The Urban Vision | Aditi Nargundkar Pathak

Name: Aditi Nargundkar Pathak

Bio: Aditi is a consulting editor with The Urban vision. Aditi is an Architect and Urban designer who splits her time between Mumbai and New York. She is involved in large scale residential and industrial projects. She has completed her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from University of Mumbai and Masters of Urban design from University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. She has worked in UK and India as an Architect and has a keen interest in urban conservation, Green neighborhoods, New Urbanism, Design policy, theory and experimentation.

Posts by Aditi Nargundkar Pathak:

Chasing the Vertical Dimension

June 12th, 2010

Not so long ago New York City was the home for some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world but in the past few years that monopoly has ceased to exist; Middle East, Asia, and South East Asia have taken the lead boasting of taller and more efficient tall structures accommodating myriad amenities. Tall buildings have always projected being efficient mega structures with their iconic reputation and now they seem to be coming up in every part of the world. India too is picking up on this trend and is building a few tall structures of her own. In cities like Mumbai or Delhi which attract a high rate of migration tall structures seem inevitable as they offer high density and smaller building footprints.

That said, one cannot help but question the viability of such tall structures in Indian cities. There is an ongoing debate about the design and efficiency of the tall structures world over and especially in Mumbai.

How does having a tall structure help an Indian city like Mumbai? There are some obvious answers to this question like smaller building foot print, high density, augmented use of the urban resources and a possibility of use of height for producing alternative energy like wind, solar etc (though the idea is at an experimental stage). The arguments against tall structures are that they are known to be energy hoggers. High energy requirement for mechanical ventilation and conveyance required by tall structures seem difficult to meet when Indian cities are prone to power outages. Also the urban infrastructure in India needs to undergo a major revamp to support high densities and high floor space indices. With such opinions and some more I had the opportunity to have an open discussion with an Indian born Architect in New York. Mr. Sudhir Jambhekar, FAIA, RIBA, LEED AP, is a Senior Partner in FXFOWLE Architects, an International firm based in New York City, with additional offices in Washington, DC, and Dubai.

Mr. Sudhir Jambhekar, FAIA, RIBA, LEED AP, is a Senior Partner with FXFOWLE Architects

Mr Jambhekar heads the International studio at FXFOWLE and has been responsible for design and execution of quite a few tall structures around the world. His experience includes working with I.M.Pei, a partnership in Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) and co-founding practise, Jambhekar Strauss, which later merged with FXFOWLE. Mr. Jambhekar has also been honoured as a Fellow by the American Institute of Architects, and as a Fellow of the Urban Design Institute of America.

The discussion that followed was a very intriguing one. I wanted to discuss and revisit some of the basics of tall building design and Mr. Jambhekar, with his experience of designing tall structures around the world, was the right person to have a conversation with. He had graciously agreed to meet with me and I will share a part of the discussion ‘as is’ with the readers.

Aditi: FXFOWLE has been working on tall structures in India, China and Middle East. You have been part of a few of them. How do you anticipate the effect of tall structures on urbanization of India? The urban infrastructure in India is already stressed; do you think the addition of tall structure to the urban fabric of city like Mumbai is feasible or there can be other solutions that we are not considering?

Jambhekar: I believe in density. Human beings are social animals and it is unnatural for them to be living out of the cities-in isolated areas. Also, when we promote living outside the city there is pressure on the land, urban resources and the environment. We must optimize the already existing urban infrastructure for more sustainable futures for us. In a Mumbai the tall buildings or the high density living is going to be the way forward. The relation between demand and supply in Mumbai’s real estate market is such that the city will have to think about accommodating high number of people on a smaller land mass. People are negatively opinionated on the viability of tall structures and the reason often given is that the infrastructure in Mumbai is not efficient enough to sustain them. It is a compelling logic to a certain extent but improvement in the infrastructure of Mumbai for it to become a prominent and successful city is inevitable. The world cities like London, New York and Beijing have one thing in common and that is efficient and workable infrastructure and more importantly excellent public transport system. Their systems efficiently transport large number of commuters from point A to point B without many delays, glitches or overcrowding. This allows dense cities to confidently grow further through high rise structures. Mumbai needs this type of confidence to address its need of space. Another concept that I think will help in developing and utilizing density to our advantage is high Floor Space Index (FSI). Today on an average Mumbai has an FSI of 1 to 2, where as if we look at Manhattan the Average FSI is 18 and with bonuses this FSI can go up to 21. If the FSI can be increased and higher average can be achieved in Mumbai, hopefully habitation requirements of Mumbai can be eased.

Aditi: If we talk about tall Mumbai, we cannot ignore that Floor Space Index (FSI) does form a very important design parameter .In my experience it promotes skewed thinking in designers as every developer wants to maximize the FSI. From an experienced designers perspective do you think there can be creative alternatives for FSI?

Jambhekar: I don’t think FSI is controlling factor in design. All it does it limits the building bulk, in terms of square footage. Other zoning regulations like set back lines or sky planes become more constrictive. For example, what is happening in Mumbai is that the authorities relentlessly demand that each building has to have setbacks on all sides, it does not matter how tall the proposed building is. Therefore each site becomes a box having an object within itself. Now if we compare the sites in Mumbai to sites in New York City, there is no such regulation in Manhattan and as the result the buildings are lined along the roads .They are connected and we have continuous retail store fronts like at Madison Avenue. Under present regulations there cannot be a Madison Avenue in Mumbai. For the liveability of a city we need public spaces where people can walk comfortably. These spaces create an environment of amenities, stores, colleges, and museums etc., which in turn contribute to the quality of life. Regulations like setbacks prohibit such public spaces. These regulations create building dots in the cityscape which are not connected and thus create spaces in between those building dots which are inhabitable. I am not saying every city should be like New York but you can borrow tried and tested ideas and design spaces adaptable to Mumbai. Around the world, like in London, New York, Shanghai etc. cities are pleasurable when they are walkable. In Mumbai itself the British designed walkable streets like D.N road and Ballard Pier but sadly these notions of urbanism have not been carried out in the newer parts of the city.

Aditi: The trendy modern tall structures we design have a contextual significance. As architects designing tall structures we try to create landmarks for commercial success of a building. In a city like Mumbai, high density is seen as the possible way to solve its rapid urbanization. In such a scenario, if all buildings become tall and iconic in Mumbai, how do you think we can control the aesthetics, do you think the iconic designs will matter then?

Jambhekar: A tough question; Girgaon area developed in the 19^th century as trader settlements. Here future redevelopment is inevitable since the land value sky rocketed. It will be a great idea to create an overall vision for the area having some research based contextual constraints. Then the development for the whole or part of the area could be undertaken according to this vision. I wish this had been done for past redevelopments as well. In city planning if the designers and developers think about these visions, the developments can be more connected to the surroundings. I believe that any project, if has successfully merged with the fabric of the city, everyone involved in its design has succeeded. The owners succeeded because they have contributed to the city, the users succeeded because they can enjoy the development and the surroundings and society succeeded because their quality of life has improved. Ideally that’s what needs, to happen. In our office we quote a famous saying ‘If you think of a chair, think of the room , if you think of the room ,think of the house , if you think of the house think of the neighbourhood and if you think of the neighbourhood , think of the city’. This big picture thinking is needed for a Mumbai. On the note of aesthetics, I remember, in one of the lectures Mr. Balkrishna Doshi, upon showing a slide of slum asked the audience ‘who are we to judge if this is right or wrong?’ So point being made was that aesthetics can be very subjective and as designers and planners we have to allow for that.

Aditi: Have you designed buildings that are creating and using alternative energy and has height of tall structures been of any advantage for that?

Jambhekar: I don’t know if height helps in creating/ using alternative energy or not but we have certainly used these alternatives in our designs. LEED has these X- numbers of categories and the two most important categories are energy conservation and indoor air quality. When you deal with tall buildings most of them essentially need mechanical systems to regulate ventilation as opposed to the naturally ventilated buildings. So, by nature they demand more energy. In India if you are doing a housing project, there is no need for centrally conditioning the air. Depending upon where you are in the country, one can chose to use air conditioning in residences. It is different in the office buildings, there you need mechanical ventilation and so there you need to think of alternative ways of looking at either conserving or producing energy. At FXFOWLE we have done it in many ways like geo thermal, solar, wind etc. We also try to efficiently manage water like in Riyadh we have designed buildings for water conservation but in Mumbai rain water harvesting is important and we designed to address that .

Aditi: Growing up in Mumbai and living in New York, I have noticed that there is a distinct difference in tropical living and temperate living. Tropical living that is how we live in India; is more outward looking. We like to take a stroll in the evening all year long, know our neighbours and most of us live in some sort of community. We celebrate festivals like Ganpati, Navratri, Durga Pooja, and Diwali on our streets which transform them into public spaces. The temperate living on the other hand is more inward looking. In New York because of the harsh and extreme climate people don’t go out as much. After work, on weekdays people stay at home with their families and plan their outings only on weekends. The high rise designs typologies that are emerging work very well in temperate conditions. Don’t you think high rises will have a huge cultural impact on the way we live in India? Can you think of design solutions which can accommodate these cultural habits or nuances?

Jambhekar: There is surely a distinct difference in how we live in India as compared to elsewhere. I don’t think the cultural habits can change so easily though. Today the vertical transit systems are such that the travel time is not much. The new elevators can travel about 160 – 170 foot per second. The total time frame of travel even in tallest buildings is negligible, so people talking stroll will still go out as per their routine, but there is another way of dealing with these nuances. There is a trend of cluster development that is emerging. Steven Hall has recently designed high rise structure in China called Linked Hybrid. It plays on similar ideas and has created urban links in sky. Even with our work at FXFOWLE we have created common spaces within the tall buildings to deal with social isolation.

My take away from the discussion was that whichever stand we take, tall structures in high growth cities of India are rapidly becoming a reality. Though there are very rational and compelling reasons for us to build tall structures, we need to customize their designs according to our Indian sensibilities. To promote a tall structure or not is soon becoming just an academic dialogue while Indian cities are leaping forward with an ambition of becoming the next Shanghai. As designers developing proposals for this metamorphosis of our cities we have to make sure that we equip our tall structures for a sustainable future.

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Sustainable Transportation: Key to Climate Change Mitigation

December 7th, 2009

photo credit: Wonderlane

The Urban Vision in partnership with Columbia Business School’s Energy club, Social enterprise club and Green Business club hosted a forum on sustainable transportation in Columbia University, New York City as part of The Urban Vision’s “Climate Month” celebration between September 15 – October 15 2009 leading up to the historic Copenhagen Summit scheduled for December 2009. The “Climate Month” featured a series of Forums and Symposiums with major thought leaders of our times to evaluate solutions to moving our planet into a sustainable path.

This Sustainable Transportation forum highlighted several projects and innovative processes that would benefit us in climate change mitigation while improving the overall quality of life.

Prathima Manohar from The Urban Vision set the tone of the meeting by reminding the audience of some facts like climate change being greatest challenges faced by our planet and cities being at the heart of this problem. About 80% of carbon emissions can be attributed to the cities, and automobiles contribute to the half of carbon emission. Prathima added that while other sectors like industry have been able to reduce carbon emissions; the transport sector has steadily increased their carbon emissions.

Earl Jackson, Associate Director at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) showcased the projects and design ideology of SOM. Earl focused on two main projects: – Tyson’s corner in Fairfax County, Virginia and Maytas forest Hills, Hyderabad. SOM was involved in developing a master plan with a focus on transit for Tyson’s Corner. The plan was to introduce four new metro stations on the site to reduce the automobile dependency and increase pedestrian traffic. The concept of this design was to develop a pedestrian friendly neighbourhood for community living while including the infrastructure associated with these metro rail stations.

The design programme for Maytas Forest hills included a special economic zone and only two site accesses. The integration of this project to the Hyderabad city depended on the local /regional buses, which would enter the site through these main access points. A major road loop where local /regional buses would run was created with the accesses and a smaller internal loop was designed to intersect the major loop where the energy efficient buses serviced the internal site area. The proposal had highest density around the special economic zone to facilitate residences for people to live where they work. The plan also included watersheds to harvest rainwater, preserved existing orchards and used locally available material to reduce the community’s carbon footprint.

Fred Kent the Founder and President for People for Public Places (PPS discussed concepts of place-making which involved using the community to develop public spaces. PPS works on ideas like the comfort, place-making, power of 10, zealousness of public, and acknowledging community is an expert to develop places in cities. Power of 10 concept advocates that each community needs to have 10 places with things to do, 10 destinations to go to and 10 such communities would make a region interesting. Fred discussed the case study of downtown New Hampshire where PPS was successful in creating a people friendly place with their approach of involving the community. Fred introduced some experiments in the presentation which defied the general notion of traffic functioning. These changes in road design by PPS have proved to reduce crashes according to the data collected. Fred also went on to explain the sustainability of traditional markets, shop fronts and suggested using green design as a integrated concept as compared to the specialised type of design.

Dan Collins, IBM, USA showcased how technology can be used in shaping sustainable future of transportation. An average person today experiences increased commute time to work which is a non-productive time for the commuter. To address this concern IBM is working on tools for congestion management which would reduce commute time. Dan explained infrastructure solutions like cordoned pricing or dynamic pricing for High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lanes. Solutions to predict traffic jams based on traffic motion are also being implemented which would predict a jam up to 90 minutes before traffic actually stops. This system is being used in Singapore and gives commuters an opportunity to choose the best available route during congestion. The case study of downtown Stockholm traffic involving IBM technology of dynamic pricing mechanism reduced carbon emissions, traffic congestion and increased the use of public transit. The city of Atlanta is also in the process of implementing cordoned pricing on its highway I-85 which is notorious for traffic jams.

Aaron Naparstek, the editor- in –chief of Streetsblog talked about the challenges of sustainable transportation in New York City (NYC). Average New Yorker emits 1/3 of the green house gasses as compared to average American because of the well connected transit systems. Aaron suggested some alternative sustainable transport solutions to reduce the green house gas emissions further. Bike infrastructure for American cities was an idea suggested in presentation which showed very successful examples from Germany and Paris and NYC. Bus rapid transit system was another successful idea which was used in Bogota and later in cities like Sao Paulo, Auckland and Paris. This type of mass transit system was said to be more sustainable than the way buses are managed at present. Some other ideas Aaron covered were parking management by pricing and availability, traffic congestion pricing on urban roads and making streets more liveable. Aaron went on to explain the significance of having liveable streets and gave some examples of efforts taken around the world for the cause like Parisian Summer gridlock on the Pompidou expressway, Williamsburg walks in NYC, Sumer street event in NYC and public space reclamation in Times Square.

The last contributor of the evening was a medical practitioner from NYC, Dr. Joseph Habboushe who was also working on a new tryp of mass transit idea to solve the crisis of transit in sprawled cities. Joe presented a proposal for perpetual express train to address the sprawl city of Los Angeles, which he and his colleagues designed. An interesting feature of this design was allowing the passengers would be able to transfer between trains via while trains are in motion, eliminating the need to transfer at the station. This idea, if implemented will divided the city of L.A into well connected pedestrian friendly neighbourhoods of 10 min radius each having a stop for perpetual express train system.

Click here for Photos of the forum

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Socio-spatial Exclusion in Urban Spaces: Mumbai City

October 10th, 2009

photo credit: 陈霆 MUMBAI CITY

The urban landscape of Mumbai is changing at a rate faster than what most of us would have thought impossible to achieve a decade earlier. The speed of this change makes it sometimes hard for us to comprehend the extent of lasting impact we are creating on this megacity’s urban landscape. We hope to make the commute shorter for the hard working Mumbaites, we hope to provide businesses with presentable spaces to compete for the attention of city’s flourishing middle class, and we hope to turn Mumbai into a world’s premier city in impact and appearance. However, in doing so, we are also changing the social fabric of the city, sometimes unintentionally. We will explore two very pressing issues that the designer’s in Mumbai are facing today, social exclusion and spatial practises which are harbouring social exclusion in the city.

The concept of socio-social exclusion is a very ambiguous term. Sociologists around the world find it challenging to give it a clear interpretation due to varying social, cultural and political contexts in cities. In India where the Urban Designers/Architects are constantly designing for different cultural, religious and racial groups; social exclusion becomes an even more important issue to consider in order to ensure that we design integrated environments.

So what is socio-spatial exclusion? It is exclusion of group of residents on biases of race, religion, income or regional origin, from access to everything that the city space has to offer.

Every society functions on a fine balance between the inclusionary and exclusionary socio – spatial processes defined by people responsible for the smooth running of the society. In most of the organized world this responsible body is generally the local or national government. For example, most airports around the world have areas accessible only to passengers and staff. This is an example of necessary exclusion intended to control crimes and terrorist activities. Another example of spatial exclusion is one which many of us have experienced at some point of our life. So many times we find ourselves hesitant in entering an expensive looking shopping centre when we had no resources to participate in the activities hosted there, even though there might be no physical barriers to stop us from entering. All these subtle and sometimes not so subtle cues which restrict access to our surroundings make people feel alien, unwelcome or excluded from our social space: Mumbai city.

One of the unique features of Mumbai is its ability to provide attractive options for people from all socio-economic background. This socio-economic diversity is not only “nice” from an idealistic perspective, but it is also vital for sustenance of a well functioning society. So what happens when the 50 percent population of your city belongs to lower middle class or economically weaker section and feels hesitant to access its new infrastructure like high security shopping malls, gated buildings and parks? This is when the balance of the inclusionary and exclusionary processes of the social fabric in a city is disturbed by its regulated spatial practises.

The billions of rupees of investment in the city’s infrastructure is manifesting itself in the form of shopping malls, gated commercial /residential buildings , gated parks, sea links and even in the iconic statue of Shivaji. Many of these urban spaces in Mumbai are controlled by exclusionary devices like security checks, entrance fees, and high tolls. These kinds of devices are direct result of the urge of the private sector i.e developers and investors to protect their commodity – the urban land. They are not wrong in doing so but these kinds of restrictions have a direct relationship with a general sense of freedom and well being of a people with the choices open for them in their spatial practices. On the other hand if we have a wide range of social options, we would have a wide range of places to go to, places for living, working and entertainment.

As designers, we need to break the trap of socio-spatial exclusion and need to redefine the public private relationship of spaces. It is urgent to institute more inclusionary processes while developing new plans for Mumbai. Professor of Urban design Ali Madanipour in his book ‘Social Exclusion in European cities: Processes, Experiences and Responses’ suggests two approaches for socio – spatial inclusion. The first approach is to ‘decommodify spaces, so that private real estate market plays a less decisive role in spatial planning. This, in my opinion, is a difficult target for Mumbai to achieve considering that the major financial backing for Mumbai redevelopment comes from the private real estate developer-investors. The other approach is ‘deliberate city planning to despatialize social exclusion by building inclusionary housing units for low or moderate income households in neighbourhoods they could otherwise could not afford”. I consider this to be a more feasible solution.. The urban designers/ architects/ developers and government’s SPV’s need to think about coming with subsidised housing options in communities which otherwise would have been developed only for elite or rich citizens of Mumbai.

New design alternatives of city planning need to be developed to cater to and accommodate the entire city and relinquish the century old compartmental approach of designing. The prevailing tendency in town planning and design is to regulate and rationalise spaces by imposing order. It often ends up creating enclaves for the rich and ghettos for the poor. Space planners need to be conscious of this tendency and create new design solutions by rethinking spatial barriers and creating more accessible spaces in planning. This approach will hopefully contribute to promoting social integration and Mumbai will evolve into a more socially sustainable city.