Author: betweenarchitectureandurbanism

  • ARCHITECTURAL THESIS: Practice of Academics or Academics of Practice

    Studio @ KRVIA Last several decades one could see the altered responsibilities of architecture towards itself, cities, environment and other interdisciplinary dimensions. This has perhaps resulted into need of re-examination of the academics in contemporary times. Within the academics it is important to understand the role and scope of the architectural thesis (design desertion) as…

  • THINKING ABOUT TECHNOLOGY

    The recent annual lecture series at KRVIA titled as “Discourse on Technology” concluded with the talk by keynote speaker Prof. Dhruv Raina. The keynote address was able to dissect through various pre-assumed concepts and framework on technology that most of the architectural institutes conveniently have been working around with. The technology needed much required impetus…

  • KRVIA MASTERS: LOCAL AREA PLAN: 2018

    SEMESTER III STUDIO  (URBAN DESIGN + URBAN CONSERVATION) The new paradigm called for planning practice to be “bottom up” and “people centred”, and not relies on economists, engineers and statisticians alone. The significance of anthropologists, sociologists, scholars of cultural studies and grassroots activists who were closer to people were brought within the folds of this…

  • KRVIA BRIDGE STUDIO IX: HALL OF NATION | NEW DELHI

    QUESTION OF BRIDGE STUDIOThe bridge studio is a space where the intellectual formalisation of practice begins to configure with the academic space or academic space begins to interact with practice domain. The practice domain is generally perceived as other side of academics with handful information of practical imperatives & awareness towards making of architecture that…

  • Positioning Architectural Theory

    Positioning Architectural Theory

    The article attempts to articulate the theoretical discourse in Architecture with epistemological understanding.

  • NON STRAIGHT FORWARD ARCHITECTURE: ROBERT VENTURI

    CARTESIAN RIGOR VS COMPROMISED FRAGMENTATION ” This is no an easy book. It requires professional commitment and close visual attention, and is not for those architects who, lest they offend them, pluck out their eyes” Vincent Scully Professor Emiretus, Historian Yale University The architectural & theoretical work of Robert Venturi in American context can only be…

  • FALSE CREEK HOUSING: VANCOUVER

    The history of False creek is slightly deceptive, as Britisher arrived with assumption that its going up to south via creek but ended in a delta. However the False creek divides the city from downtown to rest of the Vancouver. It has four interesting sides from the urban form point of view. The housing development…

  • URBANISM ECOLOGY AND PLACE: Reading "City Riffs"

    The recent publication of book titled ” City Riffs” by Richard Plunz ( Columbia University, GSAPP) is based on urbanism discourse (dialogue) in relation to place and ecology. The preface by Kenneth Frampton argues the production of urban knowledge in neo-liberal economy results in aporetic question on limits and scope in the field of urban study.…

  • ARCHITECTURE OF THE ENMESHED CULTURE

    The recent trends of architecture demonstrates the pugnacious departure from disciplined modernism. The traditional notion of creativity is slowly replaced by innovation in technological inputs and tools that generate the forms rather than tools that aids the process of generating one. The sinuous forms, non-structured or non euclidean geometry are encapsulating minds and thoughts into unidirectional understanding of architecture…

  • ARTHUR ERICKSON: A CANADIAN MODERNIST

    Arthur Erickson was first generation of Canadian Modernist Architect. His role in shaping modern ethos in architecture and planning domain is noteworthy. His practice involved varied kind of scale and types of building, strongly embedded into modernity. In principle his design showed the way that context is given condition and modernity has to be dealt with.…

  • KRVIA MASTERS THESIS: 2018

    How cities treat its natural reserves & ecology, how its cultural phenomena re-invents or reproduces its own city or how cities social conditions is a product of reciprocal influences, can there be an Urban Form that investigates the phenomena or addresses the issues?. The cities are place and phenomena of structured complexity and sometimes it…

  • CITY RENEWAL & URBAN RESTRUCTURING

    The post-1990s experience in Mumbai represents urban renewal processes as in other cities of Asia. As a city that is topographically challenged with land constraints and ageing infrastructure housing redevelopment is a response towards decongestion of the inner city and densification of the suburbs. This, in turn, is linked to neo-liberal urbanism characterized by economic…

  • UDVADA: COMMUNITY | WORSHIP

    Lots have been written on Udvada town, its importance as Parsi community town, its history and most importantly the worship place. However the recent attempt to create heritage awareness of the town has resulted positive responses from community and historians. The town is an agglomeration of various architectural typologies (by functions), creating unique experience and bringing sense…

  • ZAHA HADID: INNOVATION TOWER, HONG KONG

    The recently opened Innovation tower building in Hon kong Polytechnic University is fine example of contemporary building practice by Zaha Hadid. The building has spectacular presence in central open space where existing buildings have their dated presence of modernist era. The  eccentric cascade of fluid form draws the attention among the brick  cladded disciplined modern building. The…

  • TRENDS AND ISSUES IN HOUSING IN ASIA: Book Review

    The recently launched publication attempting to address housing situation in Asia,  derives its momentum from current theoretical inquiries into Asian Urbanism at large. The earlier literature were skewed towards the model of modernism and progressive, imagining the notion of future, and often Utopian in western generic sense. The publication is deviating and focusing on Asian models in addressing…

  • KRVIA Masters Studio: Local Area Planning: 2017

    In continuation of last year post on local area plan in Mumbai at various location, ranging from historic core, transportation corridor, indigenous villages and peripheries, the current year explores the communicative action based studio in Kalyan – Dombivali Municipal Corporation limit (KDMC). The studio explores the sites that are being challenged by rapid transformation and development. The…

  • REPRESENTING IRREGULAR URBANISM: SYMPOSIUM

    Roundtable at the ICA London Saturday, March 25, 11am – 5pm, ICA London, Studio (Credit: Kingston University, Prof: Christoph Leuder.) RESCALE (RESearch into Cities, Architecture, Landscape and Environments), Kingston School of Art The asymmetrical distribution of power, political and economic opportunity in the urbanising territories of the Global South between rapid urban development and spectacular…

  • Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Museum in PARIS

    The Museum building designed and constructed in 2006 by known architect Jean Nouvel. The museum building located just behind the Eiffel tower and along the water edge. The museum houses  the indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the America.  Jean Nouvel’s architecture of the building is often deals with urban field. The…

  • CHURCHES: BRUSSELS & COLOGNE

    The Brussels Church (S.Gudule) and Cologne Church are two finest example of Gothic Architecture, but moving in line with ecclesiastical architecture of early 1200 to 1475 AD. It shows the influences from french church architecture but depicting early tendencies of Romanesque characteristics. The architecture of both the churches are governed by similar plan and similar volume of nave and aisles. Both…

  • DECODING EVERYDAY

    The KRVIA masters thesis presented by Shalaka on “Representing Third place ” brings about the argument of representation of every day. The thesis argued that the Cartesian system of mapping and representing manages to engrave the rational and logical framework of functioning of cities. In such endeavor of representation, it often misses out the everyday component of the urban…

  • KRVIA MASTERS STUDIO: HOUSING AND WATER SYSTEM IN KOLKATA

    The KRVIA Master’s studio continued its academic exploration into various kind of housing systems and its typological formation in different geographical landscape. The Daman explored the housing through the settlement pattern of indigenous community and its development into an Industrial town. The Jodhpur housing studio explored the idea of topography, network of history & heritage,  and existing water bodies. The…

  • TATE MODERN EXTENSION: LONDON

    The bankside turbin power station was converted into a national art gallery and public place in 1995, which has set an example of readaptive use of industrial architectural heritage in the time of de-industrialization of cities. The setting of the place at bank of Thames also has perhaps shaped its popularity as being most popular…

  • ROCA MUSEUM-LONDON: ZAHA HADID

    The world of art has seen significant development in art domain during early 1900. The initial period led by Henry Matisse, attempted to abandon any attempt at descriptive, naturalist use of colour and form while Picasso and Braque paved the way non-euclidean means of representing space and form. The abstract and non-objective works attempted to free the art…

  • THE MOVING ICONOGRAPHY: PANDHARPUR

    Architecture and Urbanism of pilgrimage cities are complex and constantly transforming by forces that shaped religious beliefs and customs. They are complex due to its sacred geography, religious significance or mythological values, while they are constantly emerging/ transforming due to their increasing significance in context of socio-politico-economic subservience. This duality is often difficult to deconstruct…

  • RESTORATION OF SARDAR PATEL HOUSE: BARDOLI

    The field of conservation is often elite and niche practice, it often trapped into the conversation of what is contextual history and what is fabricated context. This perhaps leads  to conflicting nature of practices and resultant outcome of such wanted desirable are questionable. The conservation is also often linked with colonial architecture and less of indigenous architecture and typologies.  The recent…

  • KRVIA MASTERS STUDIO – LOCAL AREA PLAN

    The planning domain traditionally governed by monolithic & top-down  understanding of master plan approach. The centralized approach has been widely criticized for not being able to be inclusive on various account, esp: community aspects, heritage aspects, informality, environmental aspects, resilience & mitigation aspect. The recent endeavor (2014) of making of development plan endorsed the idea of two or three tier idea of…

  • KRVIA – SPA 2016

    The exchange workshop (Masters Semester I) moved from its earlier mono-directional transformation through new transportation corridor to multi-directional transformation through new ring road metro. The new ring road metro collides with existing rail corridor and existing radial metro lines. The attempt of the workshop was to expand and reinforce the existing network and imagine the…

  • CHURCH: LUND, SWEDEN.

    The church in lund represent the fine Romanesque Architecture built out of sandstone, built in 1000 AD. The similar time frame the various monuments built across the world. In Indian context it was Brihadeeshwara Temple in Thanjavur by Chhola Dynasty and Qutub Minar by  Qutub Al Din Aibak. In the context of Europe there were some of…

  • HOUSE AND HOUSING: SWEDEN & NETHERLAND

    This is in addition to earlier post ” HOUSING EXPERIMENTS”, it is interesting to observe the new experiments and issues in housing in different region of similar context. The issues of housing with methods on participatory approach or rejuvenate old housing stocks or re-claim the neighborhood qualities through open spaces and importantly the issues of re-inventing qualities of neighborhood affected by  crime and violence are some of…

  • RE-CONSERVATION: KREMS, AUSTRIA

    The town of Krems along the Danube Valley is an important historical town, which has witnessed the consistence architectural sustenance across the centuries. The old town of Krems offers high quality of Urban and Architectural landscape spreaded across the river Danube. The town has two parts, showing excellent quality of architectural monument and experiential urban…

  • VIENNA: HOUSING EXPERIMENTS

    Due to increasing complexity of metros and large urban areas, the planning mechanism has perhaps not able to resolve through mechanism of entrepreneurial market or mechanism of politics. The planning commissions and functions seem to be insufficient to tackle the fundamental issues of housing within metros and large urban areas. The planning without empowered function…

  • KRVIA MASTERS CONFERENCE: COMMUNITY HERITAGE

    KRVIA Urban Conservation Department initiated the workshop and conference (Collaboration with University of Coimbra, Portugal) on Community Heritage on the fringes of an Indian Metropolis. The intent of the workshop was to unearth the important community architecture that has helped and shaped the ethos and cultural practices within the cities and fringes of such cities. …

  • PRACTICE, KNOWLEDGE & CONTAMINATION

    The knowledge paradigm in Architecture is asymptotic representation of imagined communication. The relationship of codes and referents to their architectonics facilitate the possibilities of the structuring of form, while repository of memory provides the formal assemblage of architecture. The Architectural ideas and knowledge is an ensemble of the notion of codes & system and their…

  • VENGURLA: ARCHITECTURE AND COMMUNITY

    The town of Vengurla is located in Konkan stretch of Maharashtra and  entry point of North Goa from Konkan belt. The town is sprawling form coast line towards the NH17. The small town has distinct communities and their identifiable neighbourhoods. The main occupation is fishing and agriculture along with the ore mines for Manganese, keeping…

  • KRVIA MASTERS: SEM I- STUDIO: 2015

    The cities are accumulation of unexpected events and details, the diverse and unseen imagery, and the complex listing of objects, people, resulting into fascinating tactile & visual properties, continually creating unforeseen pleasures. This complex events and imagery transcend the time and morph itself into a surreal city, representing the collapse of reversible phenomena. The collapsible…

  • CHAMPANER: THE ABANDONED CAPITAL

    The city of Champaner, historically  was seized by several ruler due to its scenic backdrop and architectural importance. The history of establishment of regime dates back to 7th century A.D and subsequent & constant change of regime from 14th century A.D to 17th century A.D. The rule of Chavda Dynasty, Begda Dynasty, Mughul Dynasty and…

  • KRVIA MASTERS: MARCH 2015

  • KRVIA MASTERS: OCTOBER 2015

  • THE OTHER CITY

    This thesis brings my earlier reading on “FORMLESS URBANISM” city of Chanod. The formlessness condition that exist in the city are valuable tradition of soft urbanism and festivals are one of them. There was time in academic world that the cohesion is a formal property and essential one for cities. The uniqueness of urban form…

  • UNKNOWN MONUMENTS: GWALIOR

    The tomb of master Muhammad Ghaus lies near the central market and visibly close to the Gwalior fort. The magnificent architecture is not easily accessible or visible. The Muhammad Ghaus was master composer during Mughal times. The architecture of mausoleum is typologically different from many tomb structures of Maghul times. It demonstrates the various architectural influences of…

  • SPA-KRVIA 2015

    The SPA-KRVIA 2015 joint workshop, like last previous years,  it continued to explore the newly built metro transit route of Badarpur to Kashmere Gate. The workshop (Across Metropolis) along with mapping and projecting transnational trajectories, it also began to define the characteristic of each nodes and possibilities of large urban intervention that reinforces the local ethos. Incidentally each node…