Among the straight-laced buildings along the street stands a deconstructed, warped shell by Vijay Vivek Shankar. Just one of the signs of changes in the hyper city of Bengaluru. The aluminum panels were custom-fabricated in China and fitted on site. Here is how the project was reviewed in The Hindu and an IAB article.
A range of scales is reflected in the portfolio of inFORM architects. The design work is matched by parallel pursuits in the form of publications, exhibitions and events under the umbrella of inCITE. Going by the published inCITE titles, the contemporary Indian architecture appears to be branching out along multiple trajectories.
A handful of ideas wafted in some weeks ago from the international circuit to Bengaluru. An interesting hands-on digital design workshop and symposium organised by the AA Visiting School took place at the BMS Colllege of Engineering. Included some people who work for her. These intensive events appear to breed successfully a degree of cross-fertilization that is yet to folded in within academic architecture schools. A detailed wrap-up on the slideshow on Flickr.
Bangalore, circa 1924.
To follow my Bangalorey Man … goes the song by Marais and Miranda. May be it was the clouds but as the flight followed its own cryptic codes to Bangalore, the garden city was not visible. In its reincarnated identity, Bengaluru is about 30 kms away from the landing site. A smooth road snakes out of the airport to where the city must be though can’t see it from the ground either. A long ride – it feels like forever – and slowly signs of urban habitation appear. Some rather unusual ones are the dandy hats that some – not all – traffic cops wear; a boxy and very red letter box by the road side (are they still in use?); road signs of welcome to the garden city; tall nets that trap golf balls from arcing over and landing on vehicles or pedestrians on what is already a busy traffic artery. Almost unsuspecting, the city seems to creep up around us – even the traffic slows down to a crawl and it is no longer possible to play dodge-the-lanes-with-folded-rear-view-mirrors game.
Someone had mentioned earlier: this city has the highest number of cars per inhabitants in India. Third highest literate metropolitan city in India of nearly 7.2 million inhabitants. Surely there are other faces to this city I will discover in time.
A company which often moves a factory to the site – after all, it is not quite practical to transport large wind turbine blades easily on open roads in India and elsewhere – is spinning its global presence powered by wind. The campus of Suzlon in Pune has been recognised as one of the largest green building developments, LEED-certified with Platinum award. Links to more info and images of the campus.
Fish scales, alligator skins, and iron plates. Three different materials, three different ways to detail them in the shape of body armor. These material wonders from another time are just some of the surprises in a collection of 20,000 odd items in the Raja Kelkar Museum, Pune. Some other fascinating items include leather puppets, paithani paintings, and marvelous bronze Buddhas from what used to be Siam.
CDSA courtyard
This lady won’t be found easily. A road winds out of and up from Pune to the hills on the west. And watching over the hills, bushes and a courtyard surrounding a series of enclosed spaces hugging the slopes is this sculpture.
On the CDSA campus is located NIASA, the academic wing of the Council of Architecture in India. It administers the national aptitude test for architecture, taken by some 23000-25000 aspiring school leavers around the country to secure admission to one of ~10,000 available places in over 150+ architecture courses. And yet there remains a projected shortfall of institutions and teachers.
One other interesting bit – relevant to one of my current interests – is that NIASA has organised a seminar(?) together with the Indian Institute of Architects on foreign architects practicing in India. Hope to find some follow up information.
Infosys, Pune
Leafing through some unrelated literature, the spaceship pops up. It is the Infosys building in Pune designed by Hafiz Contractor. Plenty written about it at the time in daily and professional press [TOI] [ExI], and as reflected on the architect’s website.
Then I came across another under-the-hood kind of description. Note the construction duration – February to September 2006, only 9 months! That, in turn, led to the team that engineered this building into reality: construction catalysers who have an impressive range of projects with an eye for architecture and sensibility of an engineer.
Incremental upgrade
A project about in-situ upgrades, from temporary shelters to permanent ones, each one at least about 270 sq.ft. usable area, financed 50-40-10 among central, state and owners. Each is a unique case, a custom resolution of needs and what is feasible while meeting constraints of neighbors, existing infrastructure, and footprint occupied before upgrade. So much is packed into so little space. And small signs to personalise. A tile with Ambedkar’s picture, a bunch of potted plants, a dash of paint, a cast iron spiral staircase with fantastic balustrades. So much salvaged, so much invested and hoped for.
A design team led by Prasanna Desai has evolved a series of house types around service and living cores, interlocking where possible, with reinforced concrete framed structure with brick in-fills. A hard place for construction. A detailed account of this project is here from a series of online videos by SPARC-NSDF-Mahila Milan channel.
The reports suggested that monsoon had finally retreated. The reports though do not apply to Pune – heavy showers in late evenings for the last two days. It does feel a bit different, a bit of old world here in Pune, the education city and lately the IT hub of sorts.
In a roundabout way, I keep discovering information portals in India that deliver some really interesting data. Case in point: bhuvan, an information portal showcasing Indian expertise in earth observation imaging. Since 1988 when the first Indian remote sensing satellite shot up in space, ISRO has gathered data from earth observation satelllites which are now being used also for disaster management responses. There are web-based viewers to interactively view imagery in 2D and 3D, a bit like Google Earth but there are additional features not in GE. See this online channel that carries bhuvan-related videos like the following:
