm of architecture in what forms it could generate to engage future generations.

Its creativity and technology sense to perpetuate the future cause in architecture would be engaging professional pursuits.

Good servant, bad master Deepika Gandhi Lecturer, CCA

From Top (CW): Selfridges Birmingham, Future Systems; Soundcloud, B+U Architecture; Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier

Change is the only constant and considering the ever expanding horizons of human endeavours, evolution is always a positive thing. Even if the immediate explorations may not be “desirable” they will pave the way for things not yet conceived. Innovation occurs to fill changing human needs. This is called progress, and it’s good.

As with every other field architecture will also change.

The industrial revolution with its new possibilities of materials and building techniques paved the way for the Modern Architecture movement. Structures in steel and glass were decried by purists as aberrations that barely fitted into the realm of “real architecture”.

Today we find ourselves at the crossroads again.

The theory and practice of Digital architecture has spawned endless debates on the direction in which architecture is heading today. Before we blindly accept the notion of purely computer generated built environments there are a few pertinent issues that need to be addressed. There are some reservations that most architects have while warming up to this new way of building.

Architecture needs reason. There is no place for pure aesthetic whimsy. The first and foremost apprehension is that architects and engineers seem to be creating structures in an intellectual vacuum, without any real world context. We are increasingly being bombarded with apparently bizarre designs being generated with free-form computer modelling tools. One can only question the architectural and aesthetic merit of most of these proposals at the risk of being labelled conservative and regressive! Wherein lies the danger that the computer is supposed to spew out forms and spaces that are infallible and immune to criticism. This assumption marks the decline of theory, underestimating the role of critical analysis of the building brief, and the rise of ‘cool’ digital techniques and technologies .If the digital technology does not influence the design thinking, design method and spatial theory, then it can be treated as merely a new tool and a welcome addition to the architect’s palette.

On the other hand, if in the coming years all the above mentioned parameters are challenged and changed by digital architecture, it will then be more than a

theory. A case in point is writing by hand or with a type writer. Can the tool change the very fabric of your language? Will you still be able to communicate your intent either ways? Or will the ingenuity of the tool overtake and nudge you into expressing your creation in a form you did not even intend to? It takes a lot of maturity to be able to use any tool as a servant and not let it become your master. The difficulty for young designers then is not in how to use these technologies but which to use and when to use it. There seems to be an increasing peer pressure in the profession to succumb to the morphing, warping and complicated curvatures of virtual space. The emphasis on the practical methods and potential of digital fabrication and assemblage of the real is getting obscured in the pre occupation with the realm of the virtual world and its representation.

In a scenario where a bunch of numbers and statistics dictate the form and spaces of a built environment where is the scope for the architectural philosophy and theory that raised the profession from a trade to an artistic venture of high intellectual merit?

Compounding the problem in a developing country like ours is the gap between architectural education, society culture, and digital architecture. The education system has hardly been able to keep up with the rapid change of the digital technology. Our traditional architectural education is still based on the philosophical, social, historical and psychological theory. This has given rise to generation of designers lacking enough exposure and maturity to discern the validity of their own creation. The challenge then for all of us is to analyse how architecture can continue to speak for itself and what risks are posed in forsaking architectural theory. Maybe we need to remember that the computer is just one tool in a large shed of creative devices. It is a tool for materialising ideas not for generating them in the first place.

On the Urban level think of the impact of each and every bulbous creation screaming for attention at every nook and corner. What about the fabric of the city and the visual clutter it would create? As an imminent architect once said that in the ancient times each city had a consistent and distinct fabric with

maybe one odd cathedral as a landmark. But today the problem is that every building wants to be that cathedral. A choir sounds intriguing because everyone tries to blend in rather than shout out the loudest to get heard and seen And let’s not even get started about the socio economic impact of a tool that allows you to go straight form the creator to the manufacturer totally by passing the builder. What of the millions directly or indirectly dependent on the construction industry.

So before we foray into this fascinating world of possibilities we need get our priorities right and use this tool wisely to achieve the parameters that will form the basis of any architectural endeavour for years to come.

Sustainable Urban Ecology Durganand Balsavar SRM University, Chennai

Nek Chand’s ecological urbanity Ar. Durganand Balsavar is the Principal architect of ARTES-Human settlements development center, Chennai. He has been involved in the CMDA Second Master Plan process and is a visiting Faculty in several Indian and International Universities. This paper is part of a larger research on Urbanity and Ecology. at Harvard University, Cambridge.

At the culmination of the first decade of the twentyfirst century, India is an optimistic country. Even as the cardinal cities orient to address the future, the deliverance of a better quality of life for all sections of society needs to be addressed.

The two debates of sustainability The two major issues that confront India’s postindependence urban process are the “Nature versus Development” and “Citizen’s Participation” debate.

Urban development in the present context of climate change needs to ensure a minimal adverse impact on the environment. Participatory Urban Planning also needs to eschew an inclusive growth process, which calls for a paradigm shift in the notion of justice, equity and urbanity.

The historic disregard for environment While Harrapa, Srirangam and Jaipur epitomize the mystical traditional Indian city, Lutyen’s New Delhi fossilizes the desire of Colonial powers over the last two hundred years to indigenize, during their transformation from traders to rulers. Like the Eurocentric industrial revolution, British administrators in India focused on the creation of New Colonial cities.

Unlike the traditional Indian city, these cities had broad roads for cars and trams, large railway stations in steel, Town Halls, museums and well established educational institutions. On the other side, this colonial development also involved indiscriminate deforestation in the promise of a new “civilized” world of industrial growth. Urbanization in independent India unwittingly assimilated this “colonial” disregard for the environment. The Western developed world too unwittingly ushered in technologies with adverse impacts to the environment. Nandan Nilakeni interestingly describes India as the “afflicted passive smoker when it comes to the emissions that the developed world has created over the last century”.

Today, in order to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change on the urban poor, a series of t

coordinated actions may have to be initiated from the micro-scale of the household to the state and national levels and importantly in the international context.

In that sense India has to prudently deploy new energy efficient technologies and reorganize urban consumption of resources.

The fast burgeoning urbanized populations in India and China has a consequent impact on the consumption of energy resources. Alongside such consumption has evolved the consumerist society of high technology with increased consumption of electricity and water supply. Greater awareness of indigenous and traditional knowledge of energy efficient design could ameliorate the situation. A scrutiny and establishment of standards for energy efficiency of buildings requires to be done indigenously with a better understanding of local climate and resources rather than callously adopting international standards.

Hijacking Sustainability Dr Adrian Parr, in her book “Hijacking Sustainability” explains the manner in which several multi-national companies have been forced to move their production facilities to Asia. The impact of stringent environmental regulations in developed countries could also have indirect bearing on developing countries still in the process of finalizing their blueprint of environmental protection. She also cites figures from a United Nations study showing that half of the multi-national companies in the Asia-Pacific region used lower environmental, health and safety standards than those they adhered to in developed countries. Dr Parr cites examples of a report by the Basel Action Network that approximately eighty percent of North American electronic waste ends up in Asia. Many of the developing nations accepting this e-waste may not have the appropriate technology needed to safely recycle or dispose the same.

While recycling may at face value appear the most appropriate way to manage the environmental impacts, the outdated methodology could produce toxic wastes that are harmful to the environment.

Conserving Nature Another process of ameliorating the urban

environment would be the conscious introduction of green parks and probably urban agriculture as well.

It also facilitates bio-diversity in conserving natural species. Besides exploring the symbolic and poetic realm of urban growth, perhaps a more pragmatic initiative to discover a sustainable connection with the natural environment Much has been debated on Chandigarh as the symbolic post-independent modern city. What has been as relevant has been the gardens created by Nek Chand from recycled ceramic waste (see image).

Ironically, the Chandigarh master plan guided the course of other Indian cities. The imposition of the geometric plan became the unquestioned norm for Gandhi Nagar in Gujarat, Jamshedpur and several other industrial towns. The ancient reverence for Nature was forgotten. The form of the city impacts its way of life. For instance linear cities like Mumbai and Kolkotta can rely on the rapid transit corridors and the rail as their lifeline. However cities like Chennai and Bangalore need to actively explore a unified transport network of multiple modes. Most often squatter settlements emerge close to places that provide job opportunities. Integrating this factor with the conscious

planning of cities could dramatically reduce the need for public transport, which is socially determined by quality, cost, time and convenience. While there is no specific quantification of the impact of climate change on urbanity, a gradual consensus is evolving on its possible impact – (MEA 2005) – in terms of increased temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, extreme weather conditions and sea level rise. Climate change has posed complex challenges to the urban processes in India.

Sustainable Habitat Mission The National Action Plan on Climate Change proposes a Sustainable Habitat Mission to give an impetus to energy efficiency in the urban planning process. It proposes to address these issues by evolving ; - urban waste management and recycling norms, building energy consumption norms and affordable housing in appropriate technology and through better facilities for public transport. Urban growth in India has been sustained by the enterprise of the urban poor. The urban less-privileged survive despite being formally excluded from the institutional processes of the urban process. At a macro-level, reorganizing therelationship between the urbanized settlements and the neglected rural hinterland would be essential as part of the

Below: Rock Garden, Chandigarh Facing: The Pyramids, Egypt, by Gagandeep Singh, CCA

climate change strategy. The resilience and innovativeness of the social and cultural institutions to assimilate the tenets of this mitigation process cannot be assessed at the present juncture.

Urban villages and Participatory Planning Several urban centers and towns are more a conglomerate of villages, rather than an urban expression of metropolis. This condition is fortunate and provides the needed space and time for reorganizing the nature of urban development. In a broader context, providing affordable and sustainable housing remains the most critical challenge to the urban process. Studies reveal that probably half the population of Mumbai reside in shanty dwellings occupying fifteen percent of the cities total land area. The resettlement of these slums would be an essential factor in future urban development – affordable housing, security of tenure, innovative and cost effective designs, assurance of basic amenities.

Community participation in the decision making process is critical for sustainable democratic urban

development. Key areas to be addressed would be land management and tenure, affordable and unified public transportation systems, a clear policy on urban dwellings, employment opportunities, education and healthcare systems.

Its not about idealistic manifestos or “green� slogans, but sheer common sense to transform our urban development to respect and protect the ecology, reduce harmful emissions, address affordable and dignified housing, unified transportation and infrastructure and the humane workplace. To rediscover the foundations of the equitable and sustainable post-independent Indian City is a collective pragmatic choice.

artesindia@gmail.com

U2 and the Indian city Aparajithan Narasimhan

Senior Lecturer, SRM University, Chennai Principal Architect - AN Projects Below (L-R): Pondy Bazaar, Chennai; Georgetown, Washington DC

The numbers are mind boggling. Every day 300 families migrate to Mumbai, by 2050 50% of the Indian population will be urban – which means about 60 – 65 million which represents a 100% growth from the already overcrowded cities in its current state, Delhi ships water from Ganga despite Yamuna’s presence, Chennai’s population density is 24,700 people per sq km. Are these cities ready to double their size in the next few decades, and how? Should they double their size, or their carrying capacity? What can be done?

On the global front, apart from the worldwide recession, cities are back at the forefront of mainstream economics. Over the last half of the previous century, suburbanization combined with rapid disinvestment and degeneration of urban neighborhoods was rampant along with the automobile boom in leading the economic bandwagon. With globalization, however, the increased need for collaboration and human interaction in leading business decisions and the lifestyle of the modern ‘knowledge worker’ has brought urban areas that have an attractive atmosphere for such interactions and lifestyles into the limelight.

Where does this leave Indian cities? Apart from the historical fabric and cheap technical labor, they hold little attraction at a global level. The infrastructure for a friendly urban atmosphere and pedestrian oriented neighborhoods which is the main draw of the ‘global cities’ is virtually non-existent. Survival instincts take over and the entire urban experience provides scenes of various survival mechanisms – some legal, some illegal, some approved, some not, some sustainable and sane while others are obscene and ludicrous in terms of a social and cultural fabric.

The best illustration that brings out this experience is that of Pondy Bazaar in Chennai. Comparing this urban district to another similar district in Washington DC – Georgetown, the biggest difference is in the pace of life on these streets. While the laidback atmosphere in Georgetown allows you to have a wholesome experience of the urban fabric, life in Pondy Bazaar is frenetic and the survival instinct is rampant in full

splendor. There are no street side restaurants and street bands and cafes that let you relax and spend a balmy summer evening. No, not in Pondy Bazaar. It is all about fighting traffic to find a parking spot, shop and get out as fast as you can for there is nothing to let you enjoy the setting.

Where does this survival instinct come from? What is the main driver behind such frenetic and feverish urban activity? Why is there a lack of quality in our urban experience? Partially, the answer lies in the large migratory population that throng our cities in search of a livelihood and a better life for their future generations, it lies in the failure of our agricultural system that leads thousands of farmers to suicide, it lies in the lack of investment outside of ‘Economic Zones’ and ‘export oriented policies’ that came with our economic liberty.

As a result, we are ‘Caught in the Middle’ to use the term framed by Richard C. Longworth in his book ‘Caught in the Middle’, where he describes how the American Mid-West once the cradle of the US economy is now a derelict and abandoned region better known as the ‘Rust Belt’, is caught in the middle between the old economic setup where they were productive and the new economic policies of globalization where they are marginalized. Their skills and training do not render them useful to the new economy and the old industries where these communities were successful have also taken the Silk Route. The blue collared workers find themselves out of favor due to lack of training in the ‘new’ industry and their acquired skill is of no use anymore. And he is talking of America, where access to education is not an issue.

In the Indian context, given the size of our population and the access to basic facilities outside the preferred urban/economic zones, we face a larger conundrum. Decentralized economic opportunity and a widespread investment and development portfolio is the call of the hour to provide for inclusive growth – the latest political mantra in India. Whatever the merits and demerits of the Nehru era, the investment in education and science however farfetched it seemed at the time has been our savior in the last two decades. Similar

vision and commitment is called for from a policy stand point. The aim should be to stop migration to cities and provide opportunities for a better life wherever there is an existing human settlement.

The means of achieving this goal is not farfetched or utopian. We have had successful examples like Amul that have created a business model to emulate. With a cooperative base and a capitalistic outreach, Amul has been able to channelize economic opportunity to the grass roots shown by the development of Anand in Gujrat. Similar setups with an organized retail sector at the helm can help bring prosperity to the grass roots of our country. With this kind of a setup, redistribution of wealth acquired is also channelized and realizable, and does not remain a pipe dream.

At the moment, we are pinging our hopes on ‘trickledown Reaganomics’ it seems, with no mechanism other than a Robin Hood story in place to redistribute wealth to foster ‘inclusive growth’. Our built environment also reflects this thought process at the policy level as can be clearly seen on ‘IT Highway’ in Chennai. Not so long ago, this was a road flanked by farm lands, marshes and backwaters, with buildings flung far and few in between, interspersed by villages.

Today, it looks like a mixture of confused glass containers waiting to be shipped out of an otherwise derelict village. Clearly, the conundrum is because

the community is not being developed in an inclusive manner. The inhabitants of the glass containers are shipped in and shipped out on a daily basis and their money is also spent elsewhere. This is exclusionary development and not inclusive growth.

Urbanization of the human population may be an irreversible phenomenon. However, it does not mean that existing cities have to bear the brunt of this phenomenon. Through decentralized development, newer urban regions can be created which will enable a better quality of life in every environment and render the possibility of an access to livelihood in one’s preferred environment. It does not mean a return to Ebenezer Howard and his Garden Cities, but networked transit-oriented development with high density urban centers at transit hubs and a hierarchy of high-speed long distance rail, short-distance rail and surface trams that enables development footprint to be low and allows men and materials to be transported in an efficient manner. It means a revamp of the existing urban fabric in the current cities to enable transit-oriented development and efficient resource utilization. It means that current cities should not be disinvested; rather require more attention and investment to alter the cancerous urban fabric of today to make them truly ‘Global cities’ in the shadow of which the smaller centers can then prosper.

Traditional Indian Streets - A socio-cultural expression Ar. Medha Gokhale Faculty SCOA, Pune

Streets…

When this word comes to mind, the scenario of transport road network occupied by vehicles & fast moving life suddenly flashes in the front of our eyes.

Today in the world of technological advancement in fields of communication and transportation, the word ‘Street’ has disappeared from the dictionary of urban planning. In the past this word was used interchangeably. It was conceived as a path, an avenue, a route, a highway road, a boulevard and so on. All these have similar meaning, but there exists a minor distinguishing line between the street and the road.

Today road is considered as an ordinary line of communication between different places predominantly, used to carry wheeled traffic to some end or journey. While Street may have these attributes but more importantly it is a linear surface along which movement occurs between two lines, houses or shops, says the dictionary.

Street is one such social interactive public space, which contributes to the physical, perceptual and visual dimension. It not only links public and private realm but is a place where we mingle with people of diverse culture, economic and social backgrounds. Ar. Louis Khan wrote “The Street is a room by agreement.

It is a building block of urban design and extension of urban life. The city with vibrant street life is the key for making the works as a piece of design. It is a true room of the city more than its ceremonial plazas and squares”.

Apart from the social dimension, functionally street is one of the most important elements, which shape the city fabric. The built form and the open spaces come later.

Think of a city. What comes to the mind? It is a street.

Thinking of traditional Indian Street, it can be said that it has multifunctional attributes which not only serves as linking elements but also strengthen the legibility of the city. However, today in the era of privatization and globalization, street is looked upon as a commodity.

Consumerism is shaping new lifestyles of people thereby changing the meaning of ‘street as a interactive space’.

In this increasingly standardized, consumer oriented and technology dominated world, streets as social spaces are undergoing transformations. Some are getting erased out of the fabric and some are getting trapped inside the invisible boundaries of upcoming estates, enclaves & complexes. Streets, that once were informal -interactive places and important modes of visual communication, are today being looked upon as modes of transportationpredominantly to be used for vehicular traffic or for commercial display, thus slowly moving towards standardization.

However, when I visited Rajasthan there were traditional settlements like Jaisalmer, Jodhpur that are presently uninfluenced by this wave of globalization and economic competition and still retain their original character and socio-cultural attachment. The reasons may be varied… low population densities, lack of advancements in technology, lower literacy rate and so on. But despite these reasons, these settlements still present us with visual identity, socio-cultural trends of the historic era at the time of evolution and are the dominant examples of imagibility, legibility and expressionism. These aspects are eventually reflected in the settlement pattern, built form and the streetscapes.

Physically, cross sections of the Indian street reveal the configuration of path space, profile of ground plane and the sectional character of building facades that affront the street. Its architectural personality is determined by the building facades that form boundaries of a space. Façade widths, their projections, recessions, heights, transparency, material, color, texture, window patterns, composition, ornamentation are the attributes that contribute to street character. Such variety along with the curved and meandering street patterns offer their unique experience as we move along the route. This is prominently highlighted by historic towns of Rajasthan like Jaisalmer and Jodhpur.

Talking of Jaisalmer streets, these are more than mere paths- they are public spaces too. These are not only compact networks of two to three meter wide streets abutted by two to three storied dwellings creating cluster spaces, but they also create a sense of enclosure and provide cool shade, thereby responding to climatic conditions. These streets have divided the city into rectangular blocks, which are commonly termed as ‘Padas’.

Thus Streets, through their physical attributes present us with historic significance, activity pattern and ambience. These are basic factors, which contribute to the social dimension of a street as public space and, thereby, make it an interactive public street.

Streetscape is the first and immediate element to highlight the character and tradition of the area at the time of evolution and represent the city. Streets are the first to get noticed, stating the history of its evolution in terms of the period of construction, occupation, sociocultural trend and lifestyle of people of that era.

These blocks show continuous façades of exquisitely

carved elements behind which there are open courts and terraces making them fairly porous in plan. The street is used by children to play and adults to socialize.

Each house has a plinth projecting on to the street, commonly used as verandah at ground floor with no openings on the street except the entrance door approached by steps. Intricately carved zharokhas (balconies) at upper floors are also a design feature.

These verandahs are used as informal interactive spaces where people do not have strong notion of privacy. The house starts opening as one moves up from the street. With compact organization, the house and the street become very close to each other.

Hence, almost all the dwellings are planned to open in court with few punctures on the street façade. Human scale is maintained giving a sense of proportion.

Because of the pedestrian scale of the town, people know each other and there is little evidence of anonymity.

Hence, in today’s fast pace of city expansion and transformation, conservation of historic streets and influence of socio-cultural change on their visual dimension needs to be paid serious attention to!

student

Fractals An Introduction Apoorv Kaushik CCA, Chandigarh

Every moment of the day, we are surrounded by a number of objects, whether it be a pencil or a building. If one is asked to list the things that one can remember, it will become a never ending task. But there lies a very interesting fact among all the objects in this world, living or created by us - each object has a complementary element to it. This is not only limited to the physical objects but also includes sensations and actions, such as the perception of joy and sorrow, hot and cold, tranquillity and discord. All these complement each other. This complementary nature of things establishes a sense of balance amongst them all , and our sensations are such that a slight disparity makes us edgy.

It’s hard for one to picture a fruit which is half an apple and half a banana. Symmetry is another way of complimenting an object. It’s a human tendency to be attracted towards a symmetrical and rather peaceful space. Nature embodies in itself a complex miscellany even in the symmetry of any object. While an object varies from another of the same kind, it has a selfsimilarity of smaller molecules resembling the basic shape of the object. This diversity in nature is being explained on the basis of a mathematical study of similar shapes and their relationship to natural shapes known as Fractals. It’s the play of numbers, involving several mathematical equations which concentrate on understanding the intricacy in nature and its organization.

A detailed study reveals that every object in nature is comprised of smaller parts which are in fact a duplication of the basic shape of the object. In a fern leaf for example, there is a progression of a self similar form which forms the structure molecule. The same can be observed for trees, ridges, mountains and even clouds. Every structure does not fit into the concept of straight lines and symmetrical triangles reducing in progression as proposed by Karl Weierstrass, and Waclaw Sierpinski. Hence the extensive study done on forms and structures unveils a new world of several different units, each different in shapes and sizes, and each being a unique fractal.

The evolution of this concept has been slow and has taken place with different questions being answered by different people. An overlook at this history answers some questions that have been enigmatic for a very long time like, explanations to the new shapes being evolved, stability of the solar system, motion of object under defined circumstances etc. The credit for compiling all the research and coining the name fractals goes to Benoit Mandelbrot. It was concluded that even stocks exchange rates and growth rates, when plotted on paper take the shape of a fractal and are hence repetitive. Mandelbrot exclaims that Nature played a joke on the mathematicians. The structures that they created with complex mathematical equations have turned out to be inherent in familiar objects all around us. These new set of structures were also called a Gallery of Monsters.

We are all well versed with the Euclidean geometrylines, ellipses circles etc, however, this new world did not necessarily fit in the pre-defined. In order to deal with non-integer dimensions, as was required, Fractal geometry was defined. Fractal geometry is very much at odds with the Euclidean geometry which we see around us in our man made environment; clean curves, smooth surfaces, perfect parallels and perpendiculars. These are not in accordance with nature; they have no aesthetic ‘depth’. No one wants to see a park or garden consisting of cones and triangle. It might be argued that this is because we enjoy plants and trees as a ‘break’ from the simple, tidy and monotonous geometry of everyday life, but it really goes further than this. A smooth polished piece of marble or beautifully grained wood offers far greater attraction than a smooth polished surface, owing to a certain degree of disorder. Not that it is suggested that complete disorder has any appeal: untidiness appeals to no one. But as with marble or wood grain, the beauty of fractals lies in their ‘order within disorder’.

Described in algorithms, fractal geometry forms a set of instructions on how to form fractals. The images that one sees in everyday life may inspire the definition of fractals, but that isn’t where it ends. They have innumerable possibilities.

The main characteristics of a fractal may be enlisted as: - Irregularity - Indistinguishability of most magnified images of fractals from the unmagnified version.

- Non-integer dimensions - Self similarity Fractals go beyond normal imagination, which itself is as vast as space and as varied as this world. They have given a new way to observe and study the various aspects of daily life. Fractals are an expression of the essence of nature and are being applied to architecture, as to many other fields. It has been a long an eventful journey through the field of architecture with fractals. In one form or the other, even unintentionally at times, we have incorporated this phenomena and have developed many more from this one, which is truely enthralling in every sense.

What makes fractal exploration so intriguing, is the features which are detectable on zooming. They are always changing—teasing us with a little bit of familiarity, and tantalizing with new and unexpected twists. With just a single fractal shape, one can explore forever and never see everything it has to offer. The further we zoom, the more likely we are seeing something that nobody has ever seen before.

To get a fairer idea of what we are dealing with, the following analogy can be considered. A relative size of a fractal is such that, a small fractal image—perhaps only 640x480—contains over 300,000 points. Each of those points may require running a number through the fractal formula more than 1,000 times. This means the formula has to be computed more than three hundred million times. And that’s a mild example.

Extreme images can involve more than one trillion calculations.

Looking over at the architectural aspect of fractals, every form has developed from many such small units: fractals. Indigenous architecture presents complex rhythm structures to the observer. There is a fractal mix of order and surprise which will put you in awe as we move further.

Biomimicry: A New Way of Living Palash Deolankar IIT Roorkee

Below: Bird’s Nest, Water Lily

INTRODUCTION Human being was always in search of shelter from the prehistoric period. As he started his journey, the invention of new materials for safe and comfortable shelter was the prime concern. Animal skin was used for protection against harsh weather conditions. The humans and the environment were finely tuned.

Connection between humans and environment got disconnected when poor quality design started. We have degraded almost every major ecosystem in the world thereby compromising on basic natural factors like air, water and soil.

In the future, the houses we live and the offices we work in, will be designed to function like living organisms, specifically adapted to place and able to draw all of their requirements for energy and water from the surrounding.

Man is always the focal point for all design as he is the user of the space. It is possible and within our reach to design innovative and creative designs which lead to sustainability. Even when we understand these designing criteria the gap between understanding & application remains the same. Hence we need to be bio-inspired.

Multiple inventions have been developed in the fields of medicine, robotics, material science, and engineering. However, there is currently only a small amount of research within the architecture community that explores Biomimicry.

BIOMIMICRY From the Greek word ‘bios’ meaning life and ‘mimesis’ meaning imitation. In simple words Biomimicry is the ‘Inventions inspired by the Nature’.

Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s models and imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve the human problems. e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf, self cleaning paint inspired by lotus leaves, a bionic car inspired by box fish, East Gate Centre, commercial complex in Harare inspired by termite mound etc.

Biomimicry uses an ecological standard to judge the

rightness of our innovations. After 3.8 million years of evolution, nature has learned- What works? What is appropriate? What lasts?

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 on what we can learn from it.

Industry also imitates nature. For the designing of Crystal Palace Joseph Paxton used the structure of a lily pad as inspiration in 1852. Also, Wright brothers were avid bird watchers, and their airplane wing design was modeled after birds.

APPLICATION One major application of Biomimicry is the field of Biomaterials, which involves synthesizing natural materials and applying this to practical design. One of the major advantages of biomaterials is that they are normally biodegradable. In addition, the extreme temperatures and hazardous chemicals often used in manmade construction are usually unnecessary with natural alternatives.

Spider silk is one of the most sought after biomaterials, gaining a reputation as the “Holy Grail” of biomaterials.

This material, produced by special glands in a spider’s body, has the advantage of being both light and flexible, and pound for pound is roughly three times stronger than steel: the tensile strength of the radial threads of spider silk is 1,154 Mpa while steel is 400 Mpa . The web is composed of two types of silk, the major ampullate silk, which forms the dragline and web frame, and the viscid silk, which forms the gluecovered catching spiral.

BIOMIMICRY AND ARCHITECTURE History of architecture in the 20th century can be looked upon as a history of buildings emulating machines and technology. The machine, such as the internal combustion engine has been the symbol of progress and mankind’s mastery over nature for the last hundred years. The machine has allowed us to achieve comfort in any climate, to traverse long distances in short amounts of time and has

revolutionized everything from food production to the manufacture of clothing. It is not surprising that machines are the ultimate metaphor for the buildings of today. Le Corbusier, one of the 20th century’s greatest architects even went so far as to say that “houses are machines for living in.”

FUTURE PROJECTION As architectural evolution took place, we have seen different construction techniques which help in human’s comfort and protection from harsh climatic conditions. The journey started with load bearing structures where vernacular building materials were used. The concrete came into existence in the 18th century and this new building material changed the world. The reinforced cement concrete frame structure with the rigid form of building can be seen very frequently till today. The age of curtain walls for the internal cooling and heating system came into existence but the overall rigid form of the building remained same. More and more use of steel structure with tensile building material now helps in flexibility of the spaces.

The ever-changing building skin was possible only because invention of new building material. A time will come when structure and skin will be combined together and more flexibility will be the prime concern.

There is an urgent need for the multifunctional space in the future where building will function by computer operated systems.

We need change - In terms of material, construction technology and thinking.

We need Biomimicry!

Fractals – Anti fractals & Its interpretation in Sacred Architecture

Bricked up dreams…

Chhavi Arya

CCA,Chandigarh

Shaiwanti Gupta

MNIT, Jaipur

I was five When I met him An impressionable age The old man stood At the end of the road Staring at the huge Sprawling house ‘’I like to play with lines’’ he said “I designed that house “he said “My bricked up dreams “ he said I held him in awe Stupid me!

And I stood At the end of the road Watching a loving couple Embraced beneath an arch I had bricked up Watching a couple o’ kids Playing in a backyard I had designed Ah! I thought Unexpected laughter Bubbled inside me The old man had been right after all

I often cursed him Later in life Cursed him For igniting the spark Cursed him silently When i Fought with my parents I wanted to be an architect I wanted to brick up my dreams

Playing with lines And floors He’d said Building homes Spaces to interact Designing life Bricking up dreams With a smile I turned away To find a young boy looking up at me He seemed around five...

Cursed him volubly When I worked n worked at college Measuring, cutting Measuring, cutting Drawing, always drawing.

Architecture, as we know it, is not just composition of 2D – Element or a detailed plan of a building juxtaposed by a flamboyant elevation. It is an art that stimulates moment, something that creates space. It’s a reciprocal relationship of form and volume that infuse certain emotions of wonder, peace or mystery.

Fractals literally stand for the repetitive modules that reduce themselves by a certain scale. But let us not limit it to the creation of patterns or a novel architecture. It is the presence of a fractal in an architectural space that enhances its emotive sense.

The fractal order in a natural holy mountain Arafat and man-made creation of Mecca may be quite similar but it is this fractal that defines the very nature of an organized complexity that not only is a repetitive pattern but also an organic interpretation, a way in which life exists.

A minimalist building altogether defies the existence of fractals. The ornamentation from a scale 2mm to 2m, which corresponds to the human scale of structuresSize of the eye, finger, arm, hand etc is eliminated. This can be defined as an ‘Anti-Fractal’ approach.

“One prayer in this-my mosque, is more efficacious than a thousand in other places”

Deconstructive style being characterized by unbalanced, chaotic forms can approach a statistical fractal but have no patterns on single scale or linked across different scales.

Does that leave the Chapel at Ronchamp a less emotive architecture? There is least detail as one approaches the building. Apart from the abstract geometry it leaves nothing in detail on magnification, a typical attribute of anti-fractals. But inside it, is the perforated north wall that brings in the drama. Addressed differently, can these rays of colored light become a fractal of space that magnifies with kinesthetic movement, change their scale and intensify their form?

A pilgrim’s journey of faith to the Grand Mosque in Mecca vanquishes the worldly desire and leads to a spiritual evaluation.

Cursed him When people sneered at me “Architect”?

They’d ask ”ohhhhh…..”

In that voice Stupid old man!

Cursed him most of all Because I loved Every minute of it.

But does architecture play a role in any way that can lead to such a strong emotional impact and a spiritual satisfaction?

Architecturally speaking, Mecca is a marvel. Here the delicate details and intrinsic geometry in each element stands apart and is a gem of its own.

One day though There I was Wrinkled and bent

Facing Page (L-R): The Grand Mosque, Mecca; Chapel at Ronchamp, France by Le Corbusier; Chapel’s interior

In such a place, where the same pattern of very small detail scales a measurable human form, a minaret that stands beside, of a scale much larger relates to something that cannot comprehend to a mere human scale. It is this realization that in a micro way infuses faith in that which lies above us all and is much grand than our existence.

Can the concept of making a holy place for Christianity over the time of some 2000 years contain a fractal element in its space? The treatment of light that remains a more philosophical fractal here, magnifies itself through the time-line. And the structural element of Gothic magnifies itself as it moves back from Romanesque to the construction of Basilica.

Fractal here does not remain as a pattern to be scaled in the ratio of non-integral terms but an interpretation of what it does, how it is relevant in a space and why it needs application in the real world.

Understanding Historic Urban Settlements (Pazhayarai – the ruined city) R. Balaji, School of Architecture

Hindustan University, Chennai

INTRODUCTION An historic building is one that gives us a sense of wonder and makes us want to know more about the people and culture that produced it. It has architectural, aesthetic, historic, documentary, archeological, economic, social and even political and spiritual or symbolic values; but the first impact is always emotional, for it is a symbol of our cultural identity and continuity – a part of our heritage.

kingdoms with great power and dominance. These three dynasties were in constant struggle with each other vying for hegemony.

Kalabhras subjugated the Tamil country after defeating the ancient Chera, Chola and Pandya Kings.

“Civilizations flourished along the river “.

Man derives basic necessities of Food, Clothing, and Shelter. Man thrives on them for existence.

Man rose to power, evolved kingdoms with guilds and feuds.

Thus 300 A.D. saw the fall of the mighty Cholas and during this “Dark age “the Chola Empire almost completely disappeared from their native. This Dark age of the Tamil history came to an end with the ascendancy of the Pandyas and the Pallavas thus reviving the Chola dynasty.

“One Man ruled and other man obeyed “ From the first act of its creation, through its long life to the present day, a historic building has artistic and human ‘messages’ which will be revealed by a study of its history. A complexity of ideas and of cultures may be said to encircle an historic building and be reflected in it.

South India, one among the mightiest kingdom among the world. Her territories are ruled by so many powerful men.

River Cauvery flooded and flourished SOUTH INDIA and its considered holy. It is responsible for the fertility and robustness of Tamil Nadu.

A number of civilizations have had their births at the lap of this holy river. Some of the ancient civilizations that prospered were Chera, Cholas, and Pandyas.

The Vijiayanageras , the Hoysala and Chalukyas. The Chera, Chola and Pandya Period were also known as the “GOLDEN AGE” of Tamil Nadu.

NEED FOR CONSERVATION To preserve historically valued buildings and their cultural features.

To enhance the importance of valuable history to the public age.

To restore the derelict and decaying conditions to a newer and preservable state.

To add value to oldness by preserving it intact.

To cause a revival of usage and public participation as a community activity in restoration.

Evolution of mankind from ape to man has seen transformation through ages. Mankind has sustained over these ever changing ages through flourishing and desperation of the civilization. absolute truth.

Tamil Nadu, one of the most ancient Empires ever seen in the Indian history. It dates from the PALEOLITHIC period. Remains such as potteries, burial pots and cave paintings have been discovered by archaeological survey, thus proving its ancient ethnicity.

The Cholas were the most powerful among the other rulers. The Chola period has been classified to three periods namely, EARLY, MEDEIVAL and LATER.

The Chola dynasties were at the heights of their power continuously from the later half of the 9th century till the beginning of the 13th century.

The Chola King Vijayalaya Chola was one among its ancient kings and held Pazhaiyarai as their capital city for nearly 200 years. It was during this time, the Cholas set the first milestone of the medieval period by 846 A.D. Ref: ‘Pirkaala Cholar Saritharam’- Sadhasiva

Earlier the Chera, Chola, Pandya ruled their respective

Pandithar

“The Post-Sangam period saw the rise and fall of the Chola Empire.“ Ref: ‘The Cholas’ – Neelakanda shasthri

History of the ruined city, Pazhaiyarai A pure river side settlement.

This ancient settlement has very little mentions in historical records and its presumed to be included under Kumbakonam, the temple city.

Pazhaiyarai was believed to be the birth place of the Chola king who first invaded the kingdoms, defeating Pandyas and Pallavas.

This was framed as the first capital city after the invasion by the Cholas.

The Somanatha Swami temple lies in the centre of the settlement surrounded by Pazhaiyarai Vadathali (Palace) in the north, Araimetrali in the south and Thenthali in the south.. The temple has been revered by the verses of Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar.

This is said to be the birth place of Mangayarkarasiyar, a saint amongst the 63 nayanmars. The scene of Ravaneswara holding Kailasanathar in his hands is beautifully carved in this temple.

The ancient Pazhaiyarai was bounded on the East by Marudhanallur, on the west by the Suntharaperumal temple, North by Arasalaru and South by Kudamuruti river.

This capital city with its vast fertile land is bordered by the four padai veedu Puthupadai veedu – in the North-west Manapadai veedu – in the South-west Pambapadai veedu – in the South-east Aariyapadai veedu – in the North-east

“Ever in the history of the world there has never been such a long period of reign as a supreme power for nearly 430 years. They have never been equalled.”

Ref: ‘Earlier Cholas’ - Sethuraman

The king beautified this plane by implanting over thousand Lingas as temples.

This capital city enclosed numerous small villages: Veedu, Paadi, Paalayum, Thali, Kovil, Eecharum, Padugai, Kudi, Puram, Seri, Medu, Pettai, Nallur, Oor, Savadi, Thidal, Agragharam, Kai, Vanum, Thoopu, Kottai, Mutrum, Maligai, Veli, Theru, Aaru, Suzhi, Katti, Maathi, Kulam.

Settlements in this capital city were planned in accordance to the peoples’ line of work. All these panoramas made Pazhaiyarai a very authoritative capital in the Chola history. Later when Raja Raja Chola came to power, he shifted the capital to Tanjore, since then Pazhaiyarai lost its charm and shrinked into a hamlet village, thus became a place of desolation even till today.

CHANGE OVER TIME Pazhaiyarai unlike many great civilizations, which have flourished over time, has been completely neglected from the canvas of history.

Coordinates: It is ordinated in the latitude of 79.23’E to 79.38’E. Terrain: It is a low lying fertile delta plain flourished annually by numerous rivers like Cauvery, Arasalaru, etc. It is a gentle slope from North to South. It has an elevation of about 24m from sea level.

Earth science: Soil is basically alluvial rich in minerals that promote the growth of plantation crops.

Climate: It has a moderate climate with hot summers and occasional rainfall.

PRESENT SCENARIO A careful study of the finds of ‘Pazhaiyarai ‘ throws a flood of light on the social structure, religious, cultural glory, artistic excellence attained by this place in the past.

Location: Pazhaiyarai, 6km from Kumbakonam,

Thanjavur District,

Tamil Nadu

India

Rainfall: Some occasional rainfall from March to May, annual rainfall – 1115mm Temperature: It has a mean temperature range of about 32.2 ºc to 36.8 ºc.

Facing: Construction Site, Singapore, (Edited Photograph)

by Apoorv Kaushik, Fianl Year, CCA

Social structure / context: - Hamlet village - Homogenous group of people.

- Comprising mainly of Hindus - No traces of historical social structure - Village panchayats held - People live hand in hand with one another Human ecology: It has a total population of about 350 which turns up to be sparse.

Physical: - The physical aspects of the village are similar to any type of village in South India.

- The Somanatha Swami Temple is the focus but the village has developed around it.

- The roads are parallel to each other.

Cultural: - Cultural essence is lost - People here lead a simple life, not strictly governed by rules and principles - But festivals and ceremonies are always celebrated with the same pomp and posh - Virundhombal, a term that is ethnic to Tamilians that talk about the society and people.

- Culture and tradition has shaped architecture - Rearing cows gave rise to cattle shed.

- Open cooking gave rise to the construction of open kitchens.

- Self modified Architecture gave rise to thinnai which was built for the relaxation of weary travellers.

Religious context: - Worshippers of Lord Shiva known as Saivites - Worshippers of Lord Vishnu known as Vaishnavites The Cholas were strictly the followers of Lord Shiva There is a pointer in history especially during one of the Chola kings Karikal Cholan that a severe clash between saivites and vaishnavites happened.

Transportation: - The settlement is located 6kms approximately from Kumbakonam.

- Its located, 2kms from patteeswarum and nearly 3kms away from Dharasurum.

- The best mode is taking town buses or mini buses from Kumbakonam - The dharasurum railway station is nearby.

CONCLUSION: The futures’ in the air, We can feel it everywhere, Blowing with the wind of change.

Winds of change are necessary, As the ancient theories rest on assumptions that makes no sense.

Its always necessary for a change to be of a positive degree. But in today’s world change of a particular subject leads to its extinction or conclusion. This is what happened in case of Pazhaiyarai, the city which was once a mighty capital of a dynasty, later faded loosing its essence and now its yet another hamlet village in Kumbakonam with very limited developments.

These are evident enough to frame Pazhaiyarai as an urban settlement in history.

This historic urban has thus carved its niche in the canvas of history.

Fractals In New Architecture Niyati Shetty

L.S. Raheja School of Architecture.

Mumbai

Traditional architecture and urbanism require a sense of modesty and humility from the individual creator towards the sacred creation of the universe as well as a basic institution that concepts of beauty, harmony, justice, truth and rightness are permanent and universal. Christopher Alexander a brilliant architectural theorist proposed that the basic laws for architecture and urbanism depends upon scientific rules rather than stylistic dictates which can create new buildings that duplicate the intensity positive, nourishing feelings of the greatest historical buildings , without copying neither their form nor their style. A fractal structure is a structure in which there’s some observable structure at every level of magnification and different levels of scale are very tightly linked by the design.

In contradiction modernist buildings have no fractal qualities i.e. not only there are very few scales but different scales are not linked in any way.

Generating mathematical fractal on different scales

Fractal properties are seen mostly in traditional buildings as well as folk architecture Most of the cities are fractal right from the paths streets to the shape of the facades and placing of trees which is seen vividly in cities like Paris ,London and Venice which has been mathematically measured by people like Michael batty and Frankauster.

Fractals have two related characteristics: they show complexity at every magnification; and their edges and interfaces are not smooth, but are either perforated or crinkled. A fractal has some connective structure at different scales. Historical cities are richly structured at every magnification, whereas contemporary cities enhance the largest scale but suppress everything else.

Crescent at Bath arises from compression, and so it is crinkled on the human scale.

Generating an architectural fractal

When an urban interface is not permeable, it is convoluted, like a crinkly meandering river or folded curtain. A building edge couples by interweaving with its adjoining space, creating another type of fractal. This folding arises spontaneously as a natural consequence of urban forces; for example, portions of buildings that grow outwards onto the pavement.

Despite the obvious threat to public space, it seems that this process represents a natural evolution of the built boundary into a more stable fractal form.

Fractals have two related characteristics: they show complexity at every magnification; and their edges and interfaces are not smooth, but are either perforated or crinkled. A fractal has some connective structure at different scales. Historical cities are richly structured at every magnification, whereas contemporary cities enhance the largest scale but suppress everything else. A city has to do with the largest scale, whereas human beings connect to the human scales. The most important urban structures exist on much smaller scales, going right down to the detail in the materials.

One of the stated aims of modernism was to eliminate any architectural interface with fractal dimension.

These were replaced by long, straight roads, and reinforced with the strict alignment of buildings.

The reason given was to clean up the perceived messiness of older cities; yet that messiness was really the organized complexity that made them alive.

Take a wire and compress it longitudinally, fairly evenly along its entire length. It will buckle and crinkle, creating a fractal boundary of dimension greater than one.

Pull it to straighten it out, again evenly along its length, it will first straighten, and then it will break into aligned pieces so as to be able to extend its length. This creates a fractal line with fractal dimension less than one.

Fractal generated by tension and breaking Traditional villages show an infinite range of fractal interfaces between their building fronts and street. There, one finds gentle curves that are crinkled on the small scale, and lines that are only approximately straight on the large scale. Even in formal planning, a curved structure such as the Circus and Royal Crescent at Bath arises from compression, and so it is crinkled on the human scale.

Traditional villages show an infinite range of fractal interfaces between their building fronts and street.

There, one finds gentle curves that are crinkled on the small scale, and lines that are only approximately straight on the large scale. Even in formal planning, a curved structure such as the Circus and Royal

Curvature arises from longitudinal compression.

Another point is the scale on which the fractal dimension is measured: great urban environments use fractals on the human scale, whereas dead environments deliberately remove them. For example, a colonnade is useful when the intercolumn spaces are roughly between 1m and 3m, i.e., comparable to the human scale of movement.

Non-fractal structure suppresses the human scale

A portico is a fractal on the human scale

Digital Reflections of Palladian Spaces - Interactive art. Screen shot.

Project developed by Daniela Sirbu, University of Lethbridge

Natural structures are fractal, whereas only traditional buildings are fractal. Modernism teaches us to eliminate fractal structures and to replace them with non-fractal built structures. This philosophy does not respect a tree or an older building. The eradication of the fractal qualities of our cities and towns has lead to the philosophical, psychological, and physical separation of human beings from their environment. at a contemporary city -- it fails miserably as an environment for children from infants to teenagers.

Environmentalists increasingly blame architects for damaging the natural environment, but the damage extends far deeper.

This interactive art project (figure) investigates in experiential ways the generative power of Palladian architecture taking “La Rotonda� as the starting point of the digital journey. The purpose of the project is to expose the visitor to spaces generated through abstract rules starting from a known familiar pattern.

The interactive character of the digital space allows the visitor to experience La Rotonda both as pure geometrical abstraction starting from the plan, and section drawings, and as anthropomorphic digital architecture allowing human orientation in the virtual space based on behaviours acquired through interaction with real architecture. The visitor’s actions generate new patterns of possible Palladian architecture representing the digital reflections of the real Palladian spaces.

The movie explores interactions between the inner and outer spaces of the Palladian digitally generated forms of architecture. The investigation is meant to emphasize the idea of a new space conception related to the specifics of architectural space in an artificial changeable environment, developing along the historical line described by Siegfried Gideon. The new forms of digital architecture are explored from the perspective of their relation with thought, perception, and multiple dimensions of human existence in the information age.

The proposed interactive art project provides a basis for qualitative analysis synthesizing principles for virtual architecture design as a basis for the creation of spatialized information spaces. New directions of design and development for Internet portals are investigated based on the transfer of architectural composition and structures to the organization of the digital medium.

Imaginary Palladian Spaces - Movie. Screen shot. Project developed

by Daniela Sirbu, University of Lethbridge

This image (figure) explores in experiential ways the idea of a fourth space conception rooted in the specifics of the digital medium. Change the relationships between the interior and the exterior of the virtual architecture and their coexistence in simultaneous shots are investigated in order to experiment with differences and similarities in the perception of represented and real spaces.

This movie investigates the interplay between the evolving character of the digital architecture and the development of new patterns of human behaviour in interaction with the changeable virtual environment. It explores a digital architectural space in development taking as a starting point Palladio’s villa “La Rotonda.”

The architectural space is first exposed as pure geometry, then it is investigated as a growing abstract construction evolving from a nucleus pattern provided by “La Rotonda,” then it is explored through interactions between emerging inner and outer spaces, available for exploration on multiple planes.

Starting from architecture as abstract form, the movie attempts to link the beauty of pure geometry with human thought, perception, and the multiple dimensions of human existence. The movie begins with abstract representations of architecture, and then develops towards an exploration of evocative values of an active and changing digital architectural environment. The movie investigates the poetics of the evolving architectural forms and how these are related to the original starting pattern.

The movie development is characterized by the coexistence of a number of parallel universes. An accumulation of details is used as an operational device throughout the movie to provide references toward the coexisting different universes. The development in time of the visual composition is operated through manipulation of visual perception shifts from one meaningful element to another.

Throughout the movie, shots staging emphasize the exposition of different artificial worlds. The viewer is floating between emerging universes that can never be seen concretized. Transitions in the movie are a very effective device, a counterexample of pictorial continuity in the sense it is performed in classical Hollywood style.

An apologist’s crusade Vani. S

SCOA, Pune

Below: Jama Masjid, Champaner, Gujrat

“Whatever is good in its kind ought to be preserved in respect for antiquity as well as for our present advantage for destruction can be profitable to none but such as live by it” -Nicholas Hawksmoor The oxford states that conservation is to prevent something from loss or wastage or damage-be it forest, water or old buildings- they are all the same.

Though conservation of water and forest is of prime importance, it is a sad fact that old buildings across the globe lack that privilege.

Today conservation of old buildings or rather historically important buildings presents a different ideology. In a very commercial world the historic importance of a building is valued only if it can generate back the funds invested in it. Any historic building, if conserved has to be functional and a source of income. Recently I had visited a government office housed in a colonial palace. Originally the palace was built with intricately decorated cornices, ceilings and columns. It was at its time a prime example of colonial art and architecture. Though the palace still stands, many years after its construction, its historical significance is lost among the wild that grows beside it.

These days the “in” thing is to revamp any structure of historical importance into a tourist centre where the guide narrates the history of all the people ever been there and the tourists ooh and aah after him. Still undoubtedly, making a monument a tourist centre is a better option than letting nature take its toll. In such situations conservation architects have to work within the current constraints and still be effective advocates for all the buildings, which pass through their hands.

One such architect in India, presently battling to alvage the magnificent architectural history of our country, is Ar. Karan Grover, Secretary of the Heritage Thrust of Vadodara. Karan Grover and Associates, has emerged into a multi-disciplinary organization with an in-house engineering team which is seen as an integral part of architectural design activity. With the idea that the traditional architecture of India was the most sustainable of all, the practice attempts to

conceive buildings and design projects that are very Contemporary, at times Futuristic in appearance, yet Indian at their heart. Grover’s architecture reflects his concerns with the heritage and built landscape of India. He believes that India demands something more than merely adopting the western norms of architecture. The long architectural history of this country and the development of its style to cater to climatic needs provided the framework for this search.

Grover has always spread the urgently needed social commitment to the conservation of both endangered historical buildings and rapidly depleting water supplies. He believes that Indians are oblivious to the role that they are playing, in the rapid depletion of two national resources: water and ancient architecture.

India’s architectural heritage, a vast archive of accumulated technical knowhow and reason, is being drained along with its rivers and lakes.

They say conservation does not guarantee immortality.

Perhaps the thoughts of delaying mortality are the reason behind Karan Grover’s efforts. One such work of his is the old city of Champaner; which was recently cited among the World Heritage Sites by the UNESCO. The history of the Champaner-Pavagadh archaeological park dates back to pre-historic times, when it was first inhabited by the Stone Age man.

Subsequently, early settlements were recorded in the 6th and 7th century AD when the site became part of the Maitrak dynasty. With the decline of Maitraks in the 9th century, the region came under the influence of Gurajar Pratihar and Parmara rulers. It then passed into the hands of Khichi Chauhans of Rajasthan. The site’s Muslim period began with Sultan Mehmood Begada, who shifted his capital from Ahmedabad to Champaner fort in 1484.This region came under the Mughals in the year 1535 when it was plundered by Humayun.

The architecture here is a blend of Muslim and Hindu styles. The Muslim monuments, like the Jami Masjid, Nagina Masjid, and Lila Gumbaj are typical of the Sultanate architecture with medieval Hindu influence, attributed mainly to Hindu artisans. The site includes, among other vestiges, fortifications, palaces, religious

buildings, residential precincts, agricultural structures and water installations, from the 8th to the 14th centuries. This site is the only complete and unchanged Islamic pre-Mughal city in India.

Slowly, the traditional engineering and Knowledge are being rediscovered, the main significance of this site lies in its understanding of the traditional water networks which is emerging as an area of scientific research. And for Grover who is constantly working to save the dwindling sources of water and historical buildings, this was the cherry on the cake. The challenges of the Pavagadh hill were substantial, but still water was being stored.

The efficient system of rain water harvesting is another source of knowledge which is an important landmark for the holistic development of the area. Sustainable balance, as a measure for development, although a rare phenomenon, is being maintained here even today. The community has developed this very spontaneously.

The water was collected in large catchments by diverting it from small rivulets and stored at a higher plane to keep the ground water recharged. The city is dotted with thousands of wells which catered to the requirements of the individual households.

The royal palaces had elaborate systems of water channels running through the inner rooms for creating comfortable and cool environments for the inhabitants.

The Champaner Pavagadh Archaeological park is a first living heritage site which house about 4000 people in it. The landscape around the park, the various architectural features the reserved forest beside it and the Kalika Mata temple on topof the Pavagadh hill all together make this heritage site a fantastic tourist spot. Due to this commercialization the citizens of this city will be highly benefited.

It is unfortunate how all fundamentalists, both Hindu and Muslim, share a general dislike for all that is good and beautiful in this world. Currently a debate is raging among the pro-heritage and anti-heritage lobbies, the

latter being largely fuelled by Niraj Jain, a BJP member from Vadodara. In spite of the obvious advantages to the local people from the world heritage site status of this area, which include strengthening of the local economy due to increased tourist influx and consequent reduction in the labour migration to surrounding cities, the anti-heritage lobby is complaining against the restrictions put on construction of commercial and residential structures in the protected zone, lack of local consultation, and they feel that Muslim monuments are getting more attention than the Kalika Mata temple, the latter complaint has obvious communal overtones.

The fact that we find the question on conservation worth discussing marks the essential difference between the two views of conservation and underlines the fact that what we do is conditioned by our motives in doing anything at all.

From Empire State to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre How recessions produce fine architecture Hugh Pearman

Facing Page: The Emipre State Building, New York; The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, London Below: The Shard (Proposed), London

An expanded version of the article published in The Sunday Times, 4th January 2009, as “All hail the New Puritans”

There’s nothing like a recession for bringing architecture back to its senses. With less being built, there’s time to think. Overblown stylings are out the window. New Puritanism stalks the streets.

By and large, this is a good thing. For instance, the last recession brought down the curtain on the unlamented ticky-tacky decadence of the postmodern, Lawson-boom era. A new generation of cool modernists was born. But what does this one herald?

Less is definitely more when it comes to dumb shopping malls, nondescript speculative office blocks, sprawling edge-of-town housing estates, indoor ski slopes, mass-market tourist developments and just about anything in Dubai, a wholly invented place that future historians and archaeologists will have

a lot of trouble explaining. But don’t run away with the idea that, suddenly, nobody is building anything anymore. They are. In the Great Depression of early 1930s America, the incredibly ambitious building of Manhattan’s three great skyscrapers demonstrated a dogged confidence in the future that turned out to be fully justified. Thus we have the Chrysler and Empire State buildings and the Rockefeller Centre, always my favourite because it expands into a complete city district at its base. Given this precedent, I’m not remotely surprised to find that, though some plans for new City of London skyscrapers are on hold, others are not.

In Britain, the Odeon-like Royal Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon by Elisabeth Scott was built during the same slump, 1929 - 1932. Oddly enough its 100m successor by Bennetts Associates with theatre consultants Charcoalblue is being built right now - within the shell of the old building, during another big recession. The much tighter new 1,000 seat theatre will open in 2010.

But back to the City of London. Richard Rogers’ proposed 737-foot Leadenhall tower - nicknamed the Cheesegrater, just across the road from his famous Lloyd’s of London building - is to have its construction halted for the time being at foundation level. But the1,016-foot “Shard” by his old chum Renzo Piano at London Bridge is powering ahead. And while you

can’t help wondering about an equally controversial project, the 500-foot hooded cobra of Rafael Vinoly’s Fenchurch Street tower (the stop-or-go decision there is planned for March) things seem set fair for another supertall example, the 945-foot “Pinnacle” on Bishopsgate. That’s better known as the “Helter Skelter” because of its spiralling shape, and is by American architects KPF. To put it in context, that’s half as tall again as the existing Tower 42 (previously the NatWest Tower) or Norman Foster’s newer Gherkin.

Take a stroll through the City today and - although there are perhaps fewer cranes than there used to be - you’d almost think there was a boom on, what with big lower-rise developments under way by the likes of France’s Jean Nouvel or London’s Nicholas Grimshaw.

Further west you’ll find Piano doing another of these big-but-not-skyscraperish commercial schemes right next to Centre Point at the end of Oxford Street, while Rogers is well advanced with his enormous ultraluxury apartment blocks for the Candy brothers in Knightsbridge. These, of course, were all begun long ago and - barring absolute economic Armageddon are too far along to stop now.

Around the country, we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the bubble of speculative apartment building has burst. Most of those formulaic new blocks pepperpotting city centres were driven not by need, but by overseas investor clubs transfixed by capital gain, who often had no interest in seeing them

occupied. Good riddance to them. On the plus side, however, some promising cultural projects have made it through the madness.

Despite everything people like to say about the alleged maladroitness of Liverpool, it is now well advanced with its new 70m Museum of Liverpool (over leaf) on the revived Pierhead. Shame they sacked the original Danish architect - shades of the Sydney Opera House there - but at least it’s there, and will open in 2010.

Meanwhile in London, we shall shortly be seeing a 13m extension (into a former public library) of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, courtesy of Belgian architects Robbrecht en Daem. It will open in April, nearly double its previous size.

I find myself wondering about London’s biggest cultural project, Tate Modern’s 215m extension into a brick-and-glass ziggurat behind the old power station of the original building. Last time I checked, they were still hoping to get the thing done ultra-fast in time for the 2012 London Olympics (a revised planning application goes in this month, January), but had raised only one-third of the money. Unless director Sir Nicholas Serota has some magic cash fountain, I’d expect some backpedalling soon. Which would be a shame, as now is a great time to build. It’s getting cheaper. So if a powerful city like Birmingham can find the wherewithal to build its proposed new cultural quarter (central library and Birmingham Rep

Below: Museum of Liverpool Facing: High School #9 by Coop Himmelb(l)au, Los Angeles,

by Apoorv Kaushik, Final Year, CCA

combined), now’s the time to get on with it. And if not - well, there are plenty of defenders of the existing Brutalist 1970s library.

One group of people who always look on the bright side during a recession is the conservation lobby. Less good existing stuff gets knocked down. For instance, the City of London was making big plans to expand its office empire both east - into the old East End - and west, into Smithfield. Those plans are now on hold, with overblown plans for Smithfield axed and a new architect, John McAslan, appointed to come up with something more appropriate.

Across the UK, you’ll find lots of schools being built - some good, some awful. Many hospitals and clinics. Even a surprising amount of private housing, in expansion zones like Milton Keynes, Ashford and Didcot. Big new inter-city railway stations, such as London King’s Cross by John McAslan (again), and Birmingham New Street by rising stars Foreign Office Architects, are in hand. And there’s always our Austerity Olympics. The work cannot stop. The main stadium is now emerging.

Stuff, then, is happening. But stylistically? Well, the New Puritans are triumphant at the thought of the death of the weird-shaped icon building. It’s not dead yet - Abu Dhabi is still collecting the things, for instance, building itself a cultural history overnight - but the end of its

reign is perhaps in sight, for the time being. Did the year that saw the death of Jorn Utzon, architect of the Sydney Opera House and thus the progenitor of the whole icon craze, mark the end of the line? Only, I think, until the money returns. But when it does, history tells us that the architecture will be different.

Every artistic movement has its decadent phase, followed by a clearing out of the aesthetic stables.

This time will be no different for architecture, but for one interesting detail. Last time round saw a return to clean-cut modernism and the ruthless expunging of post-modern ornament. This time round, some at least of the New Puritans are getting very interested in ornament again. Odd though it may seem, we may be in for quite a bout of pattern-making in the next wave of buildings. But they’re more likely to be a sensible shape.

Steel Structures SymHomes Mk1, Kolkata: A NEW DIMENSION TO HOUSING IN INDIA Umesh Agrawal MIET, Gondia

For the proponents of steel in construction, the real challenge lies in the residential sector, to overcome the resistance of people like you and me to steel houses.

Will the Rajarhat project help to do that?

October’07, the International Iron and Steel Institute’s Annual Conference and Meetings in Buenos Aires added another dimensions in the Indian architecture.

Winners of the 1st International resource on sustainable and innovative use of steel in residential construction, Piercy Conner who has been lauded by the British Counsel as an firm that has emerged in the last five years as one of the most conceptually advanced architectural practices of its generation, extending the theory and practice of architecture in

a way that demonstrates a profound understanding of its cultural and communicational possibilities presented their winning designs before the global steel industry. The first steel residential building in India and construction will create a lot of interest in many spheres throughout the country and beyond.

The construction site for Living Steel’s Kolkata demonstration is to in Kolkata New Town, called Rajarhat, which is located 10km to the North-east of Kolkata’s (formerly Calcutta) Central Business District and about 1km from Kolkata International Airport.

Sanon Sen & Associates, Kolkata, are supporting Piercy Conner’s efforts to finalize the design plans for build.

Piercy Conner believes that contemporary housing rarely deviates from the accepted model of sealed cellular spaces, which often fails to respond to demographic and environmental conditions. So in designing for the Indian location, their self-imposed challenge was to create an economically viable alternative that would be “expressive, joyful and responsive to the environment.” Their solution is based on a dwelling design Piercy Conner calls SYMHOUSEMK1. Symhouse conceptualizes the symbiotic relationship of a sealed, conditioned contemporary living space enveloped by a permeable responsive outer skin. As the two “natures” permeate each other, the in-between spaces become an outdoor room and the internal spaces engage with the landscape. The concept creates a hierarchy of community, semi-private and private spaces that are designed to encourage engagement within the local context, while still providing secure and safe homes.

The landscape is used to reinforce the idea of event spaces, and a secret garden creates a semi-private retreat.

This project mainly for HIG’s in Rajarhat will provide homes for around 750,000 people and cater for some 250,000 floating population will have high quality infrastructure including wide roads, bridges, large public open spaces including water-bodies, educational institutions, medical facilities, sports and cultural facilities in addition to basic infrastructure like water supply, power supply and drainage A BUILDING WITH SKIN Folding steel trays with differing design cuts create a unique rain, privacy and sun screen. The permeable outer skin is created from a series of steel panels that are positioned according to layered data from sun path studies, key views and privacy. Based on the data, 10 typical screens were created in folding steel trays with differing laser or plasma cuts. The resulting façade is reminiscent of many screens and freezes found in Indo-Islamic architecture. The screens act as partial rain, privacy and sun screens, while also animating the building and effecting a dramatic day to night visual transition.

JALIS ARE USED IN THIS STRUCTURE FOR THE VENTILATION PURPOSE, WHICH IS AN ELEMENT ACCORDING TO ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE IN INDIA.

Below: by Ankita Thakur, CCA, Chandigarh

STANDARDIZED AND PREDICTABLE SymHouse aims to standardize component sizes and assembly processes. The external steel screens are all of the same dimensions. They are constructed using a simple fixing system, standard to all panels, which can be assembled with minimal training. Similar principals apply to the frame, floors, glazed and solid elements. This standardization supports buildings that are predictable in construction, cost certainty and quality, but most important, that allow builders to take advantage of India’s largest resource: its labor force.

These buildings can be constructed by a relatively unskilled workforce, while achieving an acceptable finish quality to attract potential purchasers.

“KIT OF PARTS” STRATEGY The SymHomes delivery strategy is based on a factory produced, precise “kit of parts” and simple robust detailing. The assembly process borrows from highspeed commercial office construction, utilizing the existing supply chain infrastructure. SymHomes uses a series of identical rectangular units arranged around a central core to maximize the economies of repetition as well as shared core areas, such as the stairs, lift, and community space.

The structure has a steel frame with concrete floor slabs on profiled metal decking. The structural frame is fabricated as individual elements within the steel fabrication shop and assembled on-site using bolted connections. This approach will enable the “kit of parts” strategy with significant repeatability, unit-to-unit and floor-to-floor, accuracy with precast elements & locally available semi-skilled labor can be employed to raise the building.

Steel houses may sound outlandish but they are quite common in many parts of the world, especially Finland and Australia. Tata Steel built a clubhouse and two bungalows in Jamshedpur entirely of steel. But these were primarily showpieces put up by the steel manufacturer to show that it was possible to make steel houses, and that people could live in them. Steel structure requires less time to construct, which is very essential for the fast growing population of India, but the Indian population which has mould themselves to

live in brick and concrete structures, can live in these steel homes?

Green Buildings THEIR IMPORTANCE AND RATINGS IN PRESENT DAY SCENARIO Siddharth Khitoliya Faculty of Arch & Ekistics, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

MEANING OF A GREEN BUILDING Green buildings can be characterized as those where a conscious effort to minimize the negative and encourage the positive impact of the buildings on both the indoor and outdoor environments has been made. The practice of green building typically includes attention to the following primary concepts and systems: • Sustainable/durable/low maintenance building design and operation • Energy efficiency and conservation • Site/land management, sustainability, reclamation and conservation • Water efficiency, management and conservation • Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) • Outdoor Air Quality • Material and resource management, recycling and conservation (including the re-use of building materials and products) • Innovation Each of the above major concepts and systems may be broken down into many specific and detailed components. A covered entry over an exterior entry door, for example, may be one way of reducing water intrusion, which is one way that maintenance may be reduced in accordance with the NAHB Model Green Home Building Guidelines.

GREEN BUILDING RATINGS Most buildings, even existing buildings, may be considered “green” to some extent. The previous example of a covered entry is one way in which many homes could be considered green. Similarly, when a community decides to enforce or encourage water conservation or enforce requirements which address urban heat island issues, these may be considered “green” initiatives. Federal government sponsored programs such as Energy Star (Energy conservation voluntary performance standards for new buildings; mandatory for federal buildings) and Federal Energy Management and Planning Programs, address energy and energy conservation, which are green building principles. Should all these buildings be considered “green”? To answer this question, as well

as to give further weight and definition to the term “green”, green building rating systems have been developed.

These rating systems seek to establish minimum criteria and methods by which green buildings can be measured, compared and evaluated. Green building rating systems typically grade a structure on a scale so that various levels of “green” may be verified or certified. A point system is often utilized, with points given for each environmentally friendly concept implemented. The criteria analyzed and the relative score assigned to each criteria satisfied, however, may vary significantly from one green building rating system to another. In the United States, a handful of local jurisdictions have developed their own green building criteria or rating systems, but typically only for lowrise residential structures, such as governed by the ICC International Residential Code. More prominently, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system, developed by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has been utilized for a limited but fast growing number of “green” commercial structures.

THE CURRENT STATUS OF GREEN BUILDING The groundswell of interest in green building in the United States continues to grow and gain momentum.

We hear of “the greening of America” regularly in the media. The Federal Government and more and more state and local jurisdictions require that government owned buildings as well as government sponsored or funded projects be built to green standards or they may give some form of incentives to expedite private or corporate projects that are built green. Why? Because such buildings typically cost significantly less when considered over their expected life span, may not cost prohibitively more initially, than conventional structures, have less negative impact on the environment and may significantly reduce the huge amount of financial investment required for infrastructure (such as new water treatment and power plants).

Even though green building continues to gain significant momentum, it is still very much in its

infancy. While it is true that even ancient thatched huts could be considered green buildings, the concept of controlling and measuring the impact of the construction of modern buildings on the environment is quite new and revolutionary, especially at the level of detail required by some green building rating systems. The determination of what are the proper applications of new concepts such as life cycle analysis (LCA, which seeks to determine the overall environmental impact of and total energy consumed by building products, from extraction of raw materials to manufacturing, transportation, how they are finally disposed of, etc.) and embodied energy (which seeks to evaluate criteria similar to LCA, but for all products and materials in an entire building), for example, are still in their early stages of development. And what value should be assigned to a materials effect on the ozone vs. its effect on water, for instance, can be very subjective. Some of the criteria and methods used to evaluate green building systems can, in themselves, be very arbitrary and unscientific, and may vary significantly from one rating system to the next.

GREEN BUILDING RATING SYSTEMS FOR COMMERCIAL STRUCTURES Although similar green and sustainable building concepts can be applied to both commercial and residential structures, there has been a divergence in the development of the rating systems for each. As alluded to previously, although there is an emerging trend toward mandatory green building, even where jurisdictions have adopted green building programs, corporate and commercial buildings are not typically required to be “green” (As defined by a green building rating system), except in special cases as part of specific government sponsored projects. Yet more and more such buildings are voluntarily built to “green” standards every year, even where jurisdictions have no green building program whatsoever. At the federal, state and local levels, more and more government agencies are requiring that buildings utilized for government purposes (not privately or corporate owned buildings) be built to “green” standards.

For commercial buildings in the United States,

federal, state and local jurisdictions, corporations and designers have overwhelmingly looked to the aforementioned LEED Green building rating system as a basis for the assessment and certification of the anticipated performance of a building with respect to “green” attributes. A major reason that the LEED program has become so popular and prominent may be that it is a system which can be administered and certified by USGBC staff, rather than putting a significant burden on local building departments.

The USGBC is a not-for-profit organization which is not affiliated with the federal government. Over 2,100 LEED-NC (LEED for new commercial construction) projects were registered in the year ending September, 2005, In the same time period, the states of Nevada, Washington, Arizona, Rhode Island, Colorado, Maryland and Michigan either mandated LEED projects for government buildings and projects, or provided tax abatements or credits for LEED certified commercial buildings. The USGBC not only rates and certifies green buildings, it also has programs to train and certify LEED-accredited professionals. As of 2005, twenty-two thousand professionals were LEED Accredited.

It is important to note, however, that being LEED certified does not mean a building has no negative impact on the environment, and the LEED program, as well as all other green building evaluation systems, are in the early stages of their development GREEN BUILDING FOR RESIDENTIAL STRUCTURES With regard to single-family dwellings, two-family dwellings and townhouses (low-rise residential structures typically regulated under the International Residential Code), a handful of local jurisdictions across the country have developed and are administering their own residential green building programs and rating systems. As noted earlier, till date these programs have typically been voluntary, with incentives given (such as shorter permit and plan review times) to generate interest in the programs.

While there are a fair and growing number of voluntary residential green building programs in the country, as noted earlier, there is also an emerging trend toward mandatory requirements in communities which have

Below: by Ankita Thakur, CCA, Chandigarh

had previous experience with voluntary green building programs.

On a parallel note, although energy is only one component in the green building scenario, it may be of interest to note that the city of Austin, Texas (which in 1991 became the first city in the U.S. to implement a green building program) recently announced plans to make “Zero-Energy Capable” homes mandatory by 2015. The intent is that such homes will be energy efficient and adaptable to be net-zero energy efficient homes in the future (when on-site energy generation, such as solar photo-voltaics could be designed and installed with minimal modifications to the structure).

The City of Austin contends that such homes could be approximately 60 percent more efficient than homes built to current codes.

FINAL THOUGHTS Over time, more and more “green” materials and methods will appear in the codes and have an effect on current code text. But the implications of green and sustainable building are so wide and far reaching that their effects will most certainly not be limited to one single code or standard. On the contrary, they will affect virtually all codes, and will spill beyond the codes. Some green building concepts may become hotly contested political issues in the future, possibly requiring the creation of new legislation and/or entirely new government agencies. It is certain, however, that the greening of the codes is inevitable, the greening process will continue to demand the time and effort of many individuals and organizations which safeguard the public health, safety and general welfare with regard to the built environment.

REFRENCES: ICC Green Building White Paper - March 5, 2007 , Prepared by Allan M. Bilka, RA, Senior Staff Architect, ICC Technical Services

Housing for the year 2050 Ritesh Redkar and Sai Satish Rao SPA, New Delhi

Below: by Abhishek Verma, CCA, Chandigarh

The Delhi Story…So Far…So Good Vedang Bagwe SCOA, Pune

DISCLAIMER: This is not a travelogue but simply my way of saving money and effort that would have otherwise gone into narrating the same story all over again over numerous STD calls. And for the same reason, is quite lengthy too. I hope you have enough patience to go through this.

The month of June started with a journey that was very different from the regular study tours I had been to. The train journey was of barely 18 hours. But the true journey was a journey to a very different phase of my life that would last for at least 5 to 6 months. This fact was highlighted by the number of people who had come to see us off at the railway station, even at 3am!

Other than immediate family members, a few fortunate ones had some relatives present at the station. To cut a long story short, once the train arrived, we placed our luggage and only after every mother’s mandatory list of ‘do’s and don’ts’ was over, did we settle down in our berths.

Indian railways have a funny sense of time, because even after everything was over, the train refused to move; long enough for our parents to actually get bored and wanting desperately to get rid of the train and us. “ata jaa ekdache” might have been in their minds. To their relief, the train started soon and, other than the heat, we went on smoothly till Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station.

As soon as we got out of the station, we got a taste of the ‘Delhi attitude’ in the way of the taxi drivers. The way in which they negotiated the fare made a few of us shudder at the thought of spending the next months in such a place.

To deal with them was a real tricky issue. And to make matters more difficult, none of us speaks polished Hindi. When we quoted an amount for the fare like in any bargain, they ridiculed us by saying, “moongfali nahi bech rahe hai!” However, we finally managed a decent bargain and made our way to the hotel, Pal Regency.

First two days in the capital were spent by us, some 14 architecture students searching for a decent accommodation. By decent, I mean ‘habitable’ space

for human beings as the rooms that were shown to us, termed miraculously as “flats” were, in fact, illegal boxes stacked over each other with minimum possible light and ventilation, it being the most important criteria for designing any space according to our architecture teachers. We took the assistance of flat agents and property dealers to search for accommodation. First day yielded no fruitful results.

However, on the second day, (3rd June) we finally managed to hunt down two apartments, one for girls and the other for boys. They were about a kilometer apart, with a ring road separating them.

Girls moved in on the same day, while boys decided to stay at the hotel for another night.

4thJuly is celebrated as the American Independence Day. Exactly a month before that, on 4th June, I virtually lost my independence as a student and got set for office life. Since Karol Bagh (where the hotel was located) is close to Connaught Place (where my office is sited), I left by auto. As a new comer in a city, I prayed that the driver stick to the shortest route. My first glimpse of Connaught place was, architecturally speaking, spectacular. The colonial buildings at the end of the street framed a view of two architectural masterpieces- Ar. Raj Rewal’s STC on left and Ar. Charles Correa’s LIC on the right and Palika Bazar in the center.

I had spoken with Ar. Morad Chowdhury the day before. He had given me the leave of coming late on first day by about half hour. Those of you who know about my punctuality would consider this as a grave mistake on his part. But surprisingly, I reached office a full hour earlier and found it locked. I memorized the location of the building and then set out for exploring Connaught place. Wimpy’s, Mc Donald’s, Pizza Hut, British Library, offices of national and international airlines and “many beautiful people” were the first things I noticed around my office. However, I could not (and still haven’t) find a cheap tea/coffee stall.

After enquiring about bus stops and schedules, I finally decided to head to my office.

Apprehension, tension and anxiety were not felt as I sat idly, reading the day’s newspaper. Architects

working in the office slowly started coming and I was welcomed by Deepti, an architect under Chowdhury sir, who would be guiding me. Well actually, in the firm of Kanvinde Rai Chowdhury, it’s only the three of us (Me, Deepti and Sir himself) who complete the ‘Chowdhury’ part of the firm. There are about 7 architects and trainees under Kanvinde sir and some accountants and clerks sum up the rest of the office.

First day at office was spent looking at portfolios of ongoing and past projects. Deepti had to leave half day and so, it was just sir and I, post lunch.

13th June ‘08 Architect Morad Chowdhury is the grand old man of Indian architecture. The only analogous personality that comes to my mind is Ex PM A.B. Vajpayee. I was really amazed at Chowdhury sir’s agility, memory and alertness despite his age. He’s 75+!

Most of the projects are government projects in Srinagar…and so delayed by about 10yrs. We had a nice chat on the situation of Jammu Kashmir and Srinagar after lunch on the first day.

His knowledge and information is really vast. At the time, I realized that my decision to train under him was a wise one. He’s amongst the few living architects from the first generation of Indian architecture. Learning the subtleties and practicalities of architecture ‘directly from the horse’s mouth’ fascinated me. To see him decode the drawings and think at various levels (structural, design, aesthetic) simultaneously is really an ‘out-of-the-college-studio’ experience. On one of the following days, he explained to me the importance of structural knowledge for designing toilets… for almost two hours. Sometimes it does take patience to understand his concept; I suppose that would come his age and seniority. I’ve also heard about his hot temper, but fortunately, I’ve not been at the receiving end till now.

Others in the office are almost of my age and are very helpful and friendly.

There’s a person from Sangli too. Lunch time’s the time when we all relax together in a small lunch room, mostly chatting and gossiping about other office

people and of course our dear bosses! Office has net access on a single computer (the place I mailed you this from). Other than that there are a lot of things over the LAN for a geeky guy like me to find out. Drawings and presentations of the various projects of the firm are all interesting to explore. We’re allowed to listen to music on ear phones.

Without which, trust me, everyone in the office would fall asleep. All in all the motto of the people here seems to be ‘Work while work and play while play’…

Traveling to office is quite a challenge and acquiring comfort in the process is entirely in the hands of lady luck. I learnt this the hard way on the first day, when on my bus journey back home, all I could see was the Sardarji in front of me and the lady beside me. The bus was packed to its maximum possible capacity!

And to add to it, the driver seems to be hell bent on testing all of Newton’s laws of motion that he might not have even heard of. I have realized that to restrict your state of motion irrespective of the multi directional state of motion of the bus is ‘n’ times more difficult than solving an equation of the same thing. Mumbai’s local train journey seems easier than my 45 minutes’ bus journey. The mood for the day is set right from the morning bus journey. Enjoying a window seat for the entire journey is a ticket to a pleasant day. Listening to music and plunging into Chetan Bhagat’s ‘The Three Mistakes of my Life’ is the icing on the cake. However, the route of the bus fascinates me the most. I am bound to cross the ‘axis’ (connection of Rashtrapati Bhavan and India gate) everyday. The magnificence of both these colonial structures will always be awe inspiring for me.

I once did try the Delhi metro, by changing bus routes, but realized it turns out to be double the money and hence is reserved as a luxury. There is a direct metro from Lajpat Nagar (where we stay) to Connaught Place, but presently they are laying the tracks in huge pits dug alongside roads. I reckon the phase two of metro will take at least two more years. I simply can’t wait so long to reach office! But all said, the experience of metro journey was awesome. It feels proud to see such advanced system operating in the country.

Facing: The Lotus Temple, New Delhi

After surviving the bus rush and reaching back home, we were greeted by dry taps for the first few days.

The water problem persists. Delhi water authority has queer timings of releasing water. And so, all the buildings have typical black ‘sintex’ tanks on top, which have to be filled at odd times like 3 or 4 am…!

The problem, however, seems to have been solved as of now with the installation of an automatic pump.

Other than that, we have all the comforts in our 2 BHK apartment. It’s on the second floor of a row house, close to the ring road and we have completed the arrangement with a TV (with set top box), fridge, sofa, one double bed, wardrobe in one bedroom and gas (with Faber chimney). Aur kya chahiye? You’d ask…

But we dint stop there. We also employed a maid to clean up the floor and our clothes every week. Food here is cheap and there’s a variety to choose from.

McD’s, Domino’s, CCD and small dhaba-like hotels are all there. A budget meal costs around Rs20, which is equivalent to the lunch most of us get in office; in terms of quality and quantity. But we have to buy drinking water in big cans. My average expenditure after all this is about Rs6500. This is a pinch on the pocket; especially because my stipend’s not yet disclosed. A month’s suspense will hopefully make things clear.

These were ‘in short’ my experiences in the capital in the first thirteen days of my practical training. Hope you enjoyed…

Architecture is the Music of Space Surbhi Bhardwaj CCA, Chandigarh

Facing Page (CW from left): View of the pavillion; The Stretto House; Below (Top to bottom): Stretto House Elevation; Ground Floor Plan; Formula for music and architecture interpreted by Steven Holl: Material x sound/time = material x light/space

Time has witnessed a long tradition of musical analogy with architecture. Man has found a variety of approaches for expressing this reciprocal relationship, be it from the use of underlying principles or solutions through literal translations.

led to an interest in the principles of various other filets of study, most important being music.

Renaissance architects started by creating proportional structures based on the principles of harmony in music established in Ancient Greece.

Historical references state that it was in ancient home where architecture and music were earliest considered branches of mathematical science.

In those times, knowledge of music was in fact, indispensable to an architect.

They envisioned that the same principles of beauty and aesthetics manifest in art, architecture and music.

Counterpoint and Harmony- the ‘horizontal’ and the ‘vertical’ aspects of music were given architectural equivalents – The Renaissance Palazzo and the Gothic Cathedral respectively.

“The architect should be equipped with the knowledge of many branches of study and varies kinds of learning for in the architectural judgment all of the work of other arts is brought into test. Therefore, let our architect be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, knowledgeable in history, follow the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of heavens “(Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Ten Books of Architecture).

Architecture, as a science and as an art, can be though of as being inclusive in nature. This has always

Music and architecture are correlated because – “The numbers by means of which the agreement of sounds affects our ears with delight are the very serve which please our eyes and our minds.” (Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the age of Humanism).

In order to compose a piece of music one needs to establish relationships between the different tones. If we regard the procedure of composing in a more abstract way we can observe that this music is a movement made in the musical space.

As for architecture, when a space is designed, the relationships between the various dimensions, levels, parts of the space are very important. There is a similarity of creative processes in aural composing and visual design--from both the psychological aspect of the process itself and from the aspect of formal organization, particularly as both forms are experienced in time.

The intertwining of musical principles with architecture has continued in present times as well. Architects have used music in their works and creations both literally and metaphorically.

Architect Le Corbusier and composer Iannis Xenakis collaborated on the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. The design of the pavilion referred to the principles and techniques of serial music and the interiors incorporated a multimedia show of lights, projected images and specially composed music.

The most widely known example is Steven Holl’s Stretto House. The concept of the Stretto House is the “Stretto” form of music where one musical phrase overlaps another. Steven Holl admired the connections between the traditional and the modern in Bartók’s music. Similarly, as Bartók’s extraordinary compositions reverberated original melodies, the Stretto house built an aqueous space with traditional materials, its polished concrete blocks and metal structure forming part of Texas’s vernacular architecture.

The “Stretto” form enabled Steven Holl to divide the space in such a way that each part was important for the next. The flow of the space evolved in different ways: the floor surface overlaps the next level, the roof overlaps walls and the curvilinear walls pull the daylight down into the interior space.

Graphics Facing Page (L-R): First Row: Debasish Biswas, Arun Cherian Second Row: Arun Varghese, Ridhima Mehrotra, Debasish Biswas Third Row: Shashank Gautam, Dipayan Ghosh SPA, New Delhi; Below: by Nikita Kakkar, CCA, Chandigarh

A New Excellence in High Rise Structures Jigar Patel

Vadodara DesignAcademy Facing Page: The Hearst building, Exterior cladding on the Hearst; Below: Interior view of triangulated columns of steel

“It’s a small step for man but a big leap for mankind.”

As we know we are living in a highly polluted and populated world and that has created great challenges in front of us for better living. Also, as time passes, man tries to facilitate him self in ways which rise the living standards of individuals but also increase the need of the soul. This has accelerated the construction speed of various structures as well.

With increasing pollution global warming has became one of the biggest challenges for us and building construction plays 70% role in increase of pollution.

These various issues have forced us to think towards new visions and direction of construction industry.

of land came up with a pre-eminent solution- a skyscraper. And need of reduced pollution made way for green sky scrapers.

Hearst tower at New York City is one of the finest examples of the style designed by Architect Norman Foster. The skyscraper contains 46 floors. The building consumes much less energy than an average office building; this is the first office building in New York City to achieve the US Green Buildings Council’s “Gold Rating” for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

The entire building is made out of steel, glass and first three stories with stone. 90% of the 10,480 tones of steel used in construction comes from recycled material. The triangulated steel frames uses 21% less steel than a traditionally framed building. It is also an excellence of the design because of which less

amount of natural light available at any given time. This automatically minimizes the usage of electric lighting inside. The volume receives brilliant natural light from 9m clerestory windows extending to the floor of the 10th storey and from the skirted ceiling of low-emission ceramic fritted glass.

A system on the roof collects rainwater and, instead of directing it into the sewer system, uses it to water plants throughout the building and to replace moisture lost through air conditioning. A three-story water feature named “Icefall” courses through the grand atrium inside the entrance. The sheet of flowing water is supplied by the rainwater collection system, and helps in cooling the lobby through evaporative cooling.

The remaining water collected from rain gets saved in to the basement of the building. In addition, Hearst is using high efficiency heating and air-conditioning equipment that will utilize the air outside for cooling and ventilation for 75% of the year.

One more interesting feature of the structure is that no vertical steel columns are used above the base. The tower is supported by 12 raking mega-columns.This is the first such case in any North American steel-framed skyscraper. The building is naturally ventilated for up to three quarters of the year, and that can be included as brilliance of the design.

The limestone floor not only harmonies visually with urban materials but contains water-filled tubing to channel heat from upstairs in winter and aid cooling during summer. This is an excellent idea to keep the

material is used.

According to Rabindranath Tagore “The oldest task in human history is to live without spoiling the land, harmony with whole” Thus increasing need of space and capable use

An innovative type of glass wraps around the exterior of the building. The glass has a special “low-E” coating that allows for internal spaces to be flooded with natural light while keeping out invisible solar radiation which causes heat. In combination with the glass, Hearst is installing light sensors that will control the amount of artificial light on each floor based on the

entire atmosphere at ambient temperature during the whole year.

Sustainable woods are used in everything from the Steel case workstations to the exercise-room. Highreflectivity roofing pavers reduce heat-island effects.

The demolition and construction process reused about 85% of the urban building. Locally sourced or recycled materials were the norm. Overall, the Hearst tower is estimated to be 22% more energy-efficient than a typical office building.

For New York City’s major corporations and building developers, Hearst has set a higher standard for building green. The optimization of natural light has been demonstrated in recent studies to have important, positive effects on occupant health, quality of life and productivity. Hearst Tower garnered the coveted Emporia Skyscraper Award 2006.

The Hearst is just one of the green design ideas which are now becoming standard but were rare in the US early in the decade.

Facing Page: The Swiss Re building; Below: The Pearl River tower; The Eco Dome

Fully triangulated perimeter structure makes the building sufficiently stiff without any extra reinforcements. Despite its overall curved glass shape, there is only one piece of curved glass on the building — the lens-shaped cap at the very top.

generate more energy than operation of the building will use.

These types of buildings will have great competition in rising of height and also saving of electricity, James Law Cybertecture International has proposed an “ecodome” for Dubai’s Techno Park, which will explore sustainable technologies and energy-saving systems to lower the building’s carbon footprint. Dubbed Techno sphere, the eco friendly dome will mimic the state of earth in current and future times.

The Techno sphere will enable the building to create a self-breathing environment, where the building will generate solar electricity to supplement the energy needs of the building and also integrate a distributed

After Hearst tower another interesting design was given by architect Norman Foster and that was Swiss re building- a skyscraper in London’s main financial district, completed in December 2003. It is 180 meters tall, with 40 floors.

Its erection symbolized the start of a new high-rise construction boom in London. The building uses energy-saving methods which allow it to use half the power a similar tower would typically consume. Gaps in each floor create six shafts that serve as a natural ventilation system for the entire building even though required firebreaks on every sixth floor interrupt the “chimney.” The shafts create a giant double glazing effect; air is sandwiched between two layers of glazing and insulates the office space inside. The shafts pull warm air out of the building during the summer and warm the building in the winter using passive solar heating. The shafts also allow sunlight to pass through the building, making the work environment more pleasing, and keeping the lighting costs down.

Pearl River tower has been designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who also designed the Sears Tower in Chicago and World Trade Center in New York City, among numerous other famous high-rises.

The design of the Pearl River Tower is intended to set new standards for skyscrapers: a high-performance structure designed in such harmony with its environment that it extracts energy from the natural and passive forces surrounding the building.

Some of the major accomplishments are in the nature of the formal and technological integration of form and function in a holistic approach to engineering and architectural aim. The building is being designed with energy conservation in mind, including wind turbines and solar, humidity and rainwater collectors. It arguably will be one of the most environment friendly buildings in the world. Indeed, it is intended that the systems will

The 1,000-foot-tall Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou, for the Guangdong Tobacco Company, which SOM says will be one of the greenest buildings in the world. The project’s green elements include a water-retention area, basement fuel cells, which produce electricity by extracting hydrogen from natural gas, façadeintegrated photovoltaic, a condensate reclamation system that collects water and reuses it and stack ventilation, which captures and uses heat caught between the building’s double-layered facades.

The building’s unique curved design is intended to focus the strong prevailing southern winds that blow through the region. Orientated to face these winds head-on, the Pearl River Tower’s sculpted facade will increase the speed of these winds (by two-and-ahalf times) and channel them through two main slots in the building where wind turbines will be located.

Because of this focusing of wind and higher speeds, it is estimated the vertical turbines will produce up to 15 times more energy than they would if they were standalone units.

array of sky gardens for offices and a hotel. In addition to providing an outdoor terrace, the sky gardens will also provide passive solar shielding to regulate the interior temperature and reduce the energy required to artificially heat or cool the building. A water recycling system will also be introduced that will minimize the use and wastage of water in this vast building.

These high rise structures started with a need but now they are becoming part of our life and creating better living spaces for us.

One Step at a Time Parth Patel

S.C.E.T. , Surat

“Going forward, development should be linked with environment.”

-Nandan Nilekani

The most frequently asked question of us, the confused youth of today is “How can we, such a small minority actually make a difference???” When will we realize that the world is not always changed by a majority but by a small voice which starts deep inside our hearts and the courage which follows that one voice into saying “NO” when the entire world is saying “YES”? We, as future architects have to take a bold stand and break free from these shackles of deterioration which we have brought upon ourselves and show the world the right way out …

Ayn Rand in her critically acclaimed novel, ‘The Fountainhead’ actually talks about just that ,a man who goes against all odds to prove that what he had in store for the world was better than what the people could even fathom. Instead of admiring his heroic fight for right, we admire his defiance against rules .Not really knowing what we’re defying…. All of us have fallen prey to it and then slowly some of us grew out of it or rather had that part of us killed. We are all longing to be different, and not really make a change…

With the rising problems of our shrinking world like the depleting resources, the continuing depletion of the ozone layer due to the increased pollution in the air caused by excessive carbon emission, we’re turning a blind eye to it all and distancing ourselves by letting our future generation survive on its own, with no help on our part. We are too busy squandering away earth’s gifts to us to notice that even Mother Earth has started bleeding dry…

What about the bleeding Earth?

Can’t we feel its wounds …

What about nature’s worth?

It’s our planet’s womb …

-Michael Jackson

Pointing to the urgent need to create sustainable buildings, Gary Lawrence from ARUP said, “Sustainability is a means to minimize risk and maximize opportunity.” The need to pool our resources and the knowledge to tackle the current environmental challenges was well addressed by him.

He called for an integrated approach in creating eco cities that have zero carbon emissions.

• Traffic congestion could be reduced by creating tunnels through which freight could be delivered at night.

• Use of grey water could be maximized.

• Roofs could be used to grow food while at the same time providing the much-needed insulation for the building.

• Opting for 100 per cent on-site generation of renewable energy and leaving 40-60 per cent of the site area as green space.

George Ferguson, former President, RIBA, criticized the use of concepts and designs from the west and imposing it on an environment that is clearly not compatible with it... The extensive use of glass in commercial buildings was termed ‘environmental terrorism’ because of their high energy usage and greenhouse effect.

Mr. Law from Hong Kong, who stressed the need to keep a symbiotic balance with nature, said, “Design a building such that it is part of the ecosystem.

The unique shapes used here are created for sustainability.”

Finally Cengis Bektas from Turkey mentioned that a space created should be stimulating, meeting the needs of the user while taking advantage of regional cultures even though the space may have contemporary dimensions. “The function of the space created should be structured not just for today’s needs but expectations for the future”.

According to him, “It is important to ensure that building style is flexible and compatible with external surroundings.” This means that a shape or profile cannot be copied from one place to another or from

one era to another. He summed up, “Inspiration can be sought from earlier traditions and designs but the resulting design needs to be one based on what the architect genuinely feels. It is important to respect life, the built environment and nature. We should start designing from the interior bearing in mind the functions, and then move to the outside. There must be an absolute matching of inner and outer volumes; exterior volumes must be handled like an inside space.

There should be a balanced relationship between open, semi-open and closed spaces. We must face reality with rational behaviour in arranging our design response.”

To make a difference, we must first be aware and that awareness doesn’t come from sitting in our studios in college. We must open our eyes and question everything we see around us. “Why…what….how…?”

Its not that we don’t care, we assume that somebody else will make that first step and now is when we all should make that first step. We all step up and voice out our suggestions and abstract what we can from everything we hear and gather and maybe that’ll make a difference….It will be gradual and hopefully one day we can stand tall and give our future generation a little if not all of what Mother Nature gave us…

“We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day so let’s start giving.

There’s a choice we’re making, we’re saving our own lives, it’s true, we’ll make a better day just you and me…”

“I build houses out of wood, stone, earth.

Their windows are at peace.

Their hearths, doors are open.

I build roads across hills and rivers for people to walk.

For them to gather, I build squares.

-Michael Jackson

Fountains under the plane trees for birds to bathe and children.

Not in my dreams; for real!

Like children, happy houses, I build.”

-Cengis Bektas

These architects from all over the world have made courageous attempts , however small in making a difference and not just keeping quiet about it but opening our eyes to the truth of the situation we have brought ourselves to…not because of ignorance but by our lackadaisical ‘I don’t care!’ attitude. We must learn from these architects and slowly educate ourselves and those around us of the perils of our present lifestyles and slowly, gradually…. “Make a difference”.

Thesis: Jaisalmer Airport Sagar Prasad

CCA, Chandigarh

SITE The site is in the outskirts of the Jaisalmer city. And it is 7km from the Jaisalmer fort.

Site area: 60 acres (400m X 600m) REQUIREMENTS The apron on the airside Public concourse The parking facilities on the landside of the terminal.

Passenger and baggage handling counters for booking etc.

Baggage claim section Waiting hall for passengers and travelers Security hold area Restaurants and cafeteria Shops Airline counters Office space for airport staff Post office and banking facilities The Terminal building comprising of arrival, departure, basic amenities, lounges, baggage processing, commercial activities etc.

Viewing deck CONCEPT Courtyard planning is being widely used in Jaisalmer buildings. It is a typical architectural feature in Jaisalmer.

It helps to make a buffer space in temperature and controls temperature.

Sand dunes Oasis modern interpretation of courtyard Sustainable ideas eg. Water channels in courtyard, help controlling the temperature.

Circulation for an airport is the first preference, to keep it obstruction free, circular or organic shapes are the best solution.

Journey of U2 Rini Rafi

SRM University

The NASA convention – four colorful days that see a wonderful culmination of architecture students from all over the country is definitely an event that leaves its imprint on all the participants, and an occasion that many an architect cherishes as a fond memory from student life.

This being 52nd year of this rare tradition and the second NASA convention involving the SAARC Nations, we were elated at the honor of forming the arena for the convention. With the initiative and encouragement of our Dean, Prof. M.Thirumeni, the organizing of the event, which coincides with the silver jubilee celebrations of the SRM University, was taken up with much enthusiasm by the architectural fraternity of the University.

Armed with the experience of having hosted the zonal convention in the year 2001 & 2005, we set about the mammoth task of facilitating a fertile ground for NASA convention, 2009. We focused on making the convention a memorable and novel experience for all the participants, and aimed at providing a fresh outlook to the convention while maintaining the buoyant spirit ‌.after all, NASA is also about fun!

The many discussions which saw pooling in of ideas from the fraternity, from the first years right up to the final years lead to the evolution of the spirit of the convention able .Under the light of guidance from our chief Advisor Ar. Durganand Balsaver , the theme evolved from a study of the built environs today and their response to the individual. In an increasingly faceless world that we are facing today, increasing population and the proportional increase of the urban sprawl has led to reduced vitality of the individual and lack of quality of life. A search for a better tomorrow led to the birth of U2.

U2 which is the backdrop of all activities in the convention is an attempt to turn the convention into a hub of thought , relating to the very problems that we address today . The concept of U2 revolves around the individual and his surrounding, and addresses the role of architects in creating better spaces that respect the dignity of the individual. The spirit of U2 is

the same energy that lurks in you and me and our need for a humane environment. The slow emerging of the concept fuelled our enthusiasm and every day saw mushrooming of new ideas.

The concept of U2 along with the other necessary details of the convention was presented before selected representatives from the delegate colleges in the pre-convention held on 9th, 10th and 11th of October, 2009. The pre-cons gave us a glimpse of the level of organizational skills that would be required for a larger level convention and the spirit of the delegates also gave us an estimate of the amount of excitement that could be expected at the convention.

The suggestions, arguments and discussions at the pre-cons helped us refine our objectives and gave us more focus.

After the pre-cons, the energy that spread through the students was truly sensational. Swift organization of different teams happened and the NASA mania was on!!

The Sponsorship team got more brickbats than bouquets as they knocked many doors for the funding required to host the convention. When a door closed, another opened and much must be said for the tireless warriors who strove day in and day out in search for sponsors. Endless phone calls, numerous letters and unanswered mails only form a part of their story.

While the Sponsorship team was on its chase, the Events team were spending many a sleepless night.

Several all night conversations and brainstorming gave birth to many innovative and wacky ideas that was sure to add color to the convention. They received constant inputs from the rest of the department and many cups of coffee, and sleep weary eyes are accountable for the amazing variety of events in the convention.

The members of the Public-relations Department could be found permanently on the phone, handling a detail there and an instruction here. The photocopy machine and the scanner were soon allotted for their

exclusive usage and they always had a few million e-mails to reply to. Their Phones never stopped ringing, and they had a million queries to answer. Their hectic schedules never stopped their indomitable energy and vivacity.

The Graphic design team was inseparable from their laptops as their creative energies flowed , and formed Banners , brochures , logos , signboards and just about everything required for the convention.

Sleepless nights spent bent over their laptops and sketchbooks saw many eureka moments as ideas zoomed in at several odd hours. These armies of creative souls are truly the visual designers of the convention.

Transportation Department members were heard discussing bonds, commissions and companies as they explored the various options, and argued, discussed and pondered over the options before them. The gargantuan task of providing conveyance to thousands of delegates involves plotting, planning and time management. The transportation committee must be credited for their untiring effort in this direction.

The task of providing Accommodation for the delegates is one of great responsibility and to provide food for a hungry energetic crowd of over 4000 is no mean job. But that didn’t stop the hugely motivated members of the food and accommodation Department to scour every nook and cranny of the huge campus for free hostels or scan the menu of over a hundred caterers, just to ensure a good stay and hygienic food for the delegates.

The cultural committee brought together a talented bunch of students and strains of music could always be heard from their direction. Be it walking the ramp , or performing a dance number .. They were always full of energy. Endless hours of practice and much innovation are behind the colorful show on cultural nite.

The many exhibitions and panel discussions that form the picture of NASA have many faces and much effort behind them. Right from supervision to execution, every step has the effort of many an enthusiastic volunteer.

The journey of U2 was a lesson on teamwork. The enthusiasm of the student community coupled the able guidance and encouragement of the faculty members along with support from our Alumni , specially Ar. Subbaiah , culminated in focusing of energies to build a vibrant , yet stimulating convention.

The spirit of U2 was the common link providing focus and energy. There were many sleepless nights, much hard-work and infinite energy. There was also fun, frolic and togetherness. And most importantly the iron will to present a convention, which would remain a treasured memory for ever.

SRM University & Department of Architecture Shireen Adeni SRM University

UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE...

Education at SRM is all about creating an environment of academic freedom, where bright minds meet, discover and learn.

Working with an objective of providing high quality education in the field of Engineering, Medical science and Humanities, the SRM University believes that education is all about creating an environment of academic freedom, where bright minds meet, discover and learn. Situated at Chennai in Tamil Nadu, the SRM University is run and managed by the Valliammai Society which was set up by the famous educationist, Mr. Thiru. T. R. Pachamuthu.

The SRM Group of institutions owes its success to the vision and leadership of Mr T.R Pachamuthu and made its beginning in 1968 with the establishment of Florence Nightingale Primary School. The Valliamai Society was also founded in the same year. The SRM family grew with the establishment of SRM Engineering college in 1985 which soon grew into numerous centers of learning. With the break of the new millennium, the medical , dentistry , engineering and para medical colleges were brought under the ambit of SRM Deemed University.

SRM university attained its full fledged glory in the year 2006 , under section 3 of the UGC Act 1956.

An upgraded syllabus and international teaching methods, designed by SRM’s International Advisory Board (IAB), launched SRM University way ahead of the rest.

SRM University extends across four sprawling campuses.

Within Tamil Nadu , the Kattankulathur Campus takes the lead housing the faculties of Engineering, Medicine & Health Sciences, Management and Science & Humanities - the SRM Medical College Hospital & Research Center along with the SRM hotel in its 240 acre , green campus which lies away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Not too far away is the serene and charming campus in Ramapuram accommodating the SRM Dental College.. The SRM fraternity has recently extended to the neighboring city of Tiruchirapalli offering quality education in Medicine, Engineering , Science and Humanities. The University also has a campus in the Capital City of New Delhi , in Modi Nagar , housing Engineering , technology, Management and Teacher Education.

The path of the Growth of SRM university has been adorned with laurels and recognition for excellence in imparting quality education. The Education times (Times of India ) , GFK Mode survey ranks SRM University as the No.1 Private University in India. It joins the League of NIT’s and IIT’s and is ranked within the Top 5 Institutions in Tamil Nadu by the Outlook Magazine.

It has received the accreditation by NAAC with a 5-star rating with the SRM Medical College occupying a place among the Top Ten institutes in the county.

SRM assures a sparkling future for its graduates and is placed at the number two position in Placement allotment. Research and Development is of paramount importance at SRM University and it boasts of an up-to-the-minute nanotechnology laboratory.

Curriculum, research and teaching methodology is assisted by SRM University’s International Advisory

Board (IAB). In addition to the IAB, the University has an international network of advisors. They have given SRM an international dimension in terms of knowledge, joint research and student exchange programs where top ranking students are given the opportunity to spend a semester in institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), etc Not only in terms of providing education, but the University believes in reaching out deprived through Medical care. It has initiated many primary healthcare facilities throughout the city and in villages surrounding Chennai. One such group of centers caters to 526 families in 3 villages around Maraimalai Nagar and 9 villages near Mamandur.

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN The SRM School of Architecture and Interior Design was started in 1992, and offers two degree programs for undergraduates, i.e The Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) and the Bachelor of Interior Design (B.Des) program. The M.Arch (Architectural Design) degree is one of the most innovative programs in India, and it prepares graduates to meet the challenges thrown up by the ever changing needs of contemporary society.

The school advocates a design philosophy that draws inspiration from the rich cultural heritage of India while simultaneously embracing the developments in science and technology, to produce architects of international competence.

The School of Architecture is represented by a panel of distinguished faculty of 20 members represents an unparalleled range of design philosophies and visions.

The objective of Research in School of Architecture & Interior design is to create an institutional, people oriented research culture in areas such as Architectural conservation of heritage buildings, urban redevelopment and environmental planning for sustainability.

A free and open minded approach that promotes interaction among students is seen from the working of the Architecture Association. It is a student body, that contributes colourful days to the working calendar by organizing a series of design and recreational

This academic year SRM University celebrates its the twenty fifth milestone on journey towards excellence .This momentous event is being celebrated on a huge scale , with events being organized by every department and various ambitious projects being laid on track. Adding crown to the this glory , SRM University hosts ANNUAL NASA CONVENTION this year on its vast campus in the outskirts of Chennai. The colorful event that will bring together the architectural fraternity from various parts of the country is indeed adds vibrancy to this momentous occasion.

Short Messages

for the Student Community SRM University

activities apart from special lectures, workshops and product presentations. The students are allowed a free reign to organise Conferences and symposia bringing together eminent architects and scholars who examine historical or contemporary issues and ideas concerning architecture and natural environments.

In the School of architecture, the campus life is unfettered and student exchange programmes facilitate exposure and provide new horizons to the students. The School offers facilities to enhance the potential of the students and above all , provides them with the right atmosphere to design dream and unleash their creativity .

“Be sensitive to what really turns you on rather than what should turn you on, and evolve from that via your own work”

The lively design studios are a hub for thought, and lecture halls see debates and discussions. The model making workshop houses exclusive and useful machinery for production of study models to aid in design and is compounded by the material museum.

Keeping in view the faced paced development, the school is provided with a well equipped computer lab .The Library which is a focal point and a part of daily routine for the students is home to more than 3,000 volumes on various disciplines of art and architecture and subscribes to 5 international journals and 12 national journals.

Like the master Le Corbusier has said, the focus is to awake in every student, the mind and the soul.

4236 Main Street Philadelphia, PA 19127 TEL: 215-487-0400 FAX: 215-487-2520 www.vsba.com

Sincerely, Robert Venturi VENTURI, SCOTT BROWN AND ASSOCIATES, INC.

“The great architects and urban planners of the past found new solutions through problem-finding. The opportunity for change often came from questions: basic, urgent questions. Questions first about how we lived; then about how we moved; and finally about how we experienced. The morphological studies of the urban environment in the 20th century reflected this; from pattern-ground, to flux and mapping studies.

For today, we believe in an integral way of approaching the city, called deep planning. The mechanistic models of the 20th century need to be replaced by a new way of thinking, just like the mono-directional record player has been replaced by the I-pod with its mysterious face and its infinite preference selection.”

Ben van Berkel & Caroline Bos, 2009 UN Studio

Stadhouderskade 113 PO Box 75381 1070 AJ Amsterdam tel: +31 (20) 570 20 40 fax:+31 (20) 570 20 41 www.unstudio.com

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The Team

SRM University

NASA 2009

The Team

Chandigarh College of Architecture Chandigarh

Apoorv Kaushik

indianARCH’09

Jaskaran Chauhan

Shweta Sethi

Surbhi Bharadwaj

Varun Mahopatra

Tawish Tayal

Rajat Malik