The courtyard marketplace – Old wine in a new bottle

And finally the outdoor mall arrives in a country with a long tradition of open air markets. And it had wait for Charles Correa and Ambujas to work together. A well written article by Himanshu Burte in livemint expounds the merits of Correa’s foray in creating a decent quasi-public domain for upwardly mobile Indian middle [...]

Courting the Median

I’ll leave you with images of pedestrian uses in two radically different pedestrian realm within a streetscape. One driven by desperation and other a conscious work of street design. The first one is of 11th Avenue in Ashok Nagar, Chennai and the other from the boulevard adjacent to Bibotheque Francois Mitterand in Paris. [...]

Green Washing the Glass Guzzler

The news piece in Architectural Record will make you roll your eyes looking at the title ” Chennai Airport to become India’s Greenest”…yet again. .’Green Washing’ the energy guzzler in a glass box. Not sure what these guys from Frederic Schwartz Architects, Hargreaves Associates, Gensler are smoking when talking about ‘lush’ 2-acre gardens [...]

HITEC City & Fortress Urbanism

I would rather call it HITEC Enclave. HITEC City – Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy City is located in Madapur suburb of Hyderabad, is one of the prototypical low points of Tech-Park urbanism, which is nothing but a cluster of giant footplate, gated, air-conditioned building complexes hermetically sealed and ceremonially cordoned off from rest of [...]