Showing posts with label Best Book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best Book. Show all posts
Aug 19, 2014
A lesson from a drifting feather!
So, while he was walking slowly, lost in casual thoughts suddenly a floating white feather caught his attention, it was tiny but was in its full glory and was slowly drifting in light breeze towards a nearby fountain in a gravity defying act. Anyway it gracefully landed on the clear sheet of overflowing water and suddely its motion was seized but only for a moment, it was like feather finally found its ground only to realise it was a slipping, drifting ground again. It appeared that this otherwise serious flowing water sheet was happy to receive that feather friend. Though in a fraction of second that feather was mobile again with the flow of water, only to reach its next destination. Possibly "keep drifting effortlessly" was mantra by which feather was living, it was full of life in its lifelessness, and possibly it touched the conscience somewere leaving a life lesson - a lesson of effortlessness even in its full dignity, even in its constant motion!
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Oct 22, 2013
Check out new Blog Page dedicated to World Education
Educ@ti.ON - Rethinking Education for a "lightened up world"!!
Click on image to go to page-
Visit Page at following Link: http://planningurbanoregional.blogspot.in/p/eduction.html
More Coming....
Sep 28, 2013
15 things I learned in 10 minutes about photography - Flipping through a reputed travel guide book
Amazing revelations about
Photography-
1) It’s not just about Iconic structures or monuments it’s about capturing their interaction with the people
2) If you are capturing a lively street,
capturing an element of motion is a must (people, car etc.)
3) When capturing sculptures or carved
details in the open sun, wait for the right time of the day for the perfect shadow
which accentuates the dimension and details of subject
4) Capture the clouds in the background
(particularly at dusk ) and half the job is done
5) Capture water fountain in the foreground and half the
job is done
6) Capture someone capturing others (seems
a cheap trick though)
7) If you capture street dining you must
capture some element of service - something being served or by someone who is
serving the thing
8) If capturing museum or exhibition
you must capture the chemistry between the exhibit and spectator, capture someone
quite still and who is trying to understand and appreciate the meaning of exhibit
9) Capturing the public spaces,
capture the people and their behavior at the very intersection of daylight and shadows (it naturally
captures the human dilemma of judgment whether to go out in open sun on stay in
the shadow)
10) When capturing motion you must have
something static for reference, but for best results “that static one” has to
be the one of the vary things which are moving (people, car etc.)
11) Capture a glass building at dusk at the very
moment when it gets illuminated in the evening while it is partially illuminated
from outside as well from setting sun
12) There is at least one definite
location from where the famous sculpture or display (or structure) looks
perfect (and usually it’s the most abused one as well, since whole world seems to
capture the shot from the same point)
13) When taking a shot of any high end
restaurant dining scene, don’t just
capture the food and luxury, and candlelight, you need to capture the people
having supper, with their interactions
and their exaggerated animated expressions
14) When in vegetable market capturing a vendor
interacting with customer, a price list smudged with chalk or otherwise in the
backdrop is must.
15) Shop display window + scripted shop name
typo + passer by = classic shot without fail
Another
series of interesting observations will be part of upcoming posts, Join me on twitter @urbanoregional for updates. Your view and experiences are most
welcome.
You
might also like following post :
Aug 30, 2013
Let me show you the true artist in you!
No art is as inclusive as fine arts or call it whatever.
It seems every single person is born with artistic talent specifically more pronounce and visible in the field of fine arts, abstract art or call it whatever, an artist even in you, whether you consider yourself an artist or not that is irrelevant, proof is your childhood notebook filled with weird characters drawn by you and spoiled pages of your dad's diary and all the tattoo that you made on your hand, graffiti on your school desk and crayon spoiled walls of your house where you spent your childhood days and that creative surge when you were staring at the damp basement or loo walls trying to infer some meaning out of those grunge damp patterns, or even today if you occasionally tend to draw a smiley face on moist, dew clad surface and so on. Every adult was an artist in his or her childhood so they are today, so are you.
Every child with his or her genuine creativity, making and living their own dreams in their sketchbook or on wall, vivid and real in their own imagination, a spell-bounding piece of rawness with bit of influence from surrounding, and we are not talking about all the art and craft assignments forced by educational curriculum and competition, those are plastic, manipulated, and imposed, threatening and robbing the very creative rawness of child. We are not talking about biased aesthetic judgement here. We are talking here for example the child's own interpretation of how round a sun should be or how round his dexterity allows him to draw it, not the Vinchi style geometric perfectness of circle which we tend to impose on them. Since art being essentially a true expression of self does not necessarily demands shape of circle to be a perfect circle so it really doesn't matter how well you used to draw a circle to qualify as an artist in your childhood, and since art is beyond the clutch of time so if you draw the similar weird circle today when you are grown up it is still an art and so you are an artist. Another reason is that if making a perfect circle is a qualification criteria for an artist than our computer or tab can do that job better than our master artist.
So acknowledging the truth of your own childhood talent now you can appreciate the works of kids around better. Not judging them on their perfectness but admiring them for their innocence. You see these kids will grow up one day and change the very definition of understanding of what an art should be. After all its art if you can prove it.
You might also like to read this post on "design diplomacy"
You might also like to read this post on "design diplomacy"
Jul 26, 2013
Interdisciplinary Exploration & Randomness - key to the next big wave of knowledge
It's
this notion of specialized segmented knowledge which is hindering the next big
phenomenon of world knowledge!
You
often see people walking with an air of expertise in certain field of knowledge,
they are experts of course no doubt, but the moment you talk about some fairly distant
subject, they will say oh that's wonderful but you know that’s not my area of
expertise or interest. That’s how we are, stubborn, rigid, and insensitive
toward new knowledge, that’s how we have been taught, trained to become a
doctor or an engineer or scientist or another specialist soul. A much propagated
outcome of intellectual segmentation through insensitive education, teaching
designed to produce another of many cogs in the wheel i.e. teaching only to the
extent which will suffice a day job requirement and a reasonable income. Though
they have various subjects incorporated in the curriculum they are still
missing a vital point which we are going to see.
They
say Look Mr. "A" you are a doctor, you are not supposed to get into
social science, Listen Mr. “B” you are an engineer, you are not supposed to
trespass into the field of philosophy, Hey Mr. “C” you are not a physicist so
mind your own business of architecture and You Ms. “D for dancer” microbiology
is not going to fetch you bread and butter so you better concentrate on
different dance forms which we have already listed in Wikipedia. That the
languages we understand and appreciate today, this vary language which is
hindering the next wave of knowledge! A next wave of knowledge is long due for
mankind which is something beyond currently much popular data-mining, analytics
and big-data.
Let’s
see a glimpse of what this next mutation of knowledge might look like, Mr.
Doctor “A” getting into social science finding out that size of family has
something to do with survival rate of patient. Mr. Engineer “B” has this sudden
realization while trespassing into the area of philosophy that people need
products which touches their soul and fulfill their spiritual needs not
something which just touches heart and fulfills their materialistic hunger, the
Architect Mr. “C” delving into physics and mathematics realizes that his
flowery concepts of design aesthetics can have more scientific and lucid explanation
and meaning through quantum physics and topology. Ms. Dancer is
enlightened to see the colorful oscillating Nano world through the eyes of
microscope and now trying to mimic the oscillating dynamism and moves of cells
and microbes and so on!
Contemporary
education system is missing out this very basic purpose of learning, their
focus is to let the kids memorize the books so that they have a basic knowledge
of different field, so that he or she can choose one of his or her subject of
interest later on and succeed in their life in the chosen direction. But
learning process has to be driven by Curiosity and Absorption rather than Memorizing
facts.
Teaching
everything or not at early stage of life is irrelevant, what is important here
is to plant this seed of curiosity in each child so that they keep exploring
and dare to go beyond their chosen comfort subject exploring vast possibilities
in later part of life when their education is over, learning when they are
grown up in the most productive and receptive period of life, when they are
capable to explore, absorb and learn at an unprecedented speed.
Feb 10, 2013
Nov 16, 2012
Urban Underprivileged segment-what can we do for them?
While you are driving down
the busy city lanes sometime of the year someday, from there to somewhere, busy
negotiating ruthless traffic, busy minding the gap, minding your own business,
busy processing next to-do-list on your mental map, driving with occasional
subconscious glimpse of buzzing city with all that glam and beauty and buzz and
noise and colors; glimpse of the city with constant familiar flux; suddenly on
the footpath, on the next turn, on the traffic junction or on the dim corner of
street you spot a poor deprived child, a beggar in patchwork cloth, an old
discarded person or a doped fainted soul, often pretentiously indifferent but
sometime being concerned it comes to your mind, what can you do for them? Why
they are in that state? What opportunities they lacked? What is their future? What
is the way out for them? Is there
someone listening to them? Apparently it’s not their first choices to be there
in that unpleasant state!
No matter how rich, how
well off, how busy you are in your own life you must have come across such
instance and have thought at least for once that what can you do for them? There
might be policies, might be schemes for their revival but they might not be
aware of such things, there might be some poster of welfare scheme to rescue
them from that situation posted right at the display board of that bus stop but
may be they don’t know how to read, no one told them either, may be they are
educated but they lack a caring hand to push them towards a better life, may be
the sheer number of them making it difficult for city administrations to deal
with them, may the same sheer number of them calls for restructuring of public
welfare policies and re-engineering the implementation strategies.
Something somewhere
lacking, some lessons to be learned, some immediate rescue actions need to be
taken, with a sincere note of hope we need to initiate a discussion on variety
of such issues on variety of platforms to come up with some concrete and
realistic alternative livelihood solutions. Something which will give them a
respectful livelihood and a dignified life! One still feels that it’s more of
policy level issue than the monetary one. Policies like customized education,
mandatory skill development, upfront plans for aging city population, teaching
survival tricks and strategies right from the elementary education up to the
higher education ladder and even to the uneducated population, survival from
financial breakdown, survival from natural calamity, surviving from personal,
professional, physical and medical emergencies, surviving poverty and old age in
a dignified manner of course with institutional support, citizen participation
and motivation!
We need to make every citizen
skilled and able enough to earn their own livelihood even if they already have
livelihood resources at disposal, even if they have family and people to take
care of at present, at least as a backup livelihood plan so that they don’t end
up being abandoned and begging in streets in case of major setbacks, so that at
least there offspring don’t spend whole of their life on street relying on
other’s mercy. Simply educating 100% of population is not the ultimate solution
for urban poverty for that matter poverty of any kind, even formal education will
have to be skill oriented from the very beginning; we can keep narrating
encyclopedia to them later! Just an argument though, an 8 to 12 year child who
has some livelihood skill up his sleeves can survive even flourish in his life
picking up right opportunities, if hypothetically he has no other options left,
but it might be very difficult for many of children of same age group to deal
with such situations with generalized Not-so-skill-oriented mass education which
is being transferred to them at school at present. Education system need to
include more and more of technical and creative skill and hobby oriented course
structure from the very beginning, one can even think of tailor-made customized
education for every single student identifying there talent and inclination
early in life. Even if they don’t have to use those skills they can peruse them
as their hobby or alternative income source in course of time, and we’ll have a
pool of incredibly talented, confident, morally and financially elevated citizens.
Aug 30, 2012
Sometimes you appreciate unintentional grunge architectural experience!
Even architects refrain to talk about the darker intuitive side of architectural experience.
At times you feel so tiered of popular architecture, popular formula of architecture, formula of what should be and what not and all the glorification and stubbornness around what is popular, those are kind of beautiful, but they are every were, architectural orders, theories so much overvalued so abundantly repeated, interiors so much commercialized so much in order, so much restricted, so much formalized, you are left with no choice but to live in an environment which appeal to neighbors, your housing society and society at large, even You don’t know what you really want to experience. Spoon-fed architectural experience of what is good and what is bad being taught to architects as well as future prospective clients in the school. They are taught to create wonderful architecture but no one encourages them to create wonderful personalized architectural experience no matter even if its eccentric on conventional benchmark, experience of space which you can’t really create with the popular architectural tools, styles, mass education, thumb-rules available and being used widespread today. For example if you have already decided that a particular room, should have a particular lux level of lighting, particular illumination level, uniformly distributed across the room with slight variation here and there as prescribed in the architectural bible or bylaws or general practice or as limited by the market availability and client’s choice of fixture, you can’t create an architectural experience which is thrilling, mysterious, inquisitive and even hauntingly sticky at times even for a moment, which are human psychological needs and part of their personality to experience such environment, at least just for sake of fun. No wonder at times you cherish that moment of darkness in the rainy damp evening or moonlit night when suddenly there is power cut for a brief period, because you have just experienced the dimly lit darker side of architecture which was never intended for you to experience in its original form, but only you know that how much it means to you to experience that very silence of spatial darkness, that mysterious view of dusk from the dark corner of your room, that stillness of ambiance and lack of bright LED light, that passionate experience in the beautiful and diluting sphere of space and light created by that single candle lit on the dining table, that momentarily grey sheds of otherwise bright and warm colors of interior walls. We are talking about darker side of architectural experience which induces a momentarily feeling of introspection to the occupant through its very silence, stillness darkness and grunginess, many writers, directors, photographers, architects, and artists will be able to relate to such experience. Grunge architectural experience which in thought provoking and inspires you at times and which is innate human psychological need somewhere buried in the subconscious under the monumental load of popular architectural experience!
By: Anoop Jha
Jul 6, 2012
So that you never run out of development ideas again!
Wonderful list of vision script for urban development,
Reshaping city, Re-harmonizing urban clusters, Recasting city silhouette, Re-energizing spirit of city, Re-establishing magnificence of old city, Revisiting the glorious past, Re-engaging population, Re-engineering city infrastructure, Reconnect to past, Rethinking city, Repositioning city, Recreating history, Reinventing urban mobility, Reorganizing urban growth, Rebuilding city aspirations, Reintroducing urban techniques, Redeveloping business hubs of city, Rerouting transit veins of city, Re-knitting city fabric, Reuniting city fragments for better functioning, Urban rezoning for optimization, Reintegrating smart urban technology, Redesigning mobility grid, Re-envisioning historic city, Re-proposing mobility, Reimagining urban future, Redefining boundaries of urban innovation, Repurpose city finance, Reorienting city growth direction, Rebuilding city governance structure, Re-linking destinations, Rearranging development priorities, Realigning development objectives, Reprioritizing urban development avenues, Restructuring functional hierarchy of city, Re-exciting life in urban public spaces
Have created a list of possible vision statements in snippet form for your quick reference, just to keep your creative thinking wheel running.
Jun 21, 2012
It's been done this way since ages doesn’t make it the right way today!!
Rethinking academic research methodology.
So, you are up to research, thesis, dissertation or something, great!! Let’s consider few things before we move ahead, considering few establish academic research norms, said or unsaid, which you might like to question, which you might like to challenge, but you won't, may be you can’t, because someone else is running the show.
Let’s understand the anatomy and objective of research and what should be the scope of any academic research for purposes, like thesis, PhD and so on and let’s see if there is any loophole in the well established century old research methodology and why it’s high time that research methodology has to reinvent itself.
What usually happens is that you choose a topic of your expertise and interest, narrow or wide and a mentor or guide as well either to guide you throughout or just because its mandatory to have one as per university norms, whether its architecture, planning or sociology or something else, it’s all the same. Then you start collecting supporting evidence and snippets of information first to validate the selection of research subject and then to back your conclusion.
If you delve deeper you will realise that any chosen research subject or topic no matter how wide or narrow it is, has a very wide possible scope for exploration which we unjustifiably narrow down due to many reasons. You can have all the freedom to narrow down the subject or research topic itself which you choose but how can you narrow down and limit the research domain yourself and how can you decide in the beginning of research that which external influences to choose which might affects the subject, just because scope of research seems unfathomable to you for that particular subject or topic, just because someone told you to do so, just because your curriculum allows you the freedom to do so. If you are limiting your research to the review of few books on the subject, selected by your guide who can have his or her own biased inclination towards those particular books or those authors, if you limit your research only to some good books which are remaining in your library after best books of the lot which has already been lifted by the academicians and professors long ago, if you limit yourself to handful of primary sample survey which has its own grave issues and which is bound to give inaccurate picture, and if you limit yourself for any other similar innumerable reasons, you are doing a big injustice to the research subject.
The issue with age old academic research methodology in context of today is that there always has been a strong stress on authenticity and completeness of content, fixed research structure, rigidity of data structuring, stress on literature and book reviews and first hand data gathering, there always has been submission to the authority of few established individuals in the field and imposition of idiosyncrasy and idealism of mentor or guide, ignoring the massive and continuous stream of relevant information which is available today and which is already growing and going to grow exponentially in the future. In the inertia of age old established research methodologies we are knowingly or unknowingly ignoring the possibilities that today’s technology provides us in conducting our research. Ignoring the technology of data mining and data exploration which they are already using ruthlessly in business and corporate domain is almost absolutely missing in academic research.
Two fundamental truth which majority of academicians today would be highly hesitant to be confronted with, is first that "Billions of half-baked data is much more reliable and contextual than handful of authentic publications when it comes to research and establishing a fact, excluding field of science and mathematics" and second that "Skewed focus towards book reviews and published literature for research purposes tend to glamorizes second hand work and dampen free and creative thinking spirit". There is nothing new and creative in quoting some author on some instance or subject, nothing new in putting someone else's inferences and analogies in your own words in your academic research report. When there is too much focus on structure and format (Thesis, synthesis, analogy, reference, bibliography and all) content starts losing its significance. This prominent conventional research methodology only leads to half baked conclusion at the end of your research span, because of just few numbers of cases studied and fewer perspectives of authors analysed.
Main constraint here is time and it’s up to you how you manage to get optimum exposure in that short span of time to arrive at valid inferences. More intense the exposure more authentic would be the conclusion or outcome. You are given a limited time to conduct and conclude your academic research whether thesis, dissertation or PhD. You cannot stretch it infinitely. now you zoom in and pick up few published literature on the subject for your research reading pages, first to last, how many of these books with "authentic" information you would be able to read in that assigned research span of few months or years, five, ten, twenty or fifty? That’s it? Come end of the research span and you are aware of point of view of five or fifty different authors, thinking you have known enough, thinking it’s time to conclude. No matter how very authentic information you have at the end to conclude your research, these are just point of views of handful of published authors out of millions equally talented or more or less out there in the world working, thinking, deliberating on the same subject, who never got the time, inclination, money or right publisher to get their work and thoughts published but who are constantly writing on forums, blogs, constantly tweeting and sharing and so on, may be you also missed out the brilliant thoughts on the subject because it didn’t reach your library shelf, because your guide didn’t recommended it to you, may be you didn’t have enough money to buy that book or eBook or may be because it couldn’t get the attention of the masses due to competition with shear number of literature on the same subject.
It’s high time that students and researchers need to be encouraged to look for unconventional, previously unexplored and untapped streams of data for mainstream academic research by their colleges, universities and most importantly from their mentors and guides in their dissertation and PhD, sources like massive free and dynamic data from online environment of blogs, discussion forums, audio-visual data from established or amateur masses, tiny bits of information which individually doesn’t make any sense but which collectively presents fairly recognisable, logical and surprising patterns, and it’s high time that such research methodologies should get mainstream recognition. It’s time that they should shift their fixated attention from literature reviews to data source explorations and analysis, broadening the domain of literature itself.
You see, it would be much more exciting, authentic and wholesome an experience to explore from the dynamic, widespread and crude "sea of knowledge" rather than exploring from few well-maintained but stagnate "resource lakes".
BY- Anoop Jha
May 14, 2012
“Sun Sign architecture” - Going beyond Vastu and Feng Shui
Where architecture and astrology comes together!!
Is it possible to provide tailor-made architecture for individuals? Each member of a family has a particular trait, temperament, preferences and choices, when it comes to architecture and interior design some have strict preferences, some have vague idea of what they are looking for, some doesn’t even know what they want, so when an architect asks client about their aspirations, design, functionality and aesthetic choices for their new dream home, client’s responses are either based on recent impression of their architectural quest through architecture and design magazines, neighborhood villas, exploration during travel etc., while integrating little bit of their own needs with a cap of tentative budget.
Now an architect has few choices to make. One is to give client exactly what client want and keep them satisfied in terms of their design aspirations- client is happy, you get your money, job done! Another choice is to take this project as an opportunity to fulfill your own long awaited dream as an architect- you have got a wealthy client willing to invest, you got an architectural playfield to release your creative juices, go ahead and make some masterpiece, you can always justify your work through some convincing design theory or philosophy. Third choice which is apparently more transparent and holistic in nature is to delve deep into the client’s mind and personality and dig out their dormant design aspirations and help them express their feelings. How can we do that? Clients might be shy, might be dominant, might be receptive, might be stubborn, no matter what, it’s the job of architect to thoroughly understand the client’s need while deliberating possible alternatives and provide them the best tailor-made solution possible. A sensible architect strikes a balance between his or her own architectural inclination and client’s precise needs.
A basic understanding of astrological elements like sun signs, its characteristics, traits and corresponding effects on the individual’s personality, nature and behavior, aspirations, moods, aesthetic demands in terms of preferred colors, materials, etc. belonging to a particular suns sign, might help a lot to understand the clients unexpressed needs. Most of us will accept that knowingly or unknowingly we tend to choose a particular design element type and objects over another, we also tend to appreciate a particular surrounding ambiance type over another, so knowing the sun sign of client and considering their physical, psychological and aesthetic effects and traits on client’s choices while designing might give an extra edge to final architectural product including interior design. Imagine designing a unique house for a family with a unique blend of colors, material, warmth spaces etc. chosen based on their individual sun sign, amalgamating into each other catering to unspoken traits and temperament of inhabitants.
Architects and interior designers might understand the significance of basic astrology in architecture (and we are Not talking about Vastu and all here) but they won’t prefer to use it for the benefit of client, because no one asked them to do this, neither it was part of their education nor its part of their scope of work, while it adds a little challenge and thrill to their work demanding extra time which they don’t seem to have. Given a second thought you might find it a good idea and a valid reason to incorporate a little bit of sun-sign in every architecture which is private in nature, tailor-made to individuals.
By- Anoop Jha
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