Sthapati 2020

sthapati

2020

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Hélène Binet Light’s Monologue Pg- 26

Daniel Libeskind Berlin Jewish Museum Pg- 16 The story of Fall and Rise Pg- 22 of 9/11

Arth Design Build Integrated Workstation

Viitor Cloud Hologram: Now a Reality

Pg- 34

Uniworks Studio: Toll on Health and Happiness Pg- 56

Bjarke Ingels Group Cast Away Pg- 62

Pg- 28

DFAB Building Digitally Pg- 42 LEED Need for Green Pg- 48

Sadhguru Materiality of Vaastu Pg- 66

David Alvarez Gaming and Architecture

Sebastian Errazuriz and his Works

Pg- 82

Pg- 72

CONTENTS

2020

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Ambikesh Mishra Architecture: India and the US

Pg- 88

Safdie Architects Humanizing the Mega Scale

Pg- 94

Lalith Lankatilleke People’s Process Pg- 106

Pierpaolo Lazzarini Floating Architecture Pg- 102

Karthikey Kuppu Who is an Architect?

Pg- 112

Michael Pawlyn Mimicking Architecture

Pg- 114

Yearbook 2020

Pg- 132

Department Works

Pg- 122

PARAD I GM SHIFT

PREFACE Welcome to the 12th issue of Sthapati. Sthapati is a yearly publication of SSAP, Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, IIT Kharagpur. Those who are already aware of this publication will find that it promises the same informative and educative experience as always. For new readers, it will act as a bridge connecting them with a whole new era of architecture.

Many architects and prominent personalities are sensing a shift in modern architecture which will help in resolving current issues and betterment of the future. Based on this, SSAP decided the theme of Sthapati 2020 to be ‘Paradigm Shift.’

One will be introduced to the latest revolutions in the field of architecture as well as the thoughts of various architects and essential people on this shift through different articles and interviews. Be it the new technology of biomimicry or the vision of building colonisation on Mars, and whether it is about the floating cities as a solution for raising water level or importance of ancient Vastu Vidhya in modern architecture, readers will be intrigued by the variety of knowledge this magazine has to offer.

In the end, the magazine will give a little insight into the Department of Architecture, IIT Kharagpur including various departmental activities, students’ works, entries by students in different architectural competitions.

The magazine is written and crafted in a way that readers find it interesting, easy to read and well explained. SSAP wishes you to enjoy this publication and get something out of it, may it help you in getting a new perspective towards architecture.

Happy Reading!

SSAP Department of Architecture and Planning, IIT Kharagpur

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MESSAGE FROM FORMER COA PRESIDENT

SHRI. VIJAY GARG Do you feel Indian Architectural education is adept for the present scenario, or does it need any amendments? How effective is the review system in colleges?

No system is perfect, but evolutionary changes over the years have finetuned a lot of the irritants and quirks that keep creeping in. However, sometimes after a few years of evolutionary change, one, must examine if the system is ripe for a revolutionary change, as some particular models that created over the years cannot be gently eased out, but must be surgically removed. The review systems in various colleges are handled differently depending on what each school believes in. At the School of Planning & Architecture in New Delhi where I teach, I always believe that the open jury-review is the most transparent, as well as an enriching experience, not only for the students, but also for the juniors, other faculty members, 6

and visitors that sometimes are found attending the same!

Despite all the efforts, years of apprenticeship and undergoing a gruelling process of examination, the students after their graduation get underpaid professional jobs. What are your views on this?

India has seen massive growth in the past few decades, especially in the middle class. There has also been greater exposure, education, and awareness in the populace. This has all theoretically increased the demand for Architects.

Yes, there have been many Architects that still feel that there is not enough work going around, but that is not fundamentally correct. As rightly pointed out in the question, the numbers prove this theory. As more and more people realize the value addition of Architects, and our profession also responds by

providing not just numbers, but highquality practitioners, the situation will, and has begun too, improve all around.

The fact that there are still applications for new schools is in fact reinforcement of this fact, as the market is speaking, and is reiterating this demand. I am hopeful that as the market matures and corrects, this aberration of low fees – low salaries will start getting corrected, and I predict that this will happen in the next 3-5 years at most.

Unlike the architectural councils of other countries, COA grants a license for practice after graduation itself. Should not more experience and knowledge be a criterion for granting a license?

To be honest, the intent of an intense internship is only to improve the quality and skill-sets of the graduates, which would, in turn, increase the quality of the offices and practices that they join.

One the next decade, this would result in increased efficiency and quality, and thus we hope that the pay scales, etc. would rise to even higher yet sustainable levels. Having said that, we are also looking at ways to kick-start this process by introducing some changes to the act through an active participatory process, so that we can delink “registration” with “practice”. This means that post the degree, once would be able to register but would need to apply for and pass a qualifying exam to obtain a “Certificate of Practice,” which would be mandatory to start one’s firm. This is being carefully worked out so that it’s a win-win for all concerned and enriches the profession and ultimately society as a whole. This is one of the suggestions that were made at the Council of Architecture when I was acting as the President. However, this is a complex issue as while we want to ensure that high-quality professionals only get a license to practice, we do not want to be unfair and set an unreasonably high bar for the new graduates while

allowing those that graduated some or many years ago free reign to continue practice without subscribing to the same standards! Consequently, a detailed proposed amendment to the Architects Act of 1972 has been proposed, and we are hopeful that the current Council would get it passed from the Parliament without diluting the carefully structured amendments.

Any advice you have for students to stay inquisitive in the realm of architecture?

The choices you make are definitely your own, and while there are no wrong decisions. I would encourage EACH and every one of you to spend some time on THEMSELVES for at least a couple of months after you graduate.

Please travel, learn a language, pursue your interest in music, theatre, art, dance, photography, or whatever it is that excites you. Please remember that unless you continue to evolve in ALL aspects of your personality, you cannot be a complete and satisfied individual.

Take some time to discover who you are, and what you like, dislike, and enjoy. I am reminded of a short quote by the famous philosopher and Author Carl Jung who said: “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens!”

So while it is important to dream, it is also equally important to be awake!

Don’t ever let the quest for experiences from outside, and the deepening of understanding from your inside, stop.

You have to keep growing, and you have to keep introspecting! I hope you would not take this advice as an escape to waste time! On the contrary, my appeal is to make the MOST of this time. This is the most precious time of your lives: you have little responsibilities, you are young, and you can learn and make mistakes! Don’t let the degrees you get today hinder you from what you want to do, but use them as springing boards to where you want to go to!

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SSAP COUNCIL STUDENTS’ SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS (2019-2020) President

Viansh Malik

Treasurer

Aman Kumar Agarwal

Undergraduate

Pranav Agarwal

Representative Vice President

Prabakaran Arun

President Designee

Kushagra Ramnani

Treasurer Designee

Shashank SIngh

Media and Public Relations

Akash Luhana

Coordinator General Secretaries

Shubham Choudhary Sharon Rose Tamada

Social and Cultural

Saurav Chauhan

Secretary Design Secretary

Gauri Karkhanis

Alumni Secretary

Arya S. Jyothi

Magazine Secretaries

Shirin Goel Jaswanth Doddi

Web Secretary

Vaibhav Singh

NASA Representatives Unit Secretary Unit Secretry Designee 8

Aarushi Gupta Avi Agarwal

Sthapati 2020 is a dream come true!

A certitude of Design as a process and also a living document carved out by a group of youngsters taking the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning way, way forward to a great summit! Sthapati 2020 is a forerunner of an age by our students, faculty, staff and scholars, who all have bagged the NIRF # 1 for three consecutive years!

I wish a great future for this endeavour! It sets the range, the gamut and the scale of things between the left-brain rationale and action and the deep thoughts of right brain thinking, like stitching innovative and well targetted ideas and works that are out of the box, from either futuristic or forgotten traditional styles.

We are now in the strangest of times, where the role of a designer-architect is increasingly paramount. In times featured and attributed by indicators of uncertainty, physical distancing, health-care issues, new avenues of repose, travel, logistics and settlements, the bandwidth of architecture is vast! Architects have now to leap forward to integrate normative sciences with positive applications of technology, specially imbibing products of the green order!

Keeping this in view, our organizing Committe of Sthapati has been able to invite articles from well-renowned firms like BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), DFAB and from Green Building Council and architects like Safdie, Michael Pawlyn. It is indeed more than commendable to see our youngsters, our future working this way.

Please go through the pages with care, and see how our young minds are so creative and deft in delineation and dissemination.

Enjoy the reading!

Wishing you all a great future ahead!

HOD’s note

Prof. Joy Sen

Professor and Head Department of Architecture and Regional Planning Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 9

It is indeed an honour and privilege to write the foreword for the Sthapati 2020. Our annual magazine has always endeavoured in pushing the frontiers of knowledge dissemination through quality articles from leaders and specialists in the field of architecture and allied services. This special edition of Sthapati is titled ‘Paradigm Shift’ in view of its evolution in content and aesthetics. The content of this edition moves beyond architecture, and ventures into allied fields like product design, architectural photography, gaming, immersive technological applications, etc. I think the latest edition of Sthapati has been drafted in record time, while retaining the impeccable standards and ethos of this magazine. The editorial team has indeed put in lot of efforts to present this volume to our patrons and well-wishers. This edition of Sthapati provides us the opportunity to have a glance of renowned contemporary architects/ design studios namely, Studio Libeskind, BIG, Safdie Architects, Lazzarini Design Studio, etc. Architectural practice of contemporary practitioners from India like Earth Design Build Group and Uniworks Studios have also been presented. The readers would surely appreciate the incorporation of wide gamut of articles ranging from application of architectural robotics to participatory practices in urban management.

The magazine highlights the significant achievements of the students across different platforms of academia and co-curricular activities. Snippets from noteworthy SSAP activities in the previous year are part of this edition. It also includes extracts from different architectural studios and final year B.Arch thesis.

I wish the team Sthapati all the best and hope this volume would be appreciated by a wide range of readers and provide them stimuli for creative thinking!

Prof. Arup Das

Professor Department of Architecture and Regional Planning Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur

SSAP ADVISOR’s note 10

When it comes to professors words can do no justice in defining their vital role the department they served for so long and to their students’ life. This is a note to thank two professors who are retiring this year.

Professor Uttam Kumar Banerjee (a.k.a UKB sir) stared his journey as a student in the vary department he teaches today. For the boarders of Patel Hall, he is a hall alumnus first then their professor.

Possibly the corridors of architecture department are where he decided to follow his passion for architecture. In 1984 he started a new phase in life as a professor and kept on thriving since then.

Pioneered in the field of computational design in our department, he inspired many students to work on BIM. A multidisciplinary researcher is what defines his passion and commitment to architecture. Coming to his practice as an architect, he played an important role in the planning of the academic area of IIT Kharagpur. Moreover, he initiated the architectural design of the Nalanda Classroom Complex, which is serving as the largest academic building on the campus with a capacity of 12k students. These things about him justify, why we call him Godfather of the Department.

Professor Somnath Sen, the Laughing Buddha of the department is well known for many things; his great awareness and vast knowledge about the environment and Organic Architecture are some of those. Being a former student of the department, he is very caring and friendly. After talking to him for a few minutes, one will feel more of Nehru Hall Alumnus and less of a professor in him. He started his journey as a professor in 1987, and it’s his devotion towards Architecture that made him an expert of Land Use and Development Control Planning. His involvement in various departmental activities and his inclination towards cultural events is the reason that all cultural programmes are incomplete until he sings a melodious song.

Both of them are not only professors to us but also our alumni who taught, motivated and encouraged us every time, and that’s why their departure is the reason for our moist eyes.

Two Sirs, With love 11

PRESIDENT’S NOTE It is a matter of immense pride for me as I present to you this year’s publication of Sthapati, Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, a magazine which is not just a magazine, but a record of ephemeral ideas and creative expressions for budding architects in India.

Over the years, the Sthapati has been enriched with various innovative ideas from students and architects from India as well as across the globe. All these years, it has played a vital role in bridging the gap between the academic curriculum and the professional world.

Continuing the same, this edition brings to you the ideas that would encourage the students to think of unique solutions to tackle present and future problems. I, on behalf of the Indian architectural students’ fraternity, would like to express my gratitude towards all the architects and firms, who have spent their precious time and energy to provide us with the necessary content.

We are also thankful to our sponsor, Calco Polychem, for providing us the capital support for printing the magazines.

Finally, I appreciate the efforts put in by the students of the department and hope that you all like the magazine.

Viansh Malik President SSAP 2019-2020

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The COORDINATORS The Sthapati has been there for generations, each being unique and better than before. This is one such effort where we bring in eminent architects like Bjarke Ingels, Daniel Libeskind and Moshe Safdie under one umbrella. I would take this opportunity to show gratitude for my fellow coordinators’ cooperation and congratulate the team for its remarkable efforts. I also thank the faculty members for their support and encouragement towards the student community. I hope the readers will be delighted and appreciate our efforts.

Anbu Vasant

The team has put an amazing effort into creating a fantastic offering - a magazine complementing what was while embracing what can be. Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu! “ Rakshith Reddy

First of all, I would like to congratulate Magzine secretaries and the team who worked endlessly on this edition of Sthapati with a perspective to change the way a magazine is designed. The thought process indulged in each part of the magazine was to make it more interesting for the readers. I hope that all the readers will appreciate and enjoy this edition and contribute their feedbacks for future ones.

Aman Yaduwanshi It brings immense joy and satisfaction to pursue an idea and watch it manifest. Albeit, in the hindsight, this idea seemed to be nothing more than a distant shimmering hope. I shall remain ever greatful to our team of such enthusiastic, challenge loving juniors and batchmates, who came together, inspite of the enormous constraints and individual predicaments, we all have had to face this year.

Medhajeet Bagh 13

THE TEAM MAGAZINE SECRETARIES Shirin Goel Jaswanth Doddi

MANAGEMENT TEAM

EDITORIAL TEAM

DESIGN TEAM

Devansh Kar Saurav Chauhan Aman Kant Ankit Pal Anudeep Ramteke Devraj Kavin Yashraj Bagaria

Arya Jyothi Shubham Tiwari Triyan Samala Abhinav Sachin Rohit Jain

Anushka Agrawal Avi Agarwal Haveen Hrithic Jai Chandra Sahil Khairnar Soham Saha Chanikya Gupta Namita S

SPECIAL MENTION Kavana Rao Rachana Verma Shambhavi Dhote Vaibhav Singh Gautham Lakshmanan Sai Siddhartha Riddhi Kumari Shalem Raju Shalmali Sriram Sharvari Sriram Udhbav Sinha

SOHAM SAHA

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ANUSHKA AGRAWAL

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

SSAP, IIT Kharagpur, is extremely happy and excited to bring out the publication, Sthapati 2020. This issue of Sthapati looks forward to represent itself as educative, informative and interesting to the readers , and one is going to feel that when (s)he will go through various articles by renowned professionals and academicians.

Sthapati has never been considered as a duty by SSAP, IIT Kharagpur but a part of its culture, and has ever been tried to make it live up to the epithet by establishing itself as a paragon for budding architects.

We cannot deny it being an enjoyable experience, from the very first day till the end of the line. All the opportunities and obstacles that we encountered on this road, not only made us learn new things but also to get in touch with many big personalities.

We are very thankful to our alumni Keval Sojitra, Vishnu Khandelwal, Arnab Kumar Mehanty, Nikhil Bapna, Shubham Malpani, Abhishek Kumar and Aayush Bhaskar for continuously guiding us for publishing this magazine.

We are grateful to the HOD of our Department, Professor Joy Sen, SSAP Advisor Professor Dr. Arup Das, for their continuous support and guidance.

We thank all the ‘archi junta’ for all the hard work and creativity they poured for the completion of this magazine. No words can do justice in describing valuable efforts that people put into this from editing and designing to sponsorship.

Shirin Goel

This publication is not the work of a single body; a lot of people came forward to bind up the pages of hard work and vision. ‘Thanks’ is the least we can say to appreciate their work.

17 Dec 2019

Jaswanth Doddi

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INTRODUCTION Name one ethnic group that has been the victim of widespread persecution and genocide in history. Did the Holocaust cross your mind? This event in history has made its way into our political culture filled with rhetoric. However, how many of us truly understand the history of the Jewish people in Germany and can fathom this event’s repercussion on their community as a whole?

The Jewish Museum Berlin, which was officially opened in 2001, displays the social, cultural, and political history of the Jews in Germany from the fourth century to the present, explicitly presenting and integrating, for the first time in post-war Germany, the ill effects of the Holocaust. Designed by the American-Polish architect Daniel Libeskind, this museum seeks to shed light on this glorious yet dark history.

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Courtesy: Hufton + Crow

It is commonly mistaken that antiSemitism was something created at the whims and fancies of a man with a toothbrush mustache; however, this is an age-old phenomenon having its roots in the historical bad blood shared between the Jews and the Christians. Despite this hostility, the Jewish people were a flourishing community in Germany, until Adolf Hitler rose to power. Very little is printed in textbooks across the world about their history in Germany, and the void left behind after the Holocaust.

The first Jewish Museum in Berlin was founded on 24 January 1933, under the guidance of Karl Schwartz, six days before the Nazis officially gained power. In addition to curating Jewish history, the museum also featured collections of modern Jewish art. However, the museum was short-lived, with the museum being shut down by the Gestapo in 1938, and its inventory was confiscated.

The new building of the modern Jewish museum is housed next to the site of the original Prussian Court of Justice building-The Kolligenhuas, located in the Kreizenberg district of West Berlin. The baroque style building was completed in 1735 and existed in complete contradiction to the new industrial building’s style and form.

Daniel Libeskind

Courtesy: Guenter Schneider

THE IDEA AND INSPIRATION

life in its history. In the zig-zag plan of the new building, Libeskind specified three lines of thinking in the project.

• The invisible Star of David, which shines despite all the ordeals • The museum is a completion to the incomplete 3 act opera “Moses und Aron” • The deported or missing German Jews inspired by Walter Benjamin’s urban apocalypse ‘One Way Street.’

Courtesy: Hufton + Crow

Daniel Libeskind’s design, which was created a year before the Berlin Wall came down, was based on three insights: it is impossible to understand the history of Berlin without understanding the enormous contributions made by its Jewish citizens; the meaning of the Holocaust must be integrated into the consciousness and memory of the city of Berlin; and, finally, for its future, the City of Berlin and the country of Germany must acknowledge the erasure of Jewish

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THE EXPERIENCE The architectural design of the museum seeks to engage the visitor at a deeper level. Libeskind, by the careful usage of space and form, enables the visitor to embark on a short journey mirroring the German Jewish ordeals and centuries of struggle. This sensitizes visitors to the predicament of the Jewish people in trying times and leaves a lasting impact on the visitor.

The entrance to the museum lies inside the Kolligenhaus. One descends by stairway into the underground. The entrance staircase lies at the bottom of a large concrete void/well, piercing the old baroque building at all of its floors. This seeks to dwarf the visitor, indicating that it is impossible to fathom the entire history in just a mere stroll. The old and new museums are intertwined akin to German and Jewish German history. There exists only an underground link to access the new museum, hence preserving the contradictory autonomy of both the old and the new structures above ground.

The entrance soon branches out into three axial routes. The three axes symbolize the three paths of Jewish life in Germany – continuity in German history, emigration from Germany, and the Holocaust.

‘The Axis of the Holocaust’ leads to a black door, behind which lies a tall unheated silo with bare walls and sparse lighting- The Holocaust tower.

The tower is shrouded in obscurity, much like the millions of Jewish families massacred during the Nazi era and leaves visitors dumfounded.

‘The Axis of Exile’ represents those uprooted by the horrors of the genetic cleansing attempted by the Nazis.

The corridor leads to an external garden- The Garden of Exile and

Emigration. With trees resting atop 49 tall concrete pillars, the base of this real labyrinth has a double tendegree slope. This seeks to destabilize the visitor as they meander their way through the concrete pillars akin to the exiled German Jews. The garden though in the open, is surrounded by a dry moat, and the only exit is back into the underground passage.

Hence through its design, the garden seeks to embody the fact that exile is an illusion of freedom.

The longest corridor-’The Axis of Continuity’, traces a path leading to the ‘Stair of Continuity.’ The stairs lead visitors directly from the basement to the third floor of the building. Such a long continuous flight seeks to put the visitor in the same position as the Jews who faced difficulty in attaining the light of day during the world war era.

There are a total of 6 distinct voids existent throughout the length of the building at all of its floors, lying in a straight line. The impenetrability of these voids becomes the central focus around which the exhibitions are organized. Such voids represent “That which can never be exhibited when it comes to Jewish Berlin history: Humanity reduced to ashes.”

The openings for ventilation at first glance look random. They appear to gash the building’s continuous Zinc facade. This erratic pattern is a superimposition of 2 different schemes.

• The first functional for offices and services and the second derived by projecting patterns drawn on Berlin city’s map.

• The second is a scheme based on patterns. The patterns used were obtained by connecting the addresses of emblematic figures in German Judaism on the city’s map.

RETROFITTING Despite the building being completed in 1998, delays resulted in there being nothing to display. The empty museum was thrown open to the public in 1999, with 350,000 people visiting it in 2 years. The empty museum had a charm of its own, with many commenting that it was the “Architecture itself that was on display.” For the proper exhibition, it was necessary to make changes to the existing building. However, despite these changes introduced, Daniel Libeskind’s vision of the building was preserved. The museum came to life with its collection of exhibits in September of 2001.

CONCLUSION The museum seeks to telescope time and space. Rather than facilitating a stroll, the design of the building enables the visitor to feel the Jewish ordeal in a miniature form. Such museums are rare and make for a once in a lifetime visit.

Courtesy: Hufton + Crow

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Courtesy: Hufton + Crow

THE FALL AND RISE OF

9/11

On September 11, 2001, the world stood helpless as the 1350ft tall giants fell to the ground in a blink of an eye. Even though its memory still haunts many of us, the feeling of bravery, the sacrifice of many, deserved an everlasting tribute and is indeed worth remembering. The rise of patriotic feelings amongst the citizens of America and their leaders like New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and U.S. President George W. Bush led to a pledge to construct a permanent record for future generations and genealogy.

The reconstruction of the World Trade Centre and the memorial went through a series of troubles like the cleanup of Ground Zero. For nearly a year after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, workers continued to remove debris and recover bodies from the ruins of the Twin Towers at Lower Manhattan’s former World Trade Centre complex.

Simultaneously, much deliberation between several authorities kept an intense debate raged over how best to rebuild the World Trade Centre and how to memorialize this haunting incident.

The plan was to finish building the memorial in a decade, celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2011.

But, the diligent efforts for the progress could not lead to the

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completion of the same in time. The disconcerting issues regarding political struggles, financial problems, and legal disputes among the various parties involved led to repeated delays, and rebuilding efforts are still ongoing.

Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) was established in November 2001 to manage federal aid and oversee the rebuilding efforts. As the rebuild got underway, it eventually came to involve (by some estimates) more than a dozen government agencies and some 100 construction companies and subcontractors.

As this event was an inspiring symbol of American resilience and triumph over terrorism, many brains were applied to gather those patriotic emotions in the memorial. After the cleanup and recovery at Ground Zero, LMDC invited several top architects to submit designs for the rebuilding of the site, and Daniel Libeskind was chosen as the winner.

In designing the master site plan, Daniel Libeskind worked closely with all the stakeholders, knowing that it was fundamental to balance the memory of the tragedy with the need to foster a vibrant and working neighborhood. In the end, he devoted half of the 16acre site to public space, defined by the Memorial and the Memorial Museum, while also setting aside locations for sustainable, high-tech office towers, re-connecting the historic street-grid, reinvigorating the streetscape with above-ground retail, reshaping the underground transit concourses and even finding room for two major new public facilities: an iconic new transportation station and a performing arts centre.

Courtesy: Silverstein Properties

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Courtesy: Jin Lee

Courtesy: Hufton + Crow

The centrepiece of Libeskind’s master plan, known as “Memory Foundations,” was the construction of a new tower that would reach a remarkable height of 1,776 feet (541 meters) including the spire at the top. As the tallest of four new office towers at the site, the “Freedom Tower” (in the words of New York’s Governor George Pataki) would represent the country’s triumph over terrorism. In 2009, the Freedom Tower got its new name- One World Trade Centre, perhaps in response to concerns that the original name would make it too tempting a target for future terrorist attacks. After years of sluggish progress, the rebuilding effort quickened significantly in 2010, with One World Trade Centre reaching the halfway point of its final height (693 feet above street level) by December.

The tower officially opened on November 3, 2014.

Another international competition was held for the design of the national memorial to honor and remember the men, women, and children killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as well as the bombing of the World Trade Centre on February 26, 1993. Out of more than 5000 design submissions from 62 different countries, the design by Michael Arad and Peter Walker was chosen.

The results are becoming visible with the opening of a 200-feet stretch of street and sidewalk on Greenwich Street, which hasn’t existed since the 1960s. The Memorial Museum opened in spring 2014, with underground galleries that reveal the slurry wall that withstood the terrorist attack and will forever remain as a testament to the strength of America’s foundations. The Transportation Hub is well underway and can be seen from all points on the site.

Studio Libeskind has been coordinating with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, City of New York, and the architects of the individual buildings to realize the master plan.

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MONOLOGUE OF LIGHTS Hélène Binet Architectural Photographer 26

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ARTH DESIGN BUILD Arth Design Build was started by IIT KGP alumni & industry stalwarts in 2014 to address existing and anticipated productivity gaps.

They offer solutions and products developed and validated by seasoned professionals having an impeccable professional track record in global markets to improve productivity and sustainability in the built environment and to re-define construction with simple and creative solutions through technology. Under their design for the Manufacturing and Assembly programme, which produces high-quality products that can be manufactured efficiently(offsite) and quickly assembled, have introduced the DESQ, abbreviated for Design of Efficient work Spaces for Quick assembly, has successfully produced a patent for a DESQ_ Integrated Workstation in 2019, fully integrated with HVAC, power, AV and lighting. It is truly Modular and 100% Re-configurable.

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A BRIEF DESQ_ INTEGRATED WORKSTATION AND COMPARISION WITH TRADITIONAL MODELS. 1. Raceway for conditioned AirFlow & Distribution This component of the work desk will act as an air distribution duct. In the traditional model, air distribution ducts are made of galvanized steel and hung from the true ceiling and are installed with the grills and diffusers to disperse the conditioned air. These ducts are generally fabricated off-site but are installed, connected, tested and commissioned on site. The main purpose of these ducts is to carry the conditioned air from the source (i.e. an Air handling Unit) to various locations throughout the space to maintain a uniform comfort temperature for the personnel working in the space. In the proposed concept, these raceways will be a part of the air distribution duct, made of extruded aluminium profile and insulated with 9mm thick nitrile insulation to avoid any condensation, the total cross-section of this raceway

1 6 8

7

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is 300mm (height) x 100mm (width) outer to outer. This size is optimum to disperse the volume of air sufficient enough to cater to 12 personnel assuming the requirement of volume by each personnel is 44 CFM. Hence these are designed for a cluster of 6 back to back work desks with a total air volume requirement of 528 CFM. In the proposed concept, these raceways will be fabricated and finished with the diffusers off-site with individual work desks. These will also be connected and mock tested off-site for any possible leakages. Installation of these raceways with the work desks will also be easier and faster than the conventional method due to the modularity of the desks and major work at normal heights instead of major work being on the ceiling in the conventional method. The proposed concept can be executed on-site in 25 days hence cutting down the timeline by 33 days. These raceways will constitute approximately 65% to 70% of the air distribution ducts. On the contrary, to a conventional ducting system which is custom designed for each space as per the layout and varying heat loads, these raceways will be fabricated at a

6 8 9

7

7

2 1 5 3 9 8

2 1 6 9 7

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4

WORK STATIO 30

fixed size and shape for the above values on CFM. They can also be used in the same configuration on any site.

Features to be protected in the patent pertaining to these ducts are as follows: •Concept of these air distribution raceways to disperse conditioned air at each and every work desk. •Concept of supply, installation, testing and commissioning of Air distribution through these raceways to give considerable time saving during execution. •Reusability of these Raceways with the work desks with minimum finishes touch up.

2. Linear Diffusers Disperse Air

to

These are the grills fixed with the HVAC raceway to diffuse the air on the person occupying the work desk. In the conventional system, these Diffusers are fixed on the false ceiling or on the ducts itself in case there is no false ceiling.

These Diffusers are generally at the height of not less than 8ft from the finished floor level; hence they diffuse the air centrally much above the height of a general work desk.

The common issue with these grills and ducts faced after the commissioning is the air balancing. In such systems, the ducts create a network of stem and branches. The stem is called the main duct that supplies the air to the branches. These branches

are then installed with the grills to diffuse a set volume of air as per the pre-designed duct and grill sizes and crosssections. The branches are controlled by the volume control dampers that help to balance and manage the flow of air at nominal levels and as per the design parameters.

If these dampers are not calibrated properly or are missing at certain locations, there is a disbalance in the volume of air, some branches and their diffusers disperse more volume of air, and the other operates on lesser volume than designed for. This creates an issue of improper air balancing wherein there is always a condition of discomfort among some of the users. In the proposed system, these diffusers are provided at an accessible height with the option of partial opening and closing that works similar to a mechanism seen with the AC grills of a car, these diffusers are calibrated at the maximum required dispersion to reach a designed temperature and can be adjusted by the users to partially or fully close the same as per there comfort.

3. Flip Top Box with Electrical and data supply These are the Flip top boxes with electrical and data terminations, in terms of technology these boxes are similar to the boxes which are used traditionally for a conference table set up, i.e. they house desired number of Electrical 3 pin sockets and data ports on the front

(user side) with female plugs of 3 pin and Io’s on the backside to connect them with the source supply coming through the Electrical and data cabling in 8and 9. In terms of design, this component is just aligned to the rear part of the workstation towards the service core of 1,8 & 9. In terms of usage, this component is proposed for all the work desks and not only at the conference or meeting room tables.

In a traditional model, a similar set up of Flip top box is provided by the Work desk manufacturer in which then the Electrical partner does the wiring, installs the sockets and commissions the whole line.

4 & 5. Pen Stand & File / Book Stand This component is an add on in terms of the design to make the work desk more organized and without any add on utilities.

7. Understructure The understructure of these work desks will be similar to the traditional modular work desk understructure.

The only specific area where the proposed prototype aims to explore is the modularity of individual work desks with the cluster. i.e. currently these modular work desks are produced for designed clusters such as a back to back cluster of 10 workstations having 5 workstations in a row and opposite to each other, and they share a single understructure with a set of modular end legs, mid legs and beams. The proposed prototype aims to create the beams of the understructure with an antenna like opening and locking mechanism that can be reset to any lesser length and hence a bigger cluster can be arranged as a smaller cluster as well in the same or a new space.

6. Table tops These are the general 25mm thick table tops can be finished in various shades of pre-laminated particle boards, MDF & various other material palettes used traditionally.

3 6

5 4 7

8

6 8

9

7

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Time required for Raceway and conduit laying on the floor is completely saved.

8 & 9. Electrical & Data Raceways These raceways or cable managers are primarily used to run efficiently, hide and manage the electrical power and data networking cables. These cables are connected to the nearest DB’s or Network rack, and they power the switch sockets and data IO’s on the work desks.

IN TRADITIONAL MODEL : In a traditional and currently on-going practice, the method of laying the cables and powering the sockets and IO’s are as follows.

Step 1: A pre-designed network of Raceways and conduits with the junction boxes are laid on the base floor.

Step 2: These Raceways and conduits are then covered on top with a minimum layer of Concrete Screeding.

Step 3: Lay all the cables (electrical and network) from the laid floor raceway and conduits and are stored/stacked nicely near the riser of every cluster.

Step 4: Wait until the delivery and installation of the work desks.

Step 5: After the installation of these work desks, the already laid cables are taken through the riser and cable manager of the cluster and terminated at each and every work desk to power the desk with electrical and networking.

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IN PROPOSED PROTOTYPE: In the proposed prototype, this system of cable laying and termination becomes more effective and less timeconsuming. In the proposed prototype, the proposed method of laying these cables and powering these work desks are as follows, Step 1: Proposed concept aims to avoid the Raceways and conduits on the floor, Lead 3 core Electrical cable and CAT 6 UTP cables are bunched and laid directly on the floor.

Step 2: Instead of Floor Screeding, the proposed concept uses the Access false flooring that is faster and reusable.

Electrical socket and Networking switch at the foot.

Step 5: After installation of the workstations, connect the male and female connectors at the foot of the cluster to power the workstations.

AIMED BENEFITS of Proposed prototype and method as compared to the traditional method are as follows: • Time required for raceway and conduit laying on the floor is completely saved.

• Time required for Civil works for screeding is tremendously reduced by doing false flooring instead

Step 3: At the foot of each Work desk cluster, the electrical Cables are terminated into a female socket, and Networking Cables are terminated into a network switch.

• On-site time for cabling and termination on the work desk after they arrive for installation at the site is reduced drastically as the cables are pre-installed in the workstation and just needs to be plugged in at the site.

Step 4: Parallelly With the fabrication of the work desks inside 8 & 9, Electrical and Data cables are laid, terminated into switch sockets at each workstation on the user end and terminated into male plugs and IO’s on the rear end to connect with the pre-terminated

• The extra cable length which is generally kept to be on the safer side in the traditional method for the workstation can be saved as in the proposed concept we are terminating the same precisely at both ends, i.e. at the site as well as on the work desks.

MODEL “DIFFUSERS ARE PROVIDED

AT AN ACCESSIBLE HEIGHT WITH THE OPTION OF PARTIAL OPENING AND CLOSING THAT WORKS SIMILAR TO A MECHANISM SEEN WITH THE

AC GRILLS OF A CAR.”

Author – Rohit Purohit, CEO ViitorCloud

“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope.” Princess Leia is beaconed for help through a bright light display by R2-D2 whilst ObiWan Kenobi teaches Luke about the force.

Remember this historic scene from Star Wars - A New Hope? This was one of the very first times that digital holographic technology was portrayed in mainstream media.

The scene with the hologram ignited a sci-fi phenomenon not just across literature and media but also research and development in the domain of science and technology.

Well, the scene from Star Wars and many others is no longer a fiction. You can now experience the holographic contents on mediums like a table that you have witnessed countless times in the command centres of nearly every single sci-fi movie ever created.

The concept of the hologram table has been a dominant presence in sci-fi for decades. Becoming the causality for multiple attempts at pioneering there, but never really caught on. That is mainly because,

because, in the past, they just have not worked as we hoped from time to time. The reason for this was that any hologram thus created previously lacked one integral quality—that of perception from every angle. In simpler terminology, all previous attempts at holograms became distorted when viewed by more than one person or viewed from different angles. My company, ViitorCloud, has been developing solutions in the domain of augmented and virtual reality and has utilized a multitude of technologies to develop numerous immersive and interactive experiences.

So, we have always been on the lookout for any pathbreaking new emerging technologies that could be a disruptive origin in this field.

That is how we came across the Holographic Table. The Hologram Table is designed and manufactured

by Euclideon, an Australian computer software company best known for a middleware 3D graphics engine, called Unlimited Detail and distributed across India

by Futurotec Solutions LLP.

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The Hologram Table is a continuation of what Euclideon has been working on for several years with what they refer to as the Unlimited Detail engine. It’s a pointcloud rendering technology on which the company has worked for a long time.

the content developer to have terabyte-sized 3D models, which is quite spectacular.

The Holographic table offers incredible opportunities for designing, displays, and presentations, especially for architecture, engineering, and design entities.

It allows users to not only render more traditional polygon models but also using point cloud data, which would allow

This table holds the potential to practically revolutionize the architectural industry.

The inherent quality that the table brings to the table (no pun intended) is to add the people element to the design process. Putting people first, to design, build and launch architecture and experiences that redefine industries in a constantly evolving digital era.

Imagine a team of architects surrounding the table working on a single design hologram, adding removing elements at the same time with a simple two-button controller. This has become entirely possible with the Hologram Table.

Inputs can be collated and implemented without the hassle and inefficiency of 2-dimensions. We live in a 3-dimensional, perceive and imagine in 3-dimensions, yet our work still follows a 2-dimensional approach.

VIITOR CLOUD

D

The vision behind building Holographic content on such a platform is to rectify this.

The company is committed to delivering bespoke solutions to customers and clients in numerous industry domains,

not just the ones that are invested in designing and engineering aspects.

Rather than a one size fits all approach to intuitive, no-nonsense interfaces and design creations.

ia

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“To create designs for smart cities, corporate assets, homes and display as life sized holograms.�

The fundamental idea is to provide an immersive experience that does not detach viewers from reality and allows multiple users to interact with virtual reality and with each other.

The holographic table can be and is being utilized in myriad industries across the globe. In architecture, the tables are being used to create designs for smart cities, corporate assets, homes, and buildings and display them as life-sized holograms for more detailed and efficacious presentations. Hologram business tables are also being used by government institutions to project holograms of cities up to 60cm high. The level of detail available is limited only by the data provided to the table. The holographic table can also help provide live holograms of designs or objects on stage, from large scale real estate designs to intricate interior decor or even holographic versions of your presentations with floating objects to work with. The stage hologram system can also be used in showrooms and for advertising.

Creating a brilliant design is vital in architecture, no doubt about it; however, it is equally important to be able to present the design in the most elaborative manner with the greatest ease. The Euclideon holographic table provides architects and designers with the ability to present designs and concepts to all stakeholders at a more precise and customized level by real-time controller features such as tilt, pan, zoom, transform 3d models, etc. The Hologram Table can display 3d models of cities or buildings as miniatures, with the ability to then zoom in down to single blades of grass – or even further and smaller without compromising on details! Users hold the ability to interact with the display. They can pick up objects and move them around or prepare holographic presentations to convey ideas most intricately in real-time.

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Architects, engineers, and designers working with clients could demonstrate changes made and compare different design solutions more easily and at any stage of the project. Development firms selling the ‘design’ could easily showcase and compare models of available options at any scale to their customers.

Under the table, Unlimited Detail technology (UD) removes the requirement for expensive, high-end graphics hardware when rendering 3D scenes.

At its core, UD operates an extremely efficient 3D search algorithm that can render unlimited quantities of point cloud data in real-time. It can display models of previously unimaginable sizes at high framerates, making the Hologram Table one of the most powerful tools available for viewing and interacting with 3D data. The streaming capabilities of UD allow the data to be accessed by users across the world via the internet or their own Private Network. This affords a company to interlink their Hologram Tables and offers the possibility for large-scale, simultaneous collaboration by teams around the world. Using Unlimited DetailTM, 3D data size of Gigabytes (GB), or Terabytes (TB - 1,000 GB), and even larger can be loaded almost instantly. Lidar scans of the city, terrains, facilities are a few examples of such data.

The future of experiences is individualized.

Experiences must go beyond personalization, with customized fixed assets for individuals, at scale, for the specific context and moment. This very logic is also applicable to an architectural presentation. AR/VR technology offers users a personalized experience; however, it is a cloistered one. The difference between the two comes down to a single aspect- the possibility to interact with each other whilst interacting with the display. To put things into perspective allow me to describe a personal experience.

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At ViitorCloud, we have designed immersive and interactive experiences for both clients utilizing AR/VR devices and the Holographic table. One such creation was an immersive experience for interior design and dĂŠcor application.

Whilst using the application, when the users mount the head display, they can interact with the elements of the house say for example change the wall materials, resize the rooms/ zones, place and move the furniture, apply interior and exterior elements, add voiceovers to explain the design, etc. in virtual reality. However, once the users mounted the head display units, they could no longer interact with the other users. In the Hologram table, however, a person can interact with the display of the house and change the design and dĂŠcor to their wishes whilst not losing the ability to interact with other users.

This process is very similar to actual shopping and designing experience in the real world.

This issue also lies beyond the customer’s side. There are no other existing MultiUser Hologram Tables on the market. The closest competitive technologies are Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality headsets.

Despite being reasonably successful in the entertainment industry, the adoption of these headsets has not been well received in the corporate market. Many of the businesses that tried them initially found them to be too heavy and intrusive for meetings, internally or with clients.

The Hologram Table does not require a bulky headset for viewing and instead uses active 3D glasses. For a User, the ability to simply slip glasses on and off to view presentations instead of a whole headset makes the experience an effortless one rather than clunky and awkward. Additionally, as they are glasses (not screens), they allow for ordinary social interaction to occur without needing to remove the glasses in order to interact with each other.

Since this is a relatively new technology, the table does, however, have a few limitations for now. This is a relatively new technology, so it is understandable that it will take some time in awareness generation and proliferation for it. It also caters to niche markets, so it needs to be positioned very carefully.

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VIITOR CLOUD “Everything you can imagine is real.�

Pablo Picasso

Apart from this, the Hologram Table requires a darkened temperaturecontrolled environment with no IR- light sources (especially no sunlight). On the bright side, the Hologram Table does not require a bulky headset for viewing and instead uses lightweight glasses that track the user in the darkroom, altering and changing the hologram instantaneously with every slight change in perception.

For a user, the ability to simply slip glasses on and off to view presentations instead of a heavy headset with all its straps and makes the experience an effortless one rather than being clunky and awkward.

Moreover, as they are glasses (not screens), they allow for ordinary social interaction to occur without the need to remove the glasses in order to see or interact with one another.

Having said that, the Hologram tables probably will not be going mainstream and becoming a household appliance just yet – but for entities that are invested in designing like architecture and engineering, this product is a godsend.

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BUILDING DIGITALLY Technology always serves as a bridge between imagination and reality, and it has made us smarter, but can it make our shelter smarter? Step inside the newly completed DFAB house, and you will be whisked away to the world of science and fiction. From the 3-D printed roof to the wall reminiscent of aliens, this house is a snapshot of what our future homes could be. Built on the NEST building of Empa and Eawag, this house is not only made or built but also works digitally, the blinds open as if magic and the kettle prepares water for tea.

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SHAPING IT TO REALITY The three-story “house” located in Dubendorf is a result of a long-term collaboration between researchers in eight ETH Zurich professorships and industry experts and planning professionals from more than 30 companies. It is a thought shaping for a few years that results in a house that makes planning and construction more efficient and more sustainable. It serves as a platform for implementing a new smart home solution and for validating them in reality. The fantasy of robots building houses teleports us to the

future of construction, the wall which resembles aliens was an outcome of the robotically fabricated construction system. “The architectural potential of digital fabrication technologies is immense. Unfortunately, these technologies are still scarcely used on construction sites. With the DFAB HOUSE, we can test new technologies hand in hand with industry and thus accelerate the transfer from research to practice,” says Matthias Kohler, ETH Professor of Architecture and Digital Fabrication.

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AN INTELLIGENT HOME

A delicate concrete ceiling cast in 3D printed framework and a curved concrete wall created by a construction robot characterize the architecture of the living room. The 200 sqm. house involves six highly original innovation objects. The In-Situ Fabricator is a context-aware mobile construction robot for fabricating building elements directly on construction sites.

It builds a 3D mesh structure that acts as both formwork and structure reinforcement.

Although robots are the predominant building forces, people still manually filled the framework. The house contains 15 bespoke reinforced concrete mullions produced by digitally controlled slip-forming, by which self-compacting concrete is fed into a flexible formwork that shapes the concrete as it hardens. This provides each mullion a unique shape different from each other. The digitally planned floor slab of DFAB house is statically and structurally optimized in such a way that considerable amounts of materials can be saved compared to a conventional concrete slab. The technologies also open up new design possibilities. For instance, the two upper residential floors are characterized by wooden 44

frames, which were fabricated with the help of two construction robots and arranged in complex geometries. Defining the feel of the overall structure, the house’s facade is made up of aerogel granules inserted and stabilized between specially developed membrane panels through a novel process. The result is a thin and double-curved lightweight façade system with superinsulation properties that enables light to enter the building through the entire wall. The mixing of traditional construction methods to new digital concepts proposes a possible futuristic solution.

However, the question arises if the home is smart enough to be called a home for the future?

ARCHITECTURAL PERSPECTIVE A consortium of companies led by digitalSTROM has installed the first smart home solutions in DFAB HOUSE. The idea is simple: Smart luster terminals enable analog devices (such as lamps or blinds) to be digitized and to work sensibly with devices that are already networked via WLAN or LAN. For this purpose, digitalSTROM use the two most future-proof and reliable infrastructures in the house: the power line and the IP network, which are based on the manufacturer-independent digitalSTROM platform. These include intelligent, multistage burglar protection, automated glare, and shading options, and the latest generation of networked, intelligent household appliances.

However, DFAB HOUSE is smart not only in terms of home electronics but also in terms of energy management: Photovoltaic modules on the roof supply on average one and a half times as much electricity as the unit itself will consume, while an intelligent control system coordinates all consumption and ensures that no load peaks occur. Two start-up ideas, accompanied by researchers from Empa and Eawag, are helping to save additional energy: On the one hand, heat from wastewater, which would otherwise be lost, is recovered directly in the shower trays via heat exchangers, and on the other hand hot water flows from the pipes back into the boiler when not in use instead of cooling in the water pipes. This method not only saves energy and water but also reduces the risk of bacteria growing in the pipes.

SMART FUTURE

As we can see, soon, our shelter is going to be smart enough to take care of itself, but are we ready to embrace it? Can we make a house build by bots, a home for us? Only time can answer the unanswerable, till then, let’s enjoy the smartness.

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scan for answers

DOWN 1. The lower part of the wall of a room, below about waist height, when decorated differently from the upper part.

2. Popularly known as the queen of the curve, she was the first woman to win pritzker prize.

4. From the iconic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, this pritzker prize awardee has 46

proven time and again the force that’s produced when whimsical design is done masterfully.

5. The earliest form of arch. also called the Moorish arch or the keyhole arch.

6. An indian architect famous for organic architecture and had his own unique style with a subtle influence of local climate and culture.

ACROSS 3. A term for financial assets, such as funds held in deposit accounts and/or funds obtained from special financing sources,also related to architecture.

7. A series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault.

8. It is a series of arches supported by columns or piers, a passageway between arches and a solid wall, or a covered walkway that provides access to adjacent shops.

12. An Indian architect famous for organic architecture and had his own unique style with a subtle influence of local climate and culture.

13. This modern house is set above a natural waterfall, fusing the artificial and the natural in perfect harmony.

14. The name of the company who is famous for its editing softwares, also an ancient building material usually made with tightly compacted sand, clay, and straw .

17. 2019 laureate of the Pritzker Prize.

20. Received the 2018 oscar prize for the best film,yes, not everything is related to architecture here.

21. A wedge-shaped element, typically a stone, which is used in building an arch or vault.

DOWN 9. A variation of the Ionic order, and the youngest of the three basic orders of classical Greek architecture.

10. He worked as a boxer before settling on the profession of architect, despite never having formal training in the field, highly regarded for his unparalleled work with concrete, sensitive treatment of natural light, and strong engagement with nature.

11. This architect designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings including the viceroy’s residence.

13. A band of richly sculpted ornamentation on a building.

15. The triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches.

16. A recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean or a lake It is any division of a building between vertical lines or planes.

18. A counting frame, is a calculating tool made of wood,wires and beads,also a term related to columns.

19. This word is a courtyard in Islamic architecture.

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GREEN BUILDING and LEED The ‘green building’ movement began in the U.S. about 25 years ago, it has gained currency in India in the last ten years, but why we need to go green?

When the whole world is talking about sustainable development and green building design, it also important to understand what motivates us to be a part of this movement and where we stand on this road. Energy conservation is the primary motivator to go green in India. Anything can be done to save energy. The country grew so fast, and energy could not keep pace with it, and that’s where the idea of sustainability and Green Building began to flourish. With the adoption of LEED, India has become a world leader for green building design and construction. It provides a framework for new and existing buildings to lessen their environmental impact, increase efficiency and provide healthier spaces for the people that use them.

LEED is the most widely used green building rating system, and in November 2019, it celebrated a milestone, reaching 100,000 registered and certified commercial projects across 176 countries. India has seen a boom in sustainable construction over the past several years, and the country currently ranks fourth in the world for LEED. To date, there are nearly 3,050 registered and certified projects participating in LEED in India, totalling over 1.46 billion gross square feet of space.

With the help of LEED, the vision is to have a more sustainable and green development in India, which not only promises the conservation of energy but also a better future for upcoming generations. We will see many

NEED?

CAREER IN GREEN At first glance, green buildings might not appear very different from their predecessors, but they feature specialized designs and materials to limit their environmental impact.

Creating these new buildings requires skilled workers—such as architects and construction managers—with knowledge of new design and construction techniques. As the demand for green architecture and construction continues to increase, so does the demand for sustainability professionals. Green jobs are growing at a rate of 15 to 20 per cent every year in India with no signs of slowing down.

To advance careers in this field, Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) offers LEED credentials that highlight proficiency in sustainable design, construction and operation. There are more than 204,800 LEED credentialed professionals across the world, only 1,056 of whom are currently based in India. As the fourth largest market

FOR GREEN

for LEED, there is a significant call for specialists to guide the design and construction of India’s swelling green building landscape.

LEED LAB The Lab in India is a multidisciplinary immersion course that utilizes the built environment to educate and prepare students to become green building leaders and sustainabilityfocused citizens. To help bolster this green construction, LEED has partnered with universities across the world to create this Lab, an interactive multidisciplinary course that uses project-based learning to educate and prepare students for careers in green building and sustainability.

During the course, students examine the performance of buildings on their own campus and choose one building where they facilitate the entire LEED Operation and Maintenance (LEED O+M) rating system with the goal of certifying the building. The immersive program teaches students

the foundational concepts of green building, provides them with projectbased LEED experience and prepares them to enter the green building field.

At the close of the course, students take the LEED AP O+M examination to earn their LEED AP credential, which demonstrates proficiency in today’s sustainable, design construction and operations standards and is a valuable tool for showcasing knowledge, experience, and credibility in the green building marketplace. The first LEED Lab in India was launched in 2016 at the Knowledge Institute of Technology (KIOT) in Salem, Tamil Nadu. There are now eight LEED Labs throughout the country, with an additional 30 schools teaching LEED curriculum.

While the courses are frequently taken by engineering and architecture students, young professionals of all backgrounds find that LEED’s internationally recognized credentials make them more competitive in the architecture, construction, real estate, and green industries.

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GREEN RATING CRITERIA Sunstainable Site Erosion & Sedimentation, Control Required, Site Selection, Deve-lopment Density & Community Connectivity, Brownfield Redevelopment, Public Transportation Access etc

USGBC

Innovation & Design Process Innovation in Design, a LEED Accredited Professional helps score more credits.

Energy and Atmosphere Fundamental Commissioning of the Building Energy Systems , Minimum Energy Performance,CFC Reduction in HVAC & R Equipment, Optimize Energy Performance, Renewable Energy, etc.

IGBC

Site Selection & Planning Local Building Regulations, Soil Erosion Control, Basic Aminities, Preserv-ation or Transplantation of Trees, Green Building Guidelines etc 50

Water Conservation Rainwater Harvesting, Roof & Nonroof, Mandatory Require-ment, Water Efficient Plumbing Fixtures, Landscape Design, Management of Irrigation Systems etc.

GREEN BUILDING MOVEMENTS

Water Efficency Water Efficient Landscaping, Innovative Wastewater Tech nologies and Water Use Reduction.

Materials & Resources Storage & Collection of Recyclables Building Reuse, Construction Waste Management, Resource Reuse, Recycled Content, Regional Materials and Renewable Materials.

Energy Efficency Ozone Depleting Substances, Mandatory Requirement, Minimum Energy Efficiency Equipment & Systems Eco-friendly Refrigerants On-site Renewable Energy Off-site Renewable Energy etc.

Innovation & Development Innovation in Design Process, Optimisation in Structural Design, Water Use Reduction for Construction and IGBC Accredited Professional.

Building Materials & Resources Segregation of Waste, Post-Occupancy, Sustainable Building Materials, Organic Waste Manage-ment, Handling of Waste Materials during Construction and Use of Certified Green Building Material.

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GREEN PARTNERSHIP

The green building councils of India and the U.S. said that they would strengthen their partnership for the sake of a better future that promises to be more green than concrete. As green building design is the solution of a global problem, two nations come

together and shake their hand for a better world seems to be fair enough.

USGBC has already helped IGBC in managing the LEED certification, and now we look forward to this partnership to set up new milestones in green building design in the near future.

A green building rating system is a tool that evaluates the performance of a building and its impact on the environment. It comprises a predefined set of criteria relating to the design, construction, and operations of green buildings. LEED provides a third-party verification that a building or community has been designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all metrics: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources.

Projects that are being assessed for LEED certification earn points on the basis of six broadly defined LEED credit categories. Projects are rewarded

LEED points for complying with these specific green building criteria as well as satisfying prerequisites within the categories. The six LEED categories are :

GREEN RATING

•Sustainable sites • Water efficiency • Energy and atmosphere • Materials and resources • Indoor environmental quality • Innovation in design LEED is a point-based system. LEED certification is available across four levels. The relevant LEED certification is granted based on the number of points a project earns.

Based on the above categories, projects are certified as follows:

GREEN AHEAD As India’s LEED-certified footprint continues to expand, so too does our understanding of the need for sustainable spaces. Not only do they use less energy and water, avoid waste, save on maintenance costs and improve indoor air quality, they also create a less environmental burden on their community and enhance the health and wellness of their occupants. Humans spend an average of 90 per cent of their lives indoors, and the spaces we live and work in should improve the quality of life instead of hindering it. Through LEED certification, we are making strides towards that reality.

Green future is the root, and a vision of LEED and India has already welcomed it warmly. The harmony between the surrounding ecosystem and built-up environment is only possible by the concept of green building, and LEED is playing a very important role in this, so let’s embrace this concept and make the Green come true.

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“The bamboo that bends is stronger than the Oak that Resists�

BAMBOO WOOD VS

Bamboo’s environmental benefits arise largely out of its ability to grow quickly.

Bamboo yield 20 times more timber than trees on the same area. Today, heightened consumer environmental awareness has given sales of bamboo flooring, clothing, building materials and other items a huge boost. Bamboo is harder,moisture resistant and more stable than even oak hardwoods. Many bamboo options can last upwards of 50 years if properly maintained.

Additionally, bamboo is termite resistant and comes in a huge choice of stains and plank widths. The cost is generally less than traditional hardwood and, 54

like engineered hardwood, bamboo flooring is easy to install.

WHAT IS BAMBOO? Bamboo, a sustainable wood and renewable resource, is being used as a replacement for cedar, mahogany, and other popular hardwood lumbers.

It is also used structurally for buildings, textiles, and as a food source. Bamboo has been used as construction material for a long time.Inherently strong and aesthetically pleasing, different parts of the globe are catching on to bamboo as a sustainable resource.

WHAT IS TAKKE? Takke lifestyle is an indian based company presenting to you,bamboo wood, an eco-friendlybamboo wood which is and ideal alternative to hardwood Implementing the idealogy of “Make in India� Initiative, Takke lifestyke has partnered with state-ofthe-art manufacturing units in North East, India. We deliver innovative home decor and building material solutions based on a fastest growing renewable resource- Bamboo.

We are technology integrated startup.

Support this young company by sending your enquiries at:

HELLO@TAKKE.IN

A TOLL ON HEALTH AND HAPPINESS The life we live in today has a significant impact on the indoor environment as we live more than 90% of our life indoors. While there is no doubt that modern amenities have made our lives a lot easier and comfortable indoors, but they are also the key to our current lethargic lives. Simply put, they have allowed people not to do things that they were forced to do before. Also, they have caused a disintegration of the role of nature in our daily routine. This is unfortunate for us as nature is necessary for our physical and psychological well-being. Lack of it is making people lead sedentary lives for more extended periods. Further, people are also exerting less energy, which tends to make them less fit. No wonder, people feel a significant gap on a fairly customary substratum between what our comfort is and what is offered.

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UNIWORKS STUDIO

HOW CAN INDOOR ELEMENTS AFFECT US?

Whether you are living and spending time in a home or working in an office indoors, for most of the day, indoor elements can be hazardous in the following ways: BECOME SURPRISINGLY TOXIC An average indoor environment is complex, with varied factors at play that potentially affects indoor occupant’s well-being.

Building dampness and contaminant exposure can be dangerous for the occupant’s health.

Likewise, materials with high levels of volatile organic compounds (also called VOCs) like paints, varnishes, wood preservatives, and other building materials are harmful to indoor air quality. People who spent lots of time indoors are at risk of being exposed to unusually high levels of these damaging compounds.

AFFECTS WORK, INTERACTION & SLEEP A study by Well Living Lab (a collaboration between Delos & the Mayo Clinic, US) reveals that even an indoor environment which is not too toxic can be dangerous. The biological response of indoor occupants to various changing elements in the environment, like changes in lighting, acoustic, and thermal conditions, etc., affects how they perform, interact, and sleep.

AFFECTS WORK PRODUCTIVITY Workplaces without adequate ventilation, air-flow, and such as factors, tend to affect indoor occupants’ work performance and also cause significant sleep issues.

A HEALTHY BUILDING AND INDOOR INDOOR Considering the above hazards, clean water and air offer a remedy to overcome stress and slumber, while enhancing performance, and comfort. Everyone is verbalizing about technology; it has solved our cab quandary, victuals distribution, and credit card payment from the grocery store to attire, but nobody has yet come forward to solve authentic quandaries. However, it is not all doom and gloom. For instance, Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School Of Public Health, working on a project called ‘The Healthy Buildings Project,’ is examining ‘what a healthy building’ looks like and what new standards for indoor health it can set.

The project, a brainchild of Environmental Design Professor, Joseph Allen, and his team, has come up with a condensed approach, called ‘The 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building’. The nine foundations are the elements that make-up an indoor-built environment – air quality, thermal health, moisture, dust and pests, safety and security, water quality, noise, lighting and views, and ventilation. Buildings that incorporate the nine foundations and encourage us to see ourselves as part of the natural world will flourish than those that isolate us.

Most of the time, the conceptions do not squint hard, but they certainly lack the glitz and glamour against some trendy start-up doing coding or engendering apps. We know as a law of nature that whatever we have engendered will die one day, so the only solution is either find another world or preserve the existing one.

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What determined your passion for design?

This is where a leading intelligent design Tell us about the moment you decided solutions provider, Uniworks Designs, this is the way to go (your journey). is making waves, providing solutions I emanate from a town named Varanasi, through biophilic designs that help where there is a mistry who is responsible foster a healthier indoor environment for the entire design and construction of for humans while inducing connect our houses and nobody had any idea what to nature. From conceptualization to an architect is. Joining the Bachelor of project coordination and more, Uniworks Architecture course in IIT Kharagpur was has successfully incorporated biophilic entirely accidental, but as I commenced designs with precision and attention to it, I slowly started understanding more detail, to create spaces that are timeless about Building Architecture. There works of art, a feast to the eyes and came a time in my 5th year when I was soothing-balm to the senses. equipollently intrigued with Finance and

Right cognizance of Art, Science, and Technology in the form of natural elements is used designed spaces.

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had to decide between the two. Finally, I decided to take Architecture and later, Finance played an equally consequential role to establish enterprises. The design process does not follow a set of rules or do not have a set solution. It starts with a situation of dilemma, followed by resolving to choose one path/process and further benchmarking a solution.

This entire process is unique with every quandary verbal expression. This is how there is not even an ounce of boredom in this journey. Hence your work is about

exploring the right quandary and the right process towards the solution.

How would you describe your design style? How varied are your designs?

Do you have a signature touch with your plans?

Our design style is to relinquish unnecessary details in our design. We are a team that gives utmost importance to the process that we undergo while designing. If the procedure followed is good, the design output will automatically

be good. The process commences right from the client brief, the inclusion of art/science/technology, concept design, drawing details to the final build space.

In our designs, a biophilic hypothesis is of paramount content.

What is your philosophy on design and life?

We do not design our spaces to be walled in on all sides and windows to be stuffed.

Instead, we pick the right cognizance of Art, Science, and Technology in the form of natural elements like wood, stone, fresh air and sunlight to be blown around in our designed spaces as deliberately as possible.

Ours is not a conception of indoor prison.

It has room for freshness, and it is proof against insolence brandish pride.

What do you love about being a designer? Where do you draw your inspiration from?

The best part of being a designer is that there is no fixed pattern, no fixed problem and no fixed solution; it is the creative force that guides our rationales behind any design problem.

There are invisible and visible forces in nature such as light, water, air, stone, greenery and time-a force of gravity, which existed long before the existence of human beings thus us humans have a strong connection with such forces.

Every work that we do have connectivity with such forces. We believe that once we can exhibit the truth of natural forces to people, we will be able to achieve a connection with more astronomically forces.

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DESIGN “SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE BUILD PROCESS WHEREAS ART AND CRAFT

ARE THE USEFUL GUIDANCE.”

How will Arts and Crafts and Advanced technology go in tandem in the architecture industry?

In Uniworks science and technology is an integral part of the build process, whereas Art and Craft are the useful guidance to make a part of a design idea.

Initially, the biophilic design was more the realm of architects and mainly used in commercial projects. But it is now being recognized as just as important when it comes to our own homes. Why do you think that is? What has affected the change?

Today, we spend more than 90% of our life indoors. People are increasingly 60

confined within a space, both at home and office. A study has recently revealed an authenticity that a billion people suffer from vitamin D deficiency, and most of the world’s population have vitamin paucity.

We know as a law of nature that whatever we have engendered will die one day; so the only solution is either find another planet or preserve the existing one. This is where the Uniworks intelligence comes to the picture as we offer meaningful solutions through the biophilic design hypothesis, which includes wellness as an integral part of space realization.

Biophilic designs not only help to preserve buildings but also help to foster a healthier indoor environment for humans with a healthy connection with nature. From conceptualization to

project coordination and more, Uniworks has successfully incorporated biophilic designs with precision and attention to detail, to create spaces that have been acknowledged as a timeless work of art, a feast for the eyes and soothing-balm to the senses. With human wellness as the core-driver, the impact of such spaces design will be more significant than ever, in the days ahead.

How should architects and designers approach biophilia when creating a space? What are some strategies they should use?

Use natural materials like wood, stone, natural paint, etc., instead of artificial things and try to incorporate greenery and allow more sunlight. Altogether Biophilic solutions should be low maintenance and sustainable setup.

How does the organization promote the professional growth and development of its employees?

How are employees in Uniworks recognized for their results?

For professional growth -It is decided from the time of hiring itself. We tend to hire employees better than us so that the current work is improved upon and carried forward in a much better way.

For recognition- We believe in the motto that if you want to instruct someone swimming, push him in the swimming pool but in supervision!

After a while, he will return a swimmer. Those returned learned they are recognized. This is the main reason for uniworks to have a very young team where the average age of employees is below 27.

Finally, architects, scientists, and industrial leaders are coming together to work on having settlements on Mars. Bjarke Ingles Group (the famous post-modern architecture company) has come up with a prototype for the Mars habitat.

What are your views on this?

Good ideas are always crazy until they are not executed. Habitating mars is undoubtedly one of the utopian conceptions where chances of its realization are 0.01%. However, if it is successful, it will make human beings a multi-planetary species which enables us to have divergent views on every aspect of cognizance.

We at Uniworks are orchestrating to propose our conceptions for Mars as human habitat project we will unveil by the end of Dec-2020.

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BJARKE INGELS GROUP Architecture has evolved on the Earth as a shelter for human life. But what if it is about 225 million kilometres away from our ecosystem?

What if it is about Mars?

The challenge there is not to preserve the existing environment but instead to design and engineer a whole new human-made ecosystem. When you begin to inhabit a world that has no current ecosystem, environmentalism takes a whole new meaning. The meaning of architecture, which is the art and science of making our world more

suitable for human life, becomes crystal clear when we venture beyond our terrain origins to settle in the fragile world. The architecture that captivates us most is vernacular, which has evolved by adopting local climate and landscape.

With the Mars Science City, BIG has attempted to explore the martian vernacular style. Designing to low gravity, low pressure, extreme cold and high levels of radiations, radically changes the architects’ tool kit and the resulting form and space.

CAST AWAY...

WHY THE RED?

The biggest question that arises here is why Mars is so much appealing as a shelter for humankind? Between Mars and Moon, Mars takes its stand with the presence of carbon, water mineral resources, daylight cycle, geothermal energy, atmosphere, and reasonable travel time. The conditions of Mars makes it a far better place to live than the moon. Other celestial bodies like

venus and moons of Jupiter fall in between them when it is about the colonization of the future. Even though Earth is more prominent than Mars, the combined size of the land area of both the planets is the same. Mars and Earth’s position align every two years, making travel time to Mars reasonable.

The best case of travel time is six to nine months one way. The presence of carbon, water mineral resources, and atmosphere made BIG to see a vision

of colonization on Mars.

Despite having such an encouraging environment, the future of humanity on the Red Planet is not too easy to design. A wide variety of contrast between the Earth and Mars makes us able to see the upcoming challenges. Gravity on Mars is 38% of Earth, while the pressure is about 1% of Earth, demands to create an artificial environment over the Red soil. The magnetic field of Mars is quite lower than that of Earth; most of the solar radiation on

Instead of importing his home environment, Roald Amundsen embraced the local environment and adopted a live-off-the-land strategy.

-Robert Zubrin,

Mars reaches its surface.

The radiation is dangerous for people, but the thin atmosphere can provide enough protection for plants to withstand and thrive in the greenhouse. The relationship between architecture and the surrounding ecosystem works differently on mars. The environmental conditions on the planet demand another artificial ecosystem in the lap of the existing ecosystem.

Traditional construction methods did not rely on industrial processes or fabrication. On mars, we will be in a similar situation, no industries to supply building materials. In this way, we will be working like the early settlers on Earth.

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A NEW HOME Outside Dubai, four geodesic domes are enveloping the Mars Science City covering 17.5 hectares of a desert, making it the largest space simulation city ever built.

Laboratories are there to simulate Mars’s harsh environment by making use of 3D printing technology, as well as heat and radiation insulation. The city’s design inculcates a museum with educational areas, the walls of the museum are 3D printed using sand from the Emirati desert. Compared to rectilinear forms, rounded geometrics are optimal for 3D printing and use 12% less concrete per meter square floor plan. 3D printed structures are very appealing as they provide air pressure, are radiation safe, can be built from local resources, and can accommodate any form or programme.

However, it is challenging to achieve airtightness. Inflatable structures prove as a good option in the given scenario to provide air pressure, oxygen, environment for construction, thermal comfort, and the second layer of safety. But, on the other hand, they are not wholly radiation safe and have to be transported. The optimal geometry comparisons clearly show that the sphere works very well with an area volume ratio of 4.8. From this, the design takes the shape of the inflatable dome, and when it comes to Dubai, fused domes come out to be the best design for a martian village. Connectivity and juxtapositioning

come out to be a vital feature of the mars science city, having various spaces of administration, permanent and temporary exhibitions, research, and education.

Where the five domes overlap, support functions are placed as spines of the buildings’ infrastructure, connecting the entire campus. Once the domes and connection points are established, a subgrid is used to create conditions for different users. 3D printing is being used to adjust the building according to the evolving needs. Parks are designed for more technical rather than enjoyment based experience. The placement of parks on buildings’ rooftops maximizes the opportunity for each inhabitant and visitor to occupy the green space productively.

Trees in Dubai are being replanted inside domes to distinguish between the lush environment inside and arid landscape outside.

FAR FROM HOME According to BIG, the process of colonization on mars has three stages; in their words, “Bring buildings- bring machines to build buildings- bring nothing.” Mars science city is going to make our dream of spending our vacations in a new house on mars.

The vision is to have the touch of the red soil under our feet by the year 2177. So, pack your bags and say hello to a new home, far from home 65

MATERIALITY OF VASTU This time where we are having a shift towards the perspective of looking at architecture and design as the world faces new challenges and opportunities, it becomes crucial to look back, consider our old techniques where the roots of our architecture lie, gain something positive from them and walk toward the world.

VASTU VIDYA IS A SPECIALIZED FIELD OF SCIENCE

Vastu Shastra is one of those ancient techniques on which the whole process of construction used to depend, and even today, it is quite popular in India as well as many other nations. The emergence of Vastu vidya is a specialized field of science that is speculated to have occurred significantly before the 1st-century CE; that’s why it becomes to have proper guidance on this subject.

Here is what Sadhguru, a well-known mystic, says about this immemorial field of study.

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What is Vaastu Shastra? Where do the roots of this science lie?

NSEW FOUNDATION of this ancient science is the concept of the five elements of nature - Water, Air, Fire, Earth, and Space.

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Vastu is a simple architectural guidance that was given to the people. Why was this necessary? If you want to build a house today, you can go to a local architect. There will be someone sitting in an office with their doors open for you to walk in. But there were no professional architects 5000 years ago.

So they set up some guidance so that you do not build unhealthy homes.

For example, if you decided to construct a house, building the walls was never a problem – it was the roof, which was always the challenge. If you wanted to build a house, you would look for a tree, chop it down and try to make a roof out of it. What kind of roof span you have, simply depended on the length of the timber that you can procure. Suppose you have a tree in your land which is stunted and just eight feet tall, then you would have built something eight feet wide. Today, cement, concrete, and steel are available, so your ability to make a roof has changed completely.

When you were just using wood, constructing the roof was the most challenging part. Suppose you built a house that was only eight feet wide. If you had ten children, then you would make it 200 feet long, and you would end up living in a tunnel. It would definitely not be healthy for you to live in a house like this. If you lived in a tunnel every day, it would have a significant impact on you both physically and psychologically.

Living quality and standards are different for every person in this world, so how can Vastu Shastra be inculcated in every person’s (whether rich or poor) ideal living space? Also, how does the ancient science of Vaastu hold up against today’s factual science and overwhelming field of technology?

How much of this science still relies on abstract theories?

The Vastu Shastras are different from terrain to terrain. For example, the Vastu is different for hilly areas, lowlying areas, and coastal areas. And the Vastu in Karnataka is different from the one in Tamil Nadu. In Southern India alone, there are at least seventeen to eighteen different types of Vastu.

According to that particular weather and atmosphere, they created a certain type of architectural guidance.

It is only recently that people decided to make a living out of it. In the last twenty years, it has taken on ridiculous proportions. Fundamentally, all these things have become dominant because fear is ruling people. When you live in fear, we can make you believe anything.

Once, I was a guest in someone’s house, and the man was legitimately sleeping in the bathroom because a Vastu consultant had told him, “This is where you must sleep. Only then your business will go well.” I told him, “Let the business go to hell, at least sleep with some dignity in your bedroom. Live like a human being and die one day, it’s alright.”

Fundamentally, should material inanimate substances decide the quality of human nature, or should human nature decide the quality of the material that we handle? Definitely, human nature should decide. If the shape and size of your house are going to decide who you are, that is not good. Our sense should guide us, but unfortunately, fear is ruling us.

Many people have a common notion that Vastu is outdated. Is it still outdated?

What leads to misunderstanding towards the Vastu Shastra concepts?

If you build your house sensibly, considering the weather, the atmosphere, and the kind of ventilation you need, it will have a positive impact on your health and well-being, no question about it. Generally, that is what Vastu is about. It is definitely not deciding whether your business will run well or not, as some people are advocating. If there is not enough light or ventilation, it could affect your health but not your business, which is far away from your home.

As I mentioned, unfortunately, today, people have stretched it to ridiculous limits. Many wonderful homes have been broken in India because of Vastu. Another thing is, the building materials have completely changed in the last hundred years, and your homes are airconditioned, so most of the suggestions they are making are not relevant anymore.

“The basic rule of Vaastu is to create a structure that vibrates with universal energy, and all the little sustainable issues are taken care of.”

In this fastpaced lifestyle, where the human mind constantly flows outwards towards gross objects supported by facts and figures, how can one demonstrate and make experience differences caused by issues, so much subtle in nature?

If you just look at the terrain and build a house taking the light, ventilation, and everything into consideration, it will be good Vastu. You will live well. If you have no sense of where the sun rises and sets and you simply build a house, you will suffer.

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Now you have qualified architects everywhere, so they will design a house for you. But they are also going by Vastu today because otherwise, they will lose out on business. Initially, a lot of demolition was happening in the name of Vastu, but now people are saying, “Without demolition, we’ll set it right.

Just put one piece of stone here, one mirror there, and everything will be okay.”

This is the problem – people want to master all kinds of imaginary forces, but they do not want to use what is in their hands. Please use your hands, legs, and brains – let’s leave the stars and other forces alone. We do not want to use our brains because we put it on cold storage, and we are trying to master the planets. If you do not have control over your four limbs, how are you going to master the planets? That is not going to work.

Following a set of guidelines will make buildings modular and lead to a decrease in the permutation and combination of spaces that an architect designs. Is prototyping the answer to this innate process?

In the physical world, the most crucial aspect is geometric perfection. The planets are going around the sun, not because they are held together by a steel cable. It is geometric perfection that keeps it going. If the geometry goes off in this solar system, that is the end of it! It will all fly into oblivion.

The entire yogic science – on the physical level – is just about aligning your geometry to the cosmic geometry, so that at some point there is no difference between you and the cosmos. You experience everything as yourself simply because you have attained a certain level of geometric perfection. It is not 70

just in your physiological structure.

In your chemical and energy structure, you also get aligned with the larger geometry, so that you and that larger phenomenon feel just the same because they are properly aligned.

Architecture is about dwellings and usable structures that we build. In some way, they must find their place with the rest of the creation. I think we have lost this completely today, simply because we have certain liberty with the material.

Once steel and concrete came, we thought we could build whichever way we want because of the strength of the material.

Doing things out of sheer force is sometimes alright for utility, but if you do everything like that, your life will become ugly. It is not just about the building; your life will become ugly because you are doing things with force. Life is beautiful when we can do things with minimum force and maximum impact. If you exert maximum force with minimum impact, that is a cruel way to live.

Our architecture has taken to this mode simply because we have found material where we make absurd shapes and still make them stand. Something which has no geometrical right to stand is standing up, simply because of the strength of the material.

If we withdraw from that excitement of finding new material and move to more sensible geometry in the world, you will see people will feel much better. People will be much healthier, physically, and mentally – and there will be many more benefits – if they live in such buildings.

Above all, you will cause minimum disturbance to everything around you.

Finally, architects, scientists, and industrial leaders are coming together to work on having settlements on

Mars. Bjarke Ingels Group (the famous postmodern architecture company) has come up with a prototype for the Mars habitat. What are your views on this?

Have things on earth already slipped out of our hands that we are thinking of seeking refuge on Mars, as colonizing is gaining more importance over conservation?

must become far more inclusive. Our way of existence has to come from a deeper dimension than the way we are functioning right now.

We are already in the process of actively destroying one planet. Now we want to go to Mars! In search of human wellbeing, we are looking outward, and because of this, we are destroying the very source of our life. The Living Earth statistics say that if all the seven billion and odd people are provided with the kind of comfort and convenience that an average American citizen enjoys today, we need four and a half planets.

But we have only half a planet – the other half is gone already. If a whole lot of people are taking a one-way ticket to Mars, that may be a saving grace!

But on this planet, only so much can be done because the physical material is limited. Especially now, as a generation of people, we are all superhuman in our capabilities. Suppose you pulled out a cell phone 100 years ago and talked to somebody in America –people would worship you. Just a light bulb could have made you a god a thousand years ago.

We are no more ordinary creatures – we are all superhuman beings in any context.

Do not take this for granted – this is not a small thing. But this competence could be our nemesis if we do not handle it intelligently. Handling it intelligently means the direction in which we search for our well-being has to change from outward to inward. This means understanding that your well-being is within you.

When such tremendous capabilities have come to us, our way of existence

VASTU SHASTRA

SEBASTIAN

ERRAZURIZ

NOTRE DAME This is NOT a serious proposal for the roof of the Notre Dame. This is a literary piece designed to ridicule every remaining architectural firm, still circling the carcass of Notre Dame with an “idea” for a new roof.

As an artist and designer, he confesses his first impulse was also to dream up a new design.

Nevertheless, he realized Notre Dame deserves better than anyone single creator can imagine.

He added - A “better” proposal for the reconstruction of Notre Dame, requires a design that can represent not the vision of one but the thirst for resolution of the millions whose heart shrunk with the flames.

He said, “Drop your pens, the world needs your ideas; Notre Dame does not.

Leave Notre unfinished.

Dame

open,

Invest those funds in the future”

A “better” proposal for Notre Dame must require a group of sacrifices. A sacrifice from every architect and designer to reign in on their artistic impulse to create a design.

A sacrifice from every person who wishes to revert the cathedral to its former glory by reconstruction.

Notre dame’s roof must be left unfinished open to the skies as a symbol of communal sacrifice.

France must embrace history and bear with pride- its new wound.

The cathedral must stand for a nation’s choice to designate the billion dollars in funds raised for the cathedral’s reconstruction to the future of French youth. He challenges every architect and designer to attempt to conceive any design solution that could surpass this call for communal and symbolic sacrifice.

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A PAUSE IN THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS

Artist and designer Sebastian Errazuriz have created A Pause in the City That Never Sleeps. The video consists of a continuous yawn on loop, shown on Times Square’s electronic billboards from 11:57 pm to midnight each night in January. This project is a part of Midnight Moment, a monthly presentation by The Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts.

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The yawning character appears on multiple screens as a bored, omnipresent head looking down at the passing people from between product billboards and advertisements. As yawns are contagious, the masses of people looking up at the screens will inadvertently feel inclined to stop and yawn.

As the yawning masses continue to their different destinations across the city, they will now unconsciously carry their contagious message with them, spreading a rare and valuable moment of pause throughout the city.

MEMORIAL OF A CONCENTRATION CAMP In the center of Chile’s National Stadium, they planted a 10-meter magnolia tree where dictator Pinochet in 1973 imprisoned thousands of political prisoners who were tortured and killed. After planting the tree, the stadium doors are open to the public as a park, offering a space to stop, look again, and remember.

CHANGE PERCEPTIONS “AN IMPOSSIBLE

CATHARTIC SOCCER MATCH PLAYED BEFORE A CROWD OF 20,000 PEOPLE CLOSES THE PROJECT AFTER A WEEK

OF ACTIVITY.”

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THE $UBTLE ACT AGAINST - Wall Street Nation Following his signature style of minimal public interventions, Sebastian Errazuriz unveiled his latest project titled “Wall Street Nation.” The artist has transformed street lines into “Dollar Signs” by merely painting a white letter “S” across each one. The project wishes to express the fear and impotence that people are currently experiencing, seeing greed grow

BLUE MARBLE “Blu Marble,” a monumental, 20-foot, LED structure depicting a live stream of the Earth from space, invites the public to consider their presence in a form and scale which one has not experienced before. “It is a reminder of our miraculously fragile existence. It places our very existence in perspective at a global level – like a tiny spec in space – beckoning us to live fully with awareness and mindfulness of our limited time on this vulnerable and beautiful planet,” explains Sebastian Errazuriz. On the opening night, there was a neighbourhood display

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in cooperation with the New Museum, where Blu Marble transformed the Manhattan skyline for a one night only memorable moment.

The artwork features a customcreated LED screen that projects Earth in real-time from space. To obtain this imagery, Sebastian’s team created a bot that scrapes live photographs from a NASA satellite and merges them in an exclusive software that generates a slow progression between still images to compose a live video of Earth as seen from space.

all around them. “I’m afraid greed is rapidly changing lives. While Supreme Court judges rule that companies have the same rights as people, corporations are pouring money into politics. It’s all spiralling out of control,” says the artist.

The artist hopes that his painted Dollar signs will inspire those suffering the worst effects of greed to rise.

DEATH IS THE ONLY CERTAIN THING IN LIFE -(South Beach, Miami 2009) A plane flies over South Beach with a banner that reads: “Death is the only certainty in life.” A series of phrases related to the awareness of death and life were sent to the airline for the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration(FAA). Death is the only certainty in life was the only text allowed.

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XXth CENTURY CAPITAL Wanted Design Fair commissioned Sebastian Errazuriz to create an installation to inaugurate the opening of NYC x Design. The Giant Piñata was on view to the public, which was hung between buildings. He invited young designers to grab some sticks.

It was scheduled to be smashed on Tuesday 20th at 5 pm in Industry City, Brooklyn, NY.

Naturally, the piñata wasn’t going to be free of layered symbolism and some controversy. The giant golden piñata was not only a representation of the Gold Calf worshipped in the Bible; but also had a close resemblance to the Wall Street Bull. As if this wasn’t enough, Errazuriz proposed that instead of being filled with candy(what kids of South Americans had on their birthdays ), his Giant Piñata should instead be filled up through the butt with real dollar bills.

Errazuriz’s Giant Piñata functions as a playful warning:

“MOMENTS LATER,

WE’LL SEE THE MASSES OF PEOPLE IRONICALLY SCRAMBLING TO FIGHT FOR THE MONEY FALLING OUT THAT WILL DESTROY THE PIÑATA AS A SYMBOL OF CAPITAL. HERE NOT ONLY REPRESENTS A CRITICISM OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM BUT ALSO OFFERS A QUICK PORTRAIT OF HOW GREED CAN

SWIFTLY AFFECT US ALL.”

FB POST IN BRUSH STROKES -From ‘American Kills’(2010) Brooklyn, NY At what humanitarian cost was the US fighting wars to safeguard ‘democracy’ in far corners of the world? Surfing the internet for official wartime death records, he stumbled upon a shocking revelation; a total of

304 US soldiers had suicided in 2009 alone. The number of suicides was almost equal to the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan or half of the ones killed in Iraq for the same year.

He bought a can of black paint and decided to “Post” the news in the real world - transforming the wall outside his studio.

Marking one black strip for every dead soldier, he continued until the different pieces formed a single image.

Through this mural, he wished to create a physical representation that could capture people’s imagination; create awareness; portray the discrepancy between the resources invested in protecting our soldiers at war versus those invested in protecting their mental health.

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AUTOCAD

SKETCHUP

(L) Simple Line (C) Circle (PL) Polyline (REC) Rectangle (CO) Copy (TR) Trim

(X) Paint bucket tool (Shift) Matching (Ctrl) Connected (Shift + Ctrl) Object (Alt) Sample paint (E) Eraser tool

(OP) Open options window (SC) Change scale (F) Fillets (LA) Open layer properties (X) Explode objects (Ctrl + N) New drawing tab (Ctrl + S) Save (Ctrl + Shift + S) Save as a new file (Ctrl + 0) Hides palettes and tabs (Ctrl + C) Copy to clipboard (Ctrl + V) Paste (Ctrl + Shift + V) Paste object as block (Ctrl + Z) Undo (Ctrl + Y) Redo the last undo action (F7) Toggle visibility background grid (F9) Toggle snap mode (F8) Toggles ortho mode on/off (F10) Toggles polar tracking on/off

(Shift) Hide (Ctrl) Soften/Smooth (Shift + Ctrl) Unsoften/Unsmooth (R) Rectangle tool (L) Line tool (C) Circle tool (A) Arc tool (G) Make group (Alt + M) Tape measure tool (Shift + T) Dimension tool ( Shift + D ) Text tool (Alt + P) Protractor tool (Ctrl + Alt + S) Section tool (Y) Axes tool (M) Move tool (U) Push/pull tool (Alt + R) Rotate tool ( \ ) Polygon tool (Del) Erase

(F11) Toggles object snap tracking on

REVIT

PHOTOSHOP

(AL) Align (AR) Array (CM) Place a Component (CO) Copy (CS) Create Similar (CX) Cut Profiles

(V) Pointer (P) Pen (Shift + Control + N) Create new layer (Control + G) Group selected layers (Control+Shift+G) Ungroup layers (Control + Alt + A) Select all layers

(DI) Dimensions (DL) Detail Line (DR) Door (ET) Edit Type (GR) Grid Lines (HH) Temporarily Hide an Element (KS) Keyboard Shortcuts (MV) Move (RM) Create Rooms (RS) Room Separator (RO) Rotate (TL) Thin Lines (WA) Create a Wall (WN) Create a Window (WR) Wall Reveal (VV or VG) Visibility Graphics (RT) Room Tag (TR) Trim

(Alt + .) Select top layer (Control + Shift + E ) Merge all layers (Control + A) Select all objects (Shift + drag) Draw square slice.

(Shift + Alt + N) Normal mode (Shift + Alt + I) Dissolve (Shift + Alt + K) Darken (Shift + Alt + G) Lighten (Shift + Alt + M) Multiply (Shift + Alt + O) Overlay (Shift + Alt + U) Hue (Shift + Alt + T) Saturation (Shift + Alt + Y) Luminosity (Control + Shift + S) Save work as (Control+Shift+Alt+S) Save for web (Shift + Alt + P) Toggle airbrush option (Alt + drag) Draw from center outward (Control + + ) Zoom in

(RF) Filled Region

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GAMING AND ARCHITECTURE -DAVID ALVAREZ Wherein every scene in a game tells a story, architecture seems to be requisite in evoking emotions and shaping player experience more effectively than any other aspect of a game. We all have played video games, and indeed there are games to which we connect deeply. It is because their visual environments were more than just an afterthought.

It is not only the storyline and the characters that make up any game but rather the gameplay, which deserves more consideration along with a ‘design intent.’ Thus architecture

can, and should, become a game’s focal point –maybe even it’s raison d ‘être– celebrated as a core attraction rather than a mere support mechanism. The following is an interview of David Alvarez, a Senior Concept Artist at Ubisoft Annecy, as well as a teacher at the Emile Cohl School.

His contributions to the Assassin’s Creed series primarily consist of setting and landscape concepts for the series’ multiplayer and singleplayer components. Let us look at what David has to say about the relationship between architecture and gaming.

What are the upcoming trends in the gaming scenario and how will it be influenced by architecture?

Currently, we have a lot of different trends in video games, but many productions use Sci-Fi like in movies.

A common misconception is that Sci-fi is architecture free without urbanism rules or structures. In reality, we have to imagine how our current architecture will change in the future. By 2050 or 5000, we won’t have the same materials, structures, and urbanism rules.

The viewer or player needs to have some markers to relate to it and be able to imagine things that do not exist. I love the work of Syd Mead,

for example, in Blade Runner, how he has used a lot of standard rules, but he overloaded the city Tokyo population class, according to the height of buildings. I think past and current architecture influences artistic creation and sometimes vice versa. In Space odyssey by Kubrick, many materials, objects (tablets, phone watches, etc.), spaceships, exist now but didn’t back then, knowing that the movie was shot in 1968. Asimov imagined credit cards, electric cars, in 1952. Scientists need architects for an artistic vision to push ideas, and artists need a scientist to understand the constraints and establish rules.

PLAYER EXPERIENCE “IN REALITY,

WE HAVE TO IMAGINE HOW OUR CURRENT ARCHITECTURE WILL CHANGE IN THE

FUTURE.”

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How does Architectural design influence games and how is it significant in creating environments?

For me, architecture is the preeminent essence of the game; it is the main “character.” The game is set in an environment. Usually, in the first person or third person games, you don’t view your character, your prime focus remains the surroundings, so a lot of information and storytelling goes through the setting. The environment and architecture provide the mood, theme, period, suppose for a post-apocalyptic game, or a renaissance game; the architecture exposes the game’s context to the player.

Do you think the use of innovative Art Deco/Brutalist/ Post Modernism Architecture in gaming can improve an architecture student ’s perspective in real life?

In my opinion, movies like Blade runner, StarWars, and other media with a robust architectural reference can influence students. For me, it ’s a “ virtuous circle,”. Le Corbusier ’s work influences a lot of artists to imagine sci-fi games, and I think a lot of new architects keep in mind sith’s style when they make a new brutalist building. In Wolfenstein, we see a world under the Nazi’s domination, so we imagine that architecture since WWII

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is mainly brutalism. So if you watch the façade, the cars, we can imagine how their designs got influenced by the Nazis and how they have evolved to their present form.

Brutalism/ postmodernism is a very martial mood; for me, it is the design of efficient, no fioritura only useful. That ’s why it fits perfectly with the military settings and bad guys.

It describes the strongest and order very well.

Nowadays, architects, scientists, and industrialists have been coming together for settlement on Mars. What is your take on this, and do you plan to incorporate it in your future projects?

I as k ed t he s ame s ub j ec t t o my s t ud ent s i n an art s chool i n Lyon, E mi l e C ohl, t o i mag i ne exp l or at i on on Mar s . They had t o d es ign s ever al char act er s ( w or k ers, s ci ent i s t s , exp l or at or y, etc .) and t he col oni al hous es for each k i nd of j ob . Sci ent ific r es ear ch and goal s ar e very i ns p i r i ng b ecaus e, w i t h our t echnol og y, w e have a lot of cons t r ai nt s . W hat t yp e of ener gy d o w e have t o ha v e f or a s p ace b as e on the moon, t he p s ychol ogi c al risks i nvol ved w h ile t r avel l i ng f or t hr ee years i n a s p aces hi p , et c? I t hink ar chi t ect ur e i s ver y s i mi lar t o ar t i n t hi s as p ect , and we mak e w hat w e k now, a nd t hen t he cons t r ai nt s p u sh our i mag i nat i on f ur t her.

How is Artificial Intelligence incorporated in the space navigation process of the protagonist, and how it will help architecture students in the visualization process while designing any such model?

We speak more procedural than AI because it ’s the only algorithm programmed by humans. Artificial Intelligence is useful for doing tedious tasks like putting trees in the ground, growing grass around the trunk, and if you have wind where leaf falls, etc. basically for minute detailing. AI can never replace a human’s imagination or creativity. It creates a story only with its existent knowledge about things, so if you have a reduced source, you end up with an unfortunate result. We use a tool with an algorithm to place buildings and combine façade to avoid repetition and tiling. AI helps create peculiar missions, but for now, a lot of games using this technology to create a resume only at “FedEx” missions, where you have to pick up and deliver a package that is far from exciting and not at all creative. Humans created the witcher, one of the few great games with a strong story with no algorithms involved. But if your goal is only gameplay as puzzle games, I think it should be helpful.

Could you give us an insight into your life and interests, the projects that you are currently working upon, and your recent achievements?

I just finished my work on Wolfenstein Youngblood and another project that will soon be unveiled this year. For edition, I’m working with Games Workshop on Warhammer.

I love reading SciFi, and my favourite authors are Asimov, Philippe K Dick., I also enjoy comics a lot, Mignola series and manga comics like Akira, Appleseed, and DBZ. Taking my wife’s and daughter ’s photographic portraits is my favourite pass time. I love modelling, scratch building my own Gundam, Machienen Krieger, etc. My next goal is to work for Marvel movies, and Magic, making paintings to work for them during my free time.

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Nowadays, gaming being popular amongst many students, do you think it is a source of inspiration/ideas all over the world?

Gaming is the combination of several things, being active, competing with another player’s AI, like any other sport. You can be the hero of a story but not passive like in a movie. You can play puzzle games to think like chess etc. Today a wide range of games are available; that’s why gaming is prevalent amongst all. That’s why the experience of a game can be fantastic to one while boring to another. Some games can be a source of inspiration. They can push your imagination to boundaries that know no bound through their art or stories or nothing if the game is based only on gameplay like a puzzle game.

Gaming is a source of inspiration, just like a movie, books, music, and paintings.

From your previous works, did you feel the need to study architecture for your visuals/ concept? If yes, then how did you work upon it?

I must know the architectural style and rules to design a game. For the setting to look credible and the story legible, one has to know the architectural styles of a period.

For a poor district or middle-class home, materials like stucco or stone need to be used. I had the chance to work on games that push the realism of architecture very far. For example, in Assassin’s Creed, we worked with historians and architects to be accurate in building set up, people’s habits, etc. The setting of AC II (assassin’s creed II), was the renaissance, I read a lot of books, to understand when to use Ionic capitals or Tuscan capitals according to the neighbourhood. In the AC syndicate, I learned the different locomotives types to be accurate with the design and technology in 1860.

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Courtesy: Olson Kundig (Chicken Point Cabin)

ARCHI TECTURE INDIA AND THE US

PEDAGOGY: I have had the good fortune of working, learning and teaching architecture in India and the US. Through my academic and professional journey, I have had the opportunity to work with and learn from very talented professionals, teachers and students.

This article seeks to highlight some of the realities of architectural academia and industry, providing some younger professionals with an overview of the educational and industry differences between US and India.

Architecture is a discipline that is based on collaboration. An architect in the design & construction team often acts as an orchestra conductor coordinating the expertise of a lot of varied disciplines to accomplish the goals of a project through a coherent and comprehensive conceptual vision. The typical process of becoming an architect in both countries involves getting a 4 to 5-year undergraduate experience, followed by a training or ‘internship’ period in a professional setting. This is followed by state/national licensing exams to earn the title of an architect.

The process is long and arduous, often disheartening without good mentorship.

The educational training is often the first pinch point and cause of heartache for many professionals, especially those from India looking to do work abroad working on projects that earn international recognition.

My undergraduate education was at IIT Kharagpur, one of India’s top educational institutes and the academic experience there left me bitterly disappointed. In a free economy, the market data never lies. The number of Indian architectural graduates recruited by top architectural firms is alarmingly low. The lack of adequate skills among architectural graduates from the country is evident from the data. Speaking from the context of my undergraduate training, the following were the issues I encountered during my education in India that contribute to this general market trend.

-Quality of design faculty in studios: Architecture is based on conveying ideas through graphics. A coherent logic needs to be skillfully and professionally presented. This can be through any medium, though it is mostly digital is today’s tech age. Graphic quality and legibility is often the first screening tool used by recruiters of firms or international design competition judges. This is where many portfolios and projects lose out.

There is often too much content, poor palette and lack of clear intent. This is mostly a coaching and tutoring issue.

Graduates from India often have to acquire this skill themselves for a dearth of it among tutors and faculty.

-Lack of clarity in presenting the bigger picture: Building on the orchestra conductor analogy, the discipline requires a coordination of the drawings of a myriad consultants, depending upon the scale, type and complexity of the project. The core consultants include structural, mechanical and electrical. A good example in coordinating structural 89

US like India is very diverse in its climatic zones, geology and geographic challenges.

-The freedom to fail and the mentorship to grow: Exploration of new systems requires leaps of faith, an unfaltering work ethic and courage to take crucial decisions at the right time. A good foundation for this skill is often laid in the design studio. A positive studio culture where constructive criticism is provided should be the minimum professional standard in teaching. This is found to be critically lacking in with the jury and the studio teaching in India. Critiques have to be about the improvement of the project and never personal. Every

Courtesy: Erin Feinblatt (Off the grid house- ANACAPA)

systems with an engineer on a project is knowing how the vertical and horizontal load paths work and how things are put together. An architect’s job is NOT to size every bracket or beam but to be familiar with the systems and how they work. When this step comes together well, the results are beautiful tectonic architectural compositions. While it is important to be detail-oriented, it is very critical for an architect to have the skill to know when to focus on a detail vs when to look at the bigger picture to achieve this quality of work. This skill needs to be rigorously tutored in design school.

-Infrastructural: These are harder to deal with as they require monetary investment into equipment like laser cutters, CNC routers, VR stations and so forth. Each is a unique tool that adds to the skillset and versatility of a designer. They are by no means a must to do for a good design but are nevertheless incredibly helpful. The above can be aptly summed up in the pyramid of cognitive complexity. The JEE, for example, is one of the best exams in the world for testing evaluation and analytical skills and ranks high in this pyramid.

However, the education after

that does not live up to the billing. There is way too much emphasis on memory skills rather than analytical and evaluation skills necessary to handle complex projects. Indian graduates are unfortunately being shortchanged by getting the C-team of faculty rather than the A-one.

INDUSTRY:

The industry too is vastly different in many ways.

Variety of construction methods: the US like India, is very diverse in its climatic zones, geology and geographic challenges. In general, the variety of assembly methods and detailing methods at the designer’s disposal are more diverse – engineered wood, composite assemblies, concrete and so on. The approach to the thermal envelope is also different – relying on a closed building envelope approach for weather

EXPERIENC

opinion has value, especially in the workplace. Work should be fun and inspiring, and at no stage should a student face derogatory commentary. This is a per-requisite for a professional setting, and a lack of it is highly concerning.

DIVERSE CHALLENGING “EXPLORATION OF NEW

SYSTEMS REQUIRES LEAPS OF FAITH, AND UNFALTERING WORK ETHIC AND COURAGE TO TAKE CRUCIAL DECISIONS

AT THE RIGHT TIME.”

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and thermal protection. Details are often more intricate and involved to avoid thermal bridging, vapour migration and to ensure a minimum energy loss, to name a few. This is in contrast to the thermal mass approach often employed in India. Both approaches have their merits and drawbacks.

COMMON THEMES

Value of the profession: Architecture as a profession struggles against others to sell its value and generate enough demand. This theme continues in the US. The average compensation for architects is well below other professions that control supply through licensing - law and medicine. Other than niche markets such as custom-residential design fee is low, and there is a race to the bottom when bidding for projects.

Building codes: Most US state building codes are based on model International Building Code.

This a comprehensive over-arching model code rigorously tested for a variety of building types and assemblies.

Some state codes such as California’s Title 24 goes above, and beyond health, safety, welfare and also focuses on energy efficiency and sustainability of its buildings. Meeting Title 24 requirements in itself goes a long way in getting LEED accredited buildings.

Networking opportunities: The AIA, NCARB, state licensing boards allow for a wide range of networking opportunities to meeting professionals within the field- product representatives, construction managers, quality controllers, surveyors, building officials and so forth.

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Courtesy: Olson Kundig (Delta Shelter)

Technology in design: The theme of more equipment and tools to play with continues into the profession.

The use of Virtual Reality(VR), BIM, 3D printing and construction management tools are industry standards. Each tool has a unique use. For example, VR and 3D photography are great at designing interiors where depth perception is crucial. Surveying and testing technology is also diverse.

Disconnect between academia and practice: While most US schools are great at graphic and design training, they sadly leave students ill-equipped with insufficient knowledge of building systems, project management and finances. The average delta between the critical path of getting licensed to the average age of obtaining it is quite high, revealing redundancies in the process. This is slightly better in India with an easier way to obtain a license.

However, the problems regarding ascertaining competence are more commonplace in the latter. The brief

overview barely scratches the surface of the complexity of the opportunities and problems in pursuing the profession in India vs the US. It is worth noting that in any place, having a successful career is very individual depending on their work ethic, talent and willingness to learn.

However, the importance of mentorship cannot be understated. There is no denying the fact that the system and all its cogs need to function a lot better to be competitive in the global market.

It is the duty of the system, and it is custodian’s to ensure that the younger generation entering the profession is put in a position to succeed.

Humanising the mega S A F D I E

A R C H I T Conceptual design of Abrahamic Family House (Abu Dhabi, UAE)

Modernists reduced architecture to its simplest form and explored structure as a pathway to creating a better society. When we think of Modernism, we tend to think of prominent figures like Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe.

However, there are a few masters of Modernism who are a bit more modern.

Chief among them is Moshe Safdie, an internationally revered architect who is mainly identified with Modernist ideologies, although his style is truly unique. Still, we can firmly plant him in the lineup of architects who looked at architecture not only as a way to make the world more beautiful, but also to make our lives better.

Altair (Colombo, Srilanka)

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scale

E C T S

Safdie has received numerous awards, honorary degrees, and civil honors, including the Companion of the Order of Canada and the Gold Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Moshe Safdie has been named the laureate for the 2019 Wolf Prize for Architecture.

As one of Israel’s most prestigious international awards, the prize is bestowed upon luminaries for their accomplishments in advancing science and art for the benefit of humanity.

MOSHE SAFDIE

SKY Habitat Sky gardens bridges which link the two stepping towers

Located in the neighbourhood of Bishan, a residential area in the suburban heartland of Singapore, this 38-story residential complex explores the balance of high- density living with humanistic concepts of community, landscape, gardens, and daylight.

Breaking down the scale of a typical single tower residential development, the community-based solution of the Sky Habitat is a three-dimensional matrix of homes with private terraces, balconies, and common gardens, bringing the landscape into the air and maintaining the porosity of the skyline.

The complex’s stepped form recalls the community texture of ancient hillside developments and provides for lush vertical greenery, multiple orientations relative to the sun, naturally ventilated units, and liberal views, all without

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compromising planning or structural efficiency.

Three bridging sky gardens link the twostepping towers and create a series of interconnected streets, gardens, and terraces in the air, which provide various areas for everyday recreation and congregation. As a result, the overall mass is porous and open, allowing breezes to flow through and daylight to penetrate deep into the structure.

The stepping geometry allows every residence to have multiple orientations and private outdoor space, resulting in a more humane and delicate urban fabric.

At the ground plane, above a sunken parking podium, more than 70 per cent of the site is developed into a series of lush gardens, which offers additional outdoor event areas, swimming pools, a tennis court, and walking paths.

Marina Bay Sands Corporation and its architect, Moshe Safdie, proposed a new kind of museum that explores the shared quest for knowledge, and a passion for innovation that forms the foundation of both art and science. The new ArtScience museum expresses the spirit of Singapore, combining the arts and the sciences along with celebrating creativity and exploration; and will serve as a symbol of the spirit of Singapore and its citizens.

reaches upward into the skyline as high as 60 meters and is supported by an elaborate steel lattice structure. This assembly is supported by ten columns and tied down at its centre by a basketlike diagrid–a sculptural centrepiece that accommodates the asymmetrical forces that the building’s form generates. The result is an efficient resolution of the structural forces for the building, giving it a seemingly weightless quality as it hovers above the ground.

The ArtScience Museum is grounded around a circular base with ten extending finger-like structures that house 21 naturally lit galleries. Surrounded by a lily pond reflecting pool and boasting commanding views of downtown Singapore, the museum establishes a symbolic analogy. The dish-like roof form collects rainwater and drains it through an oculus, creating a waterfall through the centre of the museum that feeds an interior pond.

The museum’s envelope is composed of double-curved Fiber Reinforced Polymer [FRP] skin, typically used at such a scale only in the construction of boats and yachts. The vertical sides of each petal are sheathed in bead-blasted stainless steel panels. The unprecedented use of FRP has made possible the joint-less, continuous skin for each of the sail-like surfaces achieving a sense of lightness with their gleaming petals. As elsewhere in Marina Bay Sands, the building aims and delivers the highest levels of sustainability.

The asymmetrical museum structure

ArtSCience

Museum

The dish like roof

Interior View

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RAFFLES CITY CHONGQING

A mixed-use complex at Singapore’s Changi airport combines the marketplace and the garden in a new typology. The project contains functional spaces, retail outlets, an aviation museum, a cabin hotel, and other hospitality spaces. Based on the geometry of a torus, the omnidirectional building shape accommodates mathematical rationality, visual porosity, inherent structural integrity, and the programmatic need for multiple connections in the airport setting.

At the heart of its glass roof, is an oculus that showers water through a primary multistory garden, five stories through to the forest -valley at ground level.

The core of the program is a 24-hour layered garden attraction that offers many spatial and interactive experiences for visitors. Four cardinal axes-north, 98

south, east, and west are reinforced by four gateway gardens, which orient visitors and offer visual connections to the intimate surroundings and other airport terminals. At night, the glazed facade helps dematerialize the building, revealing the glowing garden within.

Project Jewel, a joint development project of Changi airport group and Capitamalls Asia, extends the airport’s principal function from a transit hub to gathering space.

THE JEW CHANGI

Located on a prominent site at the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers, this nine million-square-foot mixed-use project has a strong presence at the apex of the city’s peninsula. The Chaotian Gate (“gate to heaven”), foremost of the traditional city gates, is both ceremony and commerce.

Recalling sailing ships on the river, the project symbolizes Chongqing’s noble trading past and its fast-growing future as one of China’s most significant modern cities. An ensemble of slender towers contains a mixture of office, residential, and hotel spaces. The towers, arranged in a prow-like arc, imply a great city surging forward. The outer curving glass facade, which faces the tower evokes an ancient sailing fleet. The south-facing facades at the centre of the interior tower on the axis of Chaotianmen Plaza, form stepped

EL AIRPORT

gardens that meet the ground. At the towers’ base, an expansive park knits together the greenery from the building facades with gardens, pools, and public circulation. This large landscaped park gently slopes to the north, offering dramatic tower-framed views of the water and more intimate views of the city to the south.

Beneath the park level, a podium contains five levels of public space, including retail and cultural facilities, as well as land and water transportation hubs. Bridging the centre towers at level 45 is a 300-meter-long enclosed glass conservatory that contains hotel public areas and amenities, including a deck that can be enjoyed throughout all seasons of the year. Major thoroughfares feed urban activity from the south as retail streets and grand arcades, fusing the project to the city.

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FUTURE OPPOrTUNITIES

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by Quest University for UG, all nationalities

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by Xiamne University for PG, UG and PhD, all nationalities

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by National Cheng Kung University for PhD, open to selected countries

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by Bond University for PG and UG, all nationalities 7. UG International Scholarship

by Kingston University for UG, all nationalities except UK

9. CSIR-UGC JRF NET Fellowship

by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India for PhD, only for Indians

8. International PG taught Scholarships

by University of East Anglia for PG and UG, all nationalities except EU

10. Holland Scholarship for International Students

by Dutch ministry of Education for PG and UG, all nationalities except Non-EEA countries 101

Pierpaolo Lazzarini- Lazzarini Design Studio What is your inspiration for floating architecture?

I think the sea inspires everyone.

Usually, people think of life on the water to be luxurious, which customarily gives rise to a perception of an expensive ingredient to have a relevance to it. But so is not the case with our structures. Normal yachts are dynamic and can travel at fast speeds, but our floating platforms are static visions of sea living; however, their position can be adjusted a little should it be necessary. They are flat, autonomous, electric structures that do not require a big engine or a large amount of fuel. Soon we will be unveiling the first floating pyramid in Singapore that spans a width of 16 meters.

What is the reason behind making the building like a pyramid in your Wayaland project?

Pyramids are one of the oldest forms used in Egyptian architecture. Also, the triangle is believed to be the most durable and sturdiest of shapes. In

technical terms, the pyramid has a broad square base; the structure loses weight with an increase in height. This property helps in warding off the wind from any direction. This shape also ensures balance even during rough waters.

Boats usually measure to be 20 meters in length to only 5 meters in width, putting themselves in jeopardy of getting upturned during storms and hurricanes, that have invariably been a cause of concern for all floating abodes.

Our structures have been built to cover vast expanses of 16-20 meters for the same reason, with stable geometric shapes like a square or a circular base whose symmetry helps balancing the platforms. These platforms are static and function in a relatively unconventional manner when compared to a boat.

If you were put in charge of making structures, resilient to flooding and climate change, what strategies would you implement?

I would aim for more significant floating solutions that would be

Increasingly rise of sea level and flooding threat have made futuristic architect think out of the box designs.

Designs that not only satisfy the upcoming needs but also open a new set of the domain for us. An Italian architecture firm, Lazzarini Studio has come up with the idea of floating neighboured, in which homes can rise with the water level to avoid flooding, as a possible solution to this threat.

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interconnected to deal with the flooding concern, deployed with detachable parts which could foster customisations according to the climate change owing to the dynamic design called into play.

How are you going to solve issues like direct attacks of the climate componentssolar radiation and wind, owing to a lack of neighboring buildings or trees on the one side and modern glass architecture on the other side?

Instead of problems, we see these climatic components as opportunities that we can make the most of. External surfaces of these structures are entirely solar rechargeable, covered with aesthetically pleasing white solar panels. Apart from this, energy is also tapped from water using convertors or propellers. The system is very active, as there is a lot of storage space in the basement, and some scope of weight is required to keep the considerably large structures flat on the water. Two birds are hence killed with one stone by effectuating enormous energy convertible batteries that also keep getting recharged by the sun, rain, or the wind, thus creating an endless and a rather pragmatically unlimited energy reserve.

What measures have been taken to ensure the safety of children or animals on board?

The basement contains all the services and various compartments along with 60+ rooms. All these compartments are individual units and don’t have direct openings onto the top; unlike most cruises, which ensures the safety and prevents flooding. The rest of the design is based on the fundamental conceptions and notions that were formulated twenty years ago. The idea might be new, but it has been drawn up in an old fashioned way but for the technology front.

Pyramids are one of the oldest forms used in Egyptian architecture. Also, the triangle is believed to be the most durable and sturdiest of shapes.

Of course, yes, they are designed to serve a variety of purposes like that of a residence, a hotel, or a storage facility.

The time is coming when instead of being afraid of water to destroy our shelters, we can rely on the new fluidic ecosystem. So let us get aboard on the yacht of vision and float with the waves to the beautiful future of ours.

How has your work changed over the years in response to the pressing needs of Climate Change?

The water level is rising at alarming rates everywhere. As recent studies show, places like Miami will get flooded by 2050-2070. Water is, therefore, going to be our future environment.

I also design boats augmented with roofs which have them provide for a safer environment, protecting one from the sun and the wind, ergo gaining ground towards becoming one of the most confident means of travel on water. The marine industry though is not able to understand our structures, or as it happens, their needs. The steel used all over helps avoid all threats from the external weather and can be capitalised on to take the edge off the perils associated with an environmental catastrophe.

What advances in technology, design, or materials have helped push your

architecture forward?

We have only used the fundamental technology that is readily available and accessible to all, including a standard solar recharging system and a simple device that converts salt water into drinking water. However, I would say that the real innovation here is the floating structure itself that plays multiple roles of a house, a building, a hotel, a floating station. These structures are movable, at low speeds of 3-5 knots, as and when required.

With time new materials and structures must be developed to withstand the attacks of waves, sea climate, salts, and ph-values. How are you going this?

We devised a new mixture of fibreglass (FRP) and Carbon, which allows very high flexibility and increases the life span of the structure. All the materials used are completely ecological and environmentally friendly, so they can also be re-used in the future for additional structures.

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TOWARDS RECOGNITION OF THE PEOPLE’S PROCESS People’s desire to improve their lives is the driving force of development, whether it is science, technology, arts, or philosophy. Archaeological evidence tells us that as civilisation progressed, people established certain norms, standards, and a mutual understanding of the community. This is what is recognised as the ‘People’s Process’ of housing and settlement development, which is very much a natural phenomenon. ‘ During the 16th and 17th centuries, due to rapid industrialisation and strides in maritime transportation, cities across the world were victims of massive population growth. Industrialisation and trade created a demand for cheap labour. In the absence of formal housing, people established settlements of their ownslums. This lead to the rise of slums in the northern hemisphere and squatter settlements in the southern hemisphere: characterised by very poor services and high densities.

As aptly stated Charles Abrahams ‘Housing has remained the Cinderella of the Industrial Revolution, and the slum the humble cover to which she has been indefinitely assigned’ (Man’s Struggle for Shelter, p. 5).

The conditions of slums in the cities of the northern countries deteriorated due to lack of health services, sanitation and security. ‘With cholera epidemics erupting and the death rate among the poor three times that of their ‘betters’, England in 1875 imposed minimum standards of building, drainage and ventilation upon private slum builders and owners (Abrams, 1964, p. 114).

Governments in Europe adopted a multi-dimensional strategy to tackle this: planning regulations, building Codes of different forms and public housing However, in the colonies, colonial

PEOPL

CONTROL PARADIGM authorities turned a blind eye to the problems of the poor workers. Thus this pattern of development of the cities in colonised countries created a dual city: one for the colonial masters and the local elite who administered the country and the other for the ‘natives’ who provided the labour for the industries and services to exploit the resources of the country.

During the 19th century, European cities contained the problems of housing with public social housing schemes, thanks to their economic clout. These homes accommodated the working class at subsidised rents. Such social welfare policies made the working class into ‘public property’ with no decision making power over their lives and destiny, thus eroding the people’s decision-making process. On the other hand, the Governments of the colonised countries left the people to fend for themselves.

Over the years through legal and illegal means, they obtained services

E’S PROCESS -LALITH LANKATILLEKE EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING OF A DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM

SUPPORT PARADIGM and consolidated their settlements. This demonstrates that people can build housing and settlements in conditions that are legally and intuitionally hostile to their actions. Thus with institutional support, the results will be exponentially better.

The state, rather than being the providers of ‘development’ need to become ‘facilitator’ of development.

Why? Because the power relationship of the state (or the city) and its citizens is not balanced or equal, both politically and economically. ‘Projects’ with the authorities at the centre of the process are designed by professionals with controls established by bureaucrats consume more time and money, thus impacting the lives of a limited number of people.

When people are placed at the centre of the process of decision making and action, supported by the authorities, they optimise resources with a greater degree of satisfaction, reaching a larger number of people.

HOW TO SUPPORT PEOPLE’S PROCESS In 1988, the United Nations General Assembly adopted ‘Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000’, the pillar of which as the ‘enabling approach’ whereby people would be supported to house themselves. The strategy stated ‘The fundamental policy change will need to be the adoption of an ‘enabling’ approach whereby the full potential and resources of all the actors in the shelter production and improvement process are mobilized; but the final decision on how to house themselves is left to the people concerned. Ultimately, ‘enabling concept’ implies that the people concerned will be given the opportunity to improve their housing conditions according to the needs and priorities that they themselves will define (Section 14)’ (UN, 1988) .

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MOBILIZATION AND EMPOWEREMENT

A community organization in the form of Community Development Council (CDC) can ideally cover 100 to 250 families, with elected representatives (preferably a man and woman) representing 10 to 15 families each. This community organization needs to be recognised legally to give it some form of legitimacy. Ensuring equal gender representation and representation of vulnerable families is an important consideration in the formation of community organizations.

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COMMUNITY MAPPING

Community Mapping is an exercise where the community identifies assets they have within the settlement and within their city and represent it on a map. The process allows the community to realise what they have and what they do not in terms of physical and social infrastructure. In addition, they will assess the vulnerability of their settlement to floods and other disasters.

SOME EXAMPLES OF SUPPORTING “Build Together Programme” Namibia: Responding to the Housing Crisis of an Emerging Nation (1992 till date).

At the time of independence in 1992, the country was faced with the twin problem of housing; firstly the return of over a million refugees returning after the war, secondly the segregated settlements established by the Apartheid policy of the 108

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COMMUNTIY CONTRACTING

A community contract is a contract awarded to the community organization by a government agency or a NGO to carry out physical works that have been identified in the Community Action Plan.

COMMUNITY ACTION PLANNING(CAP)

Community Action Planning is a framework for the community organization to sit together, identify their needs, negotiate amongst each other and prioritize the needs to be addressed and prepare a plan to address their needs considering all options within a given resources framework.The facilitator must refrain from what they think is right or good for the people but has to clearly articulate the trade-offs of the different decisions that the community is making. colonial Government for the majority of the people. The Government of Namibia designed the “Build Together” programme to support the people to create their own settlements. Through Community Action Planning, returnee communities planned their new settlements determining the plot sizes, roads and services points.

Initially, they built a home with whatever material they could obtain which they improved over time. Considering the limited resources at the disposal of the Government, a very small loan cash loan was offered for building and improving their houses. Gradually what looked informal settlements became beautiful organically developed settlements. The

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COMMUNITY BANKING

COMMUNTIY CONTRACTING

Community Banking is a means for the poor to save collectively and borrow funds It is a process where for their needs. Mainly organised by women, members of the community forming saving groups and five to ten groups get involved in ensuring within a community forming a branch. Members that their own efforts are then have access to credit for their immediate realised to provide the emergency needs and business needs.Experience best output, since over the last two and half decades show that they own it. the communities manage savings and credit better than external NGOs. Through this process of economic empowerment of women they are able to breakaway such an approach was that, under a from the cycle of poverty and devastated situation without properly a achieve tremendous life functioning state machinery,n‘people’s improvements. power for recovery’ was the largest asset of a country.

Build Together programme reached all To build capacity of communities, the urban areas of the country and it is community members are trained in the still been implemented on a decentralized NSP principles, project management, basis. One of the biggest challenges to accounting and specific techniques. Since the People’s Process was the integration the capacity of the government entities is of settlements with main fabric of the limited, 29 Facilitating Partners, both local cities, due to the obstinate objections of and international organizations, worked professionals and bureaucrats who came directly with communities to support the from the old school. The Build Together process. programme won the several awards for its The first step of the NSP is community innovations in handling a crisis situations mobilization: raising community and one of which was UN –Habitat Scroll awareness and establishing Community of Honour where the citation read “The Development Councils (CDCs). A CDC Build Together Programme” empowers is formed by the representatives elected communities to be in control of the decision by community members, using a secret making process affecting the development ballot. The CDCs are supported with a of their homes and neighbourhoods”. structured programme of learning on how to exercise their rights, how to plan and People’s Process in Post-conflict how to govern in their areas. The CDCs Reconstruction: National Solidarity prepare Community Programme in Afghanistan (2003- to date) Development Plan considering the socio-economic needs and prioritizing In 2001, more than 40 % of the population projects within the framework of the in Afghanistan was displaced, and 70% block grant. Once a project proposed by of its infrastructure was destroyed. UNa CDC is approved by the MRRD, funds HABITAT, in responding to the request of are transferred to the bank account of newly established Government, assisted the CDC. The CDCs are provided with the Ministry of Rural Reconstruction and block grants ranging from US$ 20,000 Development (MRRD) to design the to 40,000 depending on the size of the National Solidarity Programme(NSP), community. Then, community members based on the People’s Process of commence their implementation through development. The underlying belief in ‘Community Contracting’.

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Two-thirds of the total rural population in Afghanistan benefitted from the NSP. A distinctive feature of the NSP is the empowerment of women. The NSP made enormous women in community decision making. Their involvement in activities such as savings and credit provides the purpose to remain as a functional group.

Increasingly, development activities, such as a literacy programme, vocational training, and health services are implemented through CDCs established under the NSP. CDCs also function as the arena of ‘local governance’, such as resolving disputes between villagers, and protecting the people from antigovernment elements.

Thus, the NSP is tested tool and functional machinery, which a country can follow to cater the development needs of post conflict communities. The World Bank, one of the major donors, concluded ‘The NSP has shown that large-scale programmes can be implemented – even under volatile socio-political conditions affecting present-day Afghanistan – given substantial facilitation at the community level’ (World Bank, 2006, p.48).

Peoples process in rebuilding in disaster aftermaths Following the Indian Ocean tsunami on the 26 of December 2004, many donors and international NGOs rushed into Sri Lanka and Indonesia to rebuild houses following the emergency phase. Most of the agencies adopted the conventional approach of “let’s build a standard basic house and give to the affected”.

The affected people were resigned to be passive bystanders. To make matters worse, the construction industry could not respond to this sudden surge in demand and the construction cost of a basic house escalated. Profiteering was also taking place—some unscrupulously focused on making profit with the foreign money flowing into the country for reconstruction. The reconstruction 110

programme was slow to get started with the Government depending on external agencies and those agencies looking for contractors. In the meantime UNHabitat adopted the People’s Process of rebuilding communities affected by the tsunami and was able assist over 35,000 families in Sri Lanka and 60,000 families in Indonesia rebuild their houses very quickly.

Social Benefits Housing, being a very personal attribute just like ones dress, people intrinsically require an identity to go with it and be proud of it. The People’s Process of housing and settlement development gives greater satisfaction to the people by the mere fact that it allows the people to take their own decisions

and be responsible for the decisions.

This identity and recognition elevates people to higher levels socially. The catalytic effect of upward social mobility increases their economic opportunities and the future of their children. The transformation of being an illegal to a legal citizen empowers them to become responsible citizens.

Communities are empowered and human security is enhanced through supporting the People’s Process, even under a difficult post-conflict situation, as exemplified in the cases referred to.

Economic Benefits It enables communities to maximize the benefit of investments in housing and settlement development. The housing that the people produced exceeded the investment by the state by a large margin. These additional resources generally come from people’s own savings, from relations, networks and their own hard labour: aiding capital formation. It effectively generates small economic activity at the local level benefitting the small entrepreneurs and semi-skilled and unskilled labour.

Better Urban Forms This gives a unique form for the settlements produced by the people: no two houses will look the same. This makes much more pleasant organic urban forms rather than the drab uniform public housing which relegate the occupants to a number.

ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE

Abrams, C. (1964) Man’s struggle for shelter in an urbanizing world. Cambridge: MIT Press. Hamdi, N. (2004) Small Change: About the art of practice and limits of planning in cities. London: Earthscan.

Turner, J. F.C. (1972) Freedom to Build: Dweller Control of Housing Process. New York: MacMillan. Turner, J. F.C. (1976) Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. London: Marion Boyars. UN-HABITAT (1993) The Urban Poor as Agents of Development: Community Action Planning in Sri Lanka UN-HABITAT (2009) Global Report on Human Settlements 2009: Planning Sustainable Cities United Nations (1988) Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000. http://ww2.unhabitat.org/programmes/ housingpolicy/gss_monitoring.asp World Bank (2006) Community-Driven Development in the Context of Conflict-Affected Countries: Challenges and Opportunities.

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This article is written by our dear alumnus Mr.Karthikey Kuppu who strives to answer the question of who we are as an architect.

He then explains how it is impossible to define oneself solely on the basis of a particular period of life and that finding yourself is a long ongoing process. So in this process, the answer changes and transforms itself with time. He draws inspirations from his two major phases in life- the education he received in IIT Kharagpur and that in MIT Media Labs and how both contributed individually into shaping the architect in him.

WHO IS AN ARCHI TECT

KARTHIKEY KUPPU

As a student, my fondest memories are definitely the time I spent with my classmates after class. It is so beautiful to see your friend’s personality come out after a few beers with more enhanced creativity. This creativity provided insight into the core differences in ideology and what drives architects to do what they do in India and the US. While the end products are similar, the process is different in the two countries. I pursued a core of city planning, so that trickled down into how my colleagues thought.

The contrasting and even shocking difference was in the approach used and the level of importance given to the end-user. The bottom-up approach lets the users of architecture or specifically the residents of the city to completely plan out their own spaces. In contrast, the architect brings in a strong design ideology and works in a more topdown approach. The latter approach, i.e. more participatory in nature, is observed to be practised in the US and the former in India.

Adapting to changing nature of the question of who an architect is, the similarity that I observed at IIT Kharagpur and MIT is something that the rest of the architecture world should also learn to embrace, both as an aid to the process and part of the final product, that for the process, the inevitability of the architect’s role is redefined. In simple words, we sometimes need to look at the final product as something that is integrated into the bigger picture. When talking about the bigger picture you need to rope in those branches that are like water and oil to architecture – something that MIT does brilliantly through its labs. It studies building on Mars, finding the best ways to get free food on a university campus and similar experiments. This is one thing MIT scores a point in as it treats architecture as a part of a larger process rather than an independent piece. Architects from both hemispheres of the earth follow the discipline with a common objective. But the core difference I found was in the self-image of the architect. All in all, it is a question of who the architect thinks he or she is? Is she the technologist? Is she more of a designer?

Is she an environmentalist who would build keeping in mind the lives of many years down the line? Or is she a social worker who would like to make a change in poor people’s life and dwell into more projects of rehabilitation and cheaper homes?

“Nothing a little white wine and a sharpened pencil cannot answer” is what they say.

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hael Michael Pawlyn has written a book titled Biomimicry in Architecture, which describes many examples. The Eden Project, which Michael Pawlyn worked on while at Grimshaw, is probably one of the best-known examples of using biomimicry in architecture. Pier Luigi Nervi’s Palazzetto Dello Sport is a masterpiece of efficiency inspired by giant Amazon water lilies.

Nervi’s projects won many competitions, and the secret to his success was his frequent ability to produce the most cost-effective schemes. In a satisfying parallel with the refining process of evolution, the combination of ingenuity and biomimicry led to a remarkable efficiency of resources. The Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe by Mick Pearce, based on termite mounds, manages to create comfortable conditions for the people inside without air-conditioning in a tropical environment. Tonkin Liu Architect’s project for the Kaohsiung Ferry Terminal combines several biomimetic ideas with allusions to the Taiwanese landscape setting for which it was designed.

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MIMICKING CHITECTURE Biomimicry involves learning from the many remarkable adaptations found in biological organisms to inspire new design solutions. It is based on the way how organisms delivered functions in biology rather than just looking at forms and in many cases, can lead to innovations that achieve radical increases in resource efficiency.

An early example of biomimicry is Velcro, which was invented by a Swiss engineer by the name of George de Mestral. He developed the fastening concept from an observation of how burdock burrs (the hooked seed-heads which catch on clothes and fur) clung to his dog’s fur coat. He studied the burrs under a microscope and observed that they were covered in hook-shaped projections, which could catch onto a wide range of fibres. From this, he developed the idea

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of a two-part fastening made of hooks on one side and loops on the other and later patented it under the name Velcro – from the French words velour (‘velvet’) and crochet (‘hook’). More recently, biomimicry has been used to rethink a wide range of design challenges, from architecture to sportswear and medical equipment. The Eden Project is one of the best-known examples of a building designed using biomimicry.

From an architectural perspective, there is an important distinction to be made between ‘biomimicry’ and ‘biomorphism.’ Modern architects have frequently used nature as a source for original forms and the symbolic association. There are some examples of how this has produced majestic works of architecture, such as Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax building.

In the esoteric realm, Le Corbusier used allusions to natural forms extensively for their associated symbolism. The reason that it is necessary to make a distinction is that we require a functional revolution of sorts if we are to bring about the transformations described above, and it will be biomimicry rather than biomorphism that will deliver the solutions we need.

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Why were you drawn to biomimicry in the first place?

Exploration has been using biomimicry in all its projects since the firm was established in 2007. We have used it to develop entirely new building types like The Sahara Forest Project and to radically rethink existing building types in schemes like The Biomimetic Office and The Mountain Data Centre.

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As a teenager, I was torn between studying architecture and biology and eventually chose the former because I couldn’t see as much creative potential in biology. I was also quite politicized about environmental issues in my early teens when a relation gave me a copy of the Club of Rome’s ‘Blueprint for Survival.’ When I joined Grimshaw to work on the Eden Project, I realized that there was a way to bring these three strands together in pursuit of sustainable architecture inspired by nature. This emerged even more fully when I went on a one week course at Schumacher College run by Amory Lovins and Janine Benyus – I learned more in those five days than I had in the previous ten years of attending conferences and seminars.

You say we are entering the Ecological Age - what do you mean by this?

As I see it, this is the age in which we have the knowledge, technology, and imperative to formulate a truly sustainable way of living rather than pursuing approaches that simply mitigate negative impacts.

The industrial age was characterized by simple, linear, wasteful, and disconnected systems that run on fossil fuels. In the ecological age, we will learn from ecosystems to devise

complex, interconnected, highly optimized systems that run on current solar income and operate with zero waste.

You say that environmentally sustainable architecture tends to focus on mitigation when it should be regenerative and restorative.

Can you clarify this?

The sustainability paradigm has very often focussed on mitigating negatives – trying to make things ‘less bad’ – but I feel we now need to move beyond that and devise solutions that have a positive impact.

This can be in the form of schemes that repair some of the damage that has been done to ecosystems, or it could be a building that creates a fantastic, healthy working environment for its occupants. The Sahara Forest Project is a good example of the former, and the Biomimetic Office addresses the latter. Biological systems are regenerative, and it is time we created buildings that do the same.

Which biological organisms inspire you most?

We recently made a plastercast of a giant amazon water lily, which we were given by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The structure of the ribs on the underside is a marvel – particularly the way that it is optimized both in terms of structure and in terms of transporting fluids

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around the plant. It has been a source of inspiration for us on the exhibition of our work that we designed for our solo exhibition at the Architecture Foundation in London in February 2014.

In your book “Biomimicry in Architecture,” you seek to answer important environmental questions. Your main proposition is closed-loop models where there is no waste. Do you think this is achievable in today’s world of overconsumption?

The main obstacles are to do with the way we manufacture things, which makes it difficult to separate and recapture the materials in closed-loop systems. This is starting to change, and increasing numbers of people are talking about the idea of a circular economy.

There are also lots of reasons to be optimistic that we have passed peak consumption – this is certainly true for the UK (and even for the US) on a number of measures of consumption such as car travel, water, cement, etc. so I am positive that closed loop is part of the new paradigm that we need to create.

What do you think was the most exciting thing about the Eden Project in terms of biomimicry?

“I was fascinated by biology as a teenager but could not see the creative potential in the subject at that point, so I chose to study architecture, which offered a more obvious path towards designing and making things.” “I was fascinated by biology as a teenager but could not see the creative potential in the subject at that point, so I chose to study architecture, which offered a more obvious path towards designing and making things.”

MIMICKING HITECTURE The fact that the super-structure is lighter than the weight of the air inside lighter the building is something that amazed us when we did the calculation. With more advanced building technology and learning further lessons from nature, we could take that even further, and produce even lighter weight solutions.

EDEN PROJECT, ENGLAND

SAHARA FOREST PROJECT 118

Why are you so drawn to nature? What made you study architecture, instead of biology?

I think we all have an innate connection with the natural world, and for me, this was reinforced by watching nature documentaries and snorkelling. I was fascinated by biology as a teenager but could not see the creative potential in the subject at that point, so I chose to study architecture, which offered a more obvious path towards designing and making things.

You talk about biomimicry using 3.8 billion years of natural history to help make buildings that are sustainable and radically increase resource efficiency.

Your sources for the book are the species that inhabit the earth and represent evolutionary success stories. What are the species in nature that awe you the most? The fog basking beetle? The Amazon water lily? Or anything else?

The book is a fairly good guide to my favourites. Camel’s nostrils are miracles of heat exchange, water recovery engineering. We are currently looking at cuttlebone and bird-skulls to help design more efficient concrete structures for office buildings. The combustion chamber in the abdomen of a bombardier beetle mixes two high explosives from fuel tanks with valves.

Why is it so challenging getting some of these projects off the ground? Why are we, as a society, being so slow at embracing innovation that has the

chance of being so revolutionary with a very little downside?

The powerful vested interests of oil and motor companies – both of which provide extensive funding to political parties – are a major impediment.

Short-term ways of thinking also tend to favour solutions that produce quick profits at the expense of long-term loss.

I sense that there is already a growing reaction against companies interfering with politics, and I think that we have passed the nadir in terms of planning timescales.

I think this occurred in the late eighties / early nineties when developers were fairly brazen about saying that they weren’t interested in anything with a payback period. We now need to create investment models that allow people to invest in longer-term projects that deliver long-term value.

What projects are you working on right now?

We are just starting work on a zerowaste factory, and we are looking forward to taking our Biomimetic Office to the next stage. We recently displayed a solo exhibition of our work at The Architecture Foundation. The display structure was designed using software developed from the growth forms of bones and trees and will be entirely 3D printed from PLA (a type of recyclable plastic made from potato starch). We are also developing a design for a data centre that achieves a factor 10 reduction in carbon emissions.

THE ARCHI KID the secret behind perfect drafting is the correct hardness of your pencil.

YES, SIR!!

I will f1nd the f1awless graphite no matter what it takes.

walking past the dustbin kid thinks to check beneath them, well if nothing it was a place to atleast start

He FInds a portal that teleports him to....... continue his quest for the perfect pencil......

BATTling aliens...

FIghting sea monsters...

stand down my big army will be here soon

After many adventures...

SIr, lets start the assignment i got the pencil you wanted.

NO!! it needs to be a tone lighter

DEPARTMENT WORKS

INSDAG SECOND PRIZE National Student Award Competition for Architecture Students for the Best Innovative Structural Steel Design

Simran Kaur Hitesh Kumar Vyas Prajjwal Agrawal Shivam Kumar International/upgrading doemstic airport in Surat- a responsible interpretation in steel and to expore it’s versatality

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INTERioR DESIGN NATURE THEMED RESTAURANT 3RD YR

Undergraduate KUSHAGRA RAMNANI

3RD YR

Undergraduate AMLAN KUMAR SAHU

FAMILY INTERACTION SPACE

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DEPARTMENT VOCATIONAL ECOVILLAGE Akhila Kosaraju Imagine a place where the underprivileged form a selfreliant community living vibrant lives by the ideals of sustainability instead of just existing? The proposed complex is a sustainable village in Amravati built on the public-private partnership model. It would include a Vocational center, primary school, and residencies integrating an old age home with an orphanage.

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THESIS MUSEUM ON THE FUTURE OF MANKIND Ashutosh Sarda The world is moving forward at a rapid pace and one might find it dificult to fathom our earth in the near future.

The plan also highlights how things could turn otherwisethe adversities of technology.

The museum seeks to enable the avergae human to make wise choices in their daily lives by informing them about it’s effect on our future. It merely highlights the possibilities for our current relations.

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studio ILUMINA 2ND YR

Undergraduate SHARON ROSE TAMADA

FUTURISTIC PUBLIC LIBRARY 3RD YR

Undergraduate AKASH LUHANA

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works 2ND YR

Undergraduate PRATIBHA RAO

PRIMARY SCHOOL

SCHOOL DESIGN 2ND YR

Undergraduate GYANESHWARI CHAVAN

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DEPARTMENTAL

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ACTIVITIES

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TWORCAZ यारों का सफर

कुछ ऐसा की इंस्टी का फ़च्चा-बच्चा हमें जानेगा, और प्रोफ़ भी हमारी कहानी सुनाएगा ।

अलग- अलग कोनो से देश के, पहुँचे जिस मंज़िल पे वो एक थे, नया माहौल नया देश, जहाँ अलग था जीने का ढंग और परिवेश, किसी के लिए घुटन- घुटन सी थी किसी के लिए मौज, कुछ तो नया था अब ज़िंदगी में हर रोज़ ।

जब भी हम कभी तनहायी में ,या यारों संग बैठते हैं, तो ये फ़र्स्ट यर से फ़िफ़्थ यर का सफ़र हमारी आँखों से घूमता हैं, वो भी क्या दिन थे ये बात हमसे कोई ना कोई तो ज़रूर पूछता है, यहाँ हर एक दिन एक नयी कहानी साथ लाती थी, हम भले हो पीस मारने के मूड में हों, पर ये कुछ ना कुछ तो ज़रूर सिखाती थी, और कुछ इस तरह सिखना भी ज़िंदगी में बड़ा काम आती थी|

इसी बीच बिना कुछ पता चले, ज़िंदगी एक नया मोड़ लायी, घर-परिवार जब भी होते दूर, अपने यारों की फ़ौज आयीं, दोस्ती में जिनकी ना जाने हमने कितना कुछ सीखा, जब भी मुश्किल आयी कभी दोस्तों ने ना हांत खींचा, अब धुँधला-धुँधला सा याद है , कब ज़िंदगी की गाड़ी पटरी पर आयीं, ख़ुशी में मस्त मलँग, हर मुश्किल से बेफ़िकर टकरायीं, कितने दिनों बाद जाना की यहाँ ज़िंदगी एक रेस और हम एक रेल हैं, यहाँ हर एक मोड़ बस लोड और पीस का ही तो खेल है , एक ऐसा खेल जो यहाँ हर बन्दा - बन्दी खेलता है, हर एक लोड को बस पीस से ही तो झेलता है ।

हमारा हर एक सेम ना जाने कैसे गुज़रता था, बस एक चीज़ याद है,मन फक्का लगवाने से बड़ा डरता था, डेप और नान-डेप सब्जेक्ट्स के साथ हमने क्या मस्त कोऑर्डिनेशन खेला, साथ ही जी.वी.सी. , बी.डी. , ए.डी. , ट्रान्सपरेंस और टेक्निकल सब्जेक्ट्स को भी बख़ूबी झेला, और इनसब के बाद थीसिस के लिए भी क्या खूब पापड़ बेला |

यहाँ ज़िंदगी एक रेल की सवारी है, जहाँ लोड के कुछ छोटे-बड़े स्टेशन है, बाक़ी का सफ़र हमने पीस में ही गुज़ारी है ।

हम कभी कभी ये सोचते हैं, हमारी ज़िंदगी कितनी मस्त थी यहाँ, बिना कोई रोक टोक बस चलती थी अपनी मनमर्ज़ियाँ, अपनी यारी के कुछ किस्से तो हम अब भी बेवक़्त सोचते है, तो कभी अपने किसी दोस्त को किसी फ़च्चे में ढूँढते हैं, हम सब का वो सेंटो हमें अब हर वक़्त याद आयेगा, हम भले ही ग्रेजुएट हो जाएँ, पर ये सेंटो तो हमारे साथ जायेगा ।।

फंडे उतने न क्लियर थे शुरुवात से , जो झलकते थे हमारी कुछ बात से , धीरे-धीरे करके न जाने हमने कितना कुछ सीखा , गिरते-पड़ते वक़्त ने भी खूब सिखाया जीने का सलीका , हमने भी मन-ही-मन एक बात ठानी थी , जब यहाँ आए थे तो हम चाहे कैसे भी हो, वापस तो कुछ मचाऊ करके जाना है

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- सौरभ कुमार

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Class of 2020

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Calco Polychem Pvt Ltd WE APPRECIATE COMMITTED PEOPLE WHO MAKE DIFFERENCE AND WILLING TO BRING IN THEIR STRENGTH TO CONTRIBUTE TO OUR COMPANY’S SUCESS. FOR CAREER DROP YOUR CV AT BELOW MAIL ID Head Office : M-8, Badli Industrial Estate, New Delhi-110042, Email: info@calcopolychem.in , Phone : +91 11 47046638, 27857715 Website : www.calcopolychem.in | www.100degreeplassc.com

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(inspired from Mars Science City by Bjarke Ingels Group)