public spaces Archive

Public: The Forgotten Realm

Posted on July 11, 2010 | 82 Comments
A clubhouses, large swimming pools, wading pools, health spas with large exercise studios, jacuzzis, steam, sauna and Turkish baths, table tennis, and billiards are the typical amenities that future residents will enjoy in thousands of new apartment units that were featured at a recent real...
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What makes a good city?

Posted on April 11, 2010 | 33 Comments
A prerequisite of a good city is mixed use neighborhoods, density and walkable streets. Let’s take examples. London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo are great cities for this sole reason. These cities have residential, offices, retail, hospitality all adjacent to each other and buildings are built with negligible or zero car parks. A $ 12 million apartment in New York facing Central Park where Jack Welch and David Esner have apartments has zero car parks. On the other hand Los Angeles or Phoenix is designed for the automobile with a horizontal spread. It is called the dollar a gallon gasoline architecture or as we would say Rs. 10 per litre architecture.
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Life Between Buildings

Posted on February 12, 2010 | 52 Comments
Architects begin with programs for building. The program is measurable, quantifiable, a finite entity (something that accountants love). But life is about aspirations, hope, joy and expression. All things immeasurable, non quantifiable but connected to our feelings. Ultimately we are what we are by how we feel. Seemingly impossible tasks can be achieved if we feel that we can achieve them. Can building programs, can buildings reveal the richness of life? Is it the building or is it the space it contains or is it the experience of form, space and light which elicits responses deep within us? How does one synthesise the measurable and the immeasurable
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Reclaiming Land for Public Spaces!

Posted on November 29, 2009 | 110 Comments
The idea of reclamation has been an area of debate for a long time. The judiciary’s verdict in the 1990’s against reclamation in Mumbai has turned into a kind of a bible. There is no question about the fact that reclamation hurts environment and doesn’t offer the same kind of ecological functionality as a natural forest. But so does urbanization – Today’s urban world contributes to environmental degradation in one-way or another. Therefore, it is important for us to develop in a more structured and organized manner so as to mitigate the negative effects of progress.
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