What my phone could do...

First Sights

The first instances of taking a deeper look into the city came to me when I came to the city of Bangalore in December 2006, the city I had visited erstwhile in the year 1998 about the same time of the year. For anyone who visits the city leaving 2 years shy of a decade in between, especially on two sides of a threshold of the revolutionary software industry, it would come upon you as a culture shock. It happened to me. The calm garden city of the retiring defence community had turned into a rave of what is now a buzzing business centre. It is an amazing phenomenon to see how the city has flexes, reshapes and accomodates pressures of a growing economy and population. A city's change waves appear in the form of stacks of commercial houses in close clusters arranged along less shadier roads and huge densities of traffic coupled with towering residential complexes to accomodate the huge infiltrations of rural and sub urban population that move in everyday.

Buildings clearly represent a changing timeline, the city's vibes and its history. The question I first posed to myself is where is the Indian city heading while seeing through such rapid urban agglomeration and does it require its people to act and behave in it in a certain way to see better urban spaces? more...

-What is the near future of cities look like?

-What does urban design mean to India? Is it about making plazas or platforms?

-How much of this knowledge is required by the common man?

- Where and how are urbanism, economy and sustainability connected?

-Tangible solutions for the now and then. What should architetcs and urban designers set out to do?

These are just a few random picks from a huge box of questions. I am going to set out to answer these questions from my away of understanding urban scenes in India.

On the skyline

Its almost 17 days since i last updated by brand new blog, but ever since, i have just been waiting for the right thread to begin with. For sometime, I have been thinking, I could spread out my dissertation project on the table and debate it inside out, but today I was determined to write my mind on some unstoppable visuals we are forced to see in most Indian cities. I am taking the context of Chennai to spark this discussion.

These are thoughts based on visually compelling images advertised in most builders websites, which later transform to stand tall and blatant. I am not here to corner anybody, so for those who want a realtime experience of what I am talking here about, seek them out on your own and read the following lines, keeping one of those images side by side as you read.

Here you go.

My first blog. I have started this as a rather impromtu expedition, however with great optimism that writing my thoughts will unwrap many more thoughts hiding and hibernating deep in my mind. I think of an age in the present where we are in constant conflict with infrastructure and concepts of sustainability and an age a little ahead of our times which most of us can only fantasise a telescopic gaze. Another associative interest would be the sense of all that we discuss in its 'Indianess', which is by far, a way of life than a society and a context more than place.

Just a snippet to introducing myself, I am a little over a year out of graduation and I am currently working in Bangalore as an architect. I must say that the time elapsed since has been the one of many, many questions of multi layered intensities bombarding with self derived debates which is one reason why I have opened this blog, to open my debate to a larger arena.

It will take me a while to figure the right argument with which I want to inaugrate. Will find one very soon to keep it flowing.