“Smell Architecture”!! We have to accept non-tangible design elements as part of architecture and Urban Design!!

Walking down the buzzing food streets of the world is a thrilling experience for most of us, it’s a play field of light and shadow, sound and noise, colors, textures and smell. Smell of street, smell of variety of foods being baked, grilled, processed, and served with love from generations, aroma of spices in the air, that raw fragrances of freshly chopped vegetables, occasional breeze with hint of what is being cooked inside, looking at the faces of crowd apparently engulfed and hypnotized by the tempting aroma of food, all this combined together with the built architecture of street gives an experience which is complete and memorable.



Now take a few steps back and rewind the tour without “Smell” part of the whole experience, and you will realize how important these intangible elements like smell, sound etc. play in making architecture and urban design a complete experience.  Though Light is also an intangible element but it has been given an undue advantage in architecture since centuries, contrary  to its counterparts like smell,sound etc. Unfortunately they don’t teach this in architecture and planning school as well, probably they themselves have unable to understand the significance of such non-tangible elements of architecture. Unfortunately there focus has remained on mass-producing architects, designers and technical hands through proven formulas and they have confined themselves in the predefined boundaries of architecture like, form,  function, space, texture, colors, at most interplay of light and shadow. What about smell, noise, feelings and state of mind of users, experiencing and validating the existence of the architecture and urban design in the first place?

It’s not a hypothetical assumption but a fact that you can’t create a good architecture without a great user experience which involves variety of non-tangible elements, those elements which can’t be quantified in form of project specification items into a spreadsheet.  It’s high time that architects and urban designers should shift focus towards the ambient environment and users experience since they have already mastered the art of form and space through accumulative knowledge of centuries. It’s time to move on.

By - Anoop Jha

Walking down the memory lane of city

Walking down the memory lane, may be way different an experience now than actually walking down the old neighborhood lane you used to live decades back, while you were studying in that town, while you were on a social visit to your aunts place or on a vacation to that place, or the narrow street you use to travel to and fro from the school in childhood days.



City changes its form, experience; attitude like a person changes his appearance, philosophy and approach In course of time. Impression and impact of time can be seen on the city as we see in the human life. City reinvents itself and reflects contemporary life. Comparing present and past impression and memories of city is an emotional affair. Hence extra care needs to be taken in revitalizing and redeveloping cities because millions of memories and hopes are attached to these. 

Fallacy of Neighborhood Planning

By- Anoop Jha

Isn’t it that urban planners, landscape architects and urban designers have heard “neighborhood planning” and stuffs like that so many times, so many literature and theories revolving around these concepts are floating  everywhere from college library to, store bookshelves, to free internet, to paid ebook, that one feels little repulsive about these concepts. These concepts and theories are quoted in every urban design, landscape and planning lecture and workshop, seminar, government development and area planning proposal and have been repeated so many times, so many standard templates for neighborhood street sections, hardscape details, footpath design, street furniture etc. are available that it no more sounds exciting that someone is planning or designing neighborhood.

It all began few decades ago when people started getting aware of their surrounding environment , became conscious of their rights of healthy urban living and better neighborhood as a citizen, then planners and designers came forward with a better neighborhood concepts, which has been explored for decades now. They need to come out of this hangover or inertia of decades old new urbanism, it’s time for a new refreshing burst of creativity, radically refreshing approach to define emerging livable cities, not just taking individual pockets of city which we call neighborhood and planning and designing them up to the side curb detail but it’s time to perceive a city in totality and not just dealing with individual pockets.

Its time of revolutionary urban thinking which is made possible due to emerging near impossible technologies, amazing breakthroughs either already achieved or likely to happen very soon, Its time when definition of work, living , Landuse,  commuting, communication all are merging together  with boundaries fading, in this dawn of new era how relevant are the decades old planning theories and design philosophies? It’s time to Pause, think and provide a new solution for future urbanism. 

New Urbanism is quite old

By- Anoop Jha

New Urbanism is the phenomenon of urban awareness and urban restructuring in the 1980s, originated in US and further replicated throughout the world. It was primarily based on holistic concepts of urbanism like Walkable neighborhoods, Landuse restructuring etc. etc.

It’s high time that architects, planners and urban designers should pause for a moment and question themselves that whatever work they are doing since quite some time, is it something new or is it just inertia of decades old “New Urbanism”? Is it “New Urbanism” which current urban era  demands or something else, something new, relevant and refreshing? Isn’t it that New urbanism is quite old a theory now, might be relevant only in few pockets of worlds? 

Urban Planning and Design has to reinvent itself from time to time. This whole idea of time span and speculating direction of urban growth is vague and misleading.  We should be little skeptical about guiding our future urban development plans based on quarter century old theories. 

Why city forms are like the way they are?

By - Anoop Jha

Inspecting reasons of changing development patterns from core city to contemporary development.

Morphological Differences in old & new development

While issue of changing city morphology across time is being discussed its imperative to ask what difference does a time span induces which alters the physiology and psychology of urban development?

After analyzing several old and new city developments patterns, some catalysts which emerge as possible reasons of change since Old Town to New City Era can be as follows - 

Rise of Multi-nuclei development

Multiple developer entities

Multiple governing agencies

Rapid mass housing requirement

Stringent Fire Norms

Increased Building Height

New construction materials & technologies

Changed mode of private & public transportation

Landuse classification restructuring


[Handpicked Books]

Utility distribution requirement

Landscape requirements and norms

New active climate control tools for buildings

Easy exposure to international benchmarks

Increased requirements of privacy

Changed Living style and  social interaction  pattern

New trend of concept based development

Targeted development to please stakeholders

Feeling pressed against time for getting products or services of daily use?

By – Anoop Jha

You need a better landuse plan and new typology of neighborhood hubs

Specialized service and commercial hubs have advantage in case of volume trade and optimized choices with better shopping and services experience due to many options available to choose from while mixed Landuse development has advantage of convenience shopping and saved time.  Taking time off to visit a specialized market hub to get a small product or service of daily use which you cannot get in neighborhood shop due to its little specialized nature might be stressful for many, due to lack of time in busy city life.

There are two distinct categories of people in city one who will go anywhere and to any extent to save a single penny on any product or service, these are the people apart from wholesale marketers who go to specialized hubs so that they can negotiate on product or service pricing due to available market competition in such hubs, other kind of people are those who are ready to pay any amount in lieu of convenience and due to shear lack of time and motivation as long as price is in the acceptable limit and surprisingly it has nothing to do with laziness, it’s just because they don’t have enough time from their packed daily routine, it’s simply not worth sending time to go to some specialized market like electronic or electrical market or hub of mechanical goods or big car service hub located far away from your home just to buy a new exhaust fan for your kitchen or a new tap knob, or to get a minor repair work of your car’s fm radio set done.


[Handpicked Books]

The number of second type of people who value convenience over pricing in City is exponentially growing. There is an urgent need to consider requirements of this segment of people in Landuse planning; it has become necessity of time. They need to create small integrated specialized product and service hubs in neighborhood where one can go and buy variety of products and services in one place, products and services which are little specialized in nature and which you don’t generally get in neighborhood shopping centre or mall. An electrician or plumber provided to you by resident welfare association (RWA) of your society is of no good unless you have required basic electrical or plumbing products at hand which need  to be replaced.

How about creating a small “integrated specialized product and service hub” in every neighborhood of city which keeps all the basic household and daily use items similar to convenient shopping and those items which are specialized in nature like medicine and first aid materials, emergency products and tools, electrical and mechanical goods, and in term of manpower it can comprise of at least one doctor, one counselor, one security personal, one pet care specialist, one electrician, one plumber, one car and bike mechanic etc. etc.