There is no shortcut to Good Architecture or Urban Design

Losing purity of form in contemporary architecture

You must have seen bizarre buildings, distorted mega sculptural elements in public places scattered all over the urban fabric. This entire gimmick in the name of creativity and uniqueness!! It’s like; short term YouTube or social media fame. It may grab attention of public for sometime but such architecture or urban design or public landscape elements are not going to sustain for long.

Though different era of history has witnessed different architectural styles, elements and treatments but fundamentally, beauty of architectural forms have remained timeless and it is timeless indeed. Timeless architectural aesthetics can’t be confined in any time-span or region. Architecture demands a fair representation through lucidity of form with innocence and tenderness of its complex but aesthetic attributes, which is getting lost somewhere in the race of success, uniqueness and technological race. Suddenly so much advancement has taken place in building materials and construction techniques and it appears that architecture has become an experimental ground to execute hidden bizarre instincts of architects who seem to be unable to handle this outburst of Techno-architectural possibilities. 

Art of Urban exploration

By - Anoop Jha,

Then, Now and What Next

Historically cities have provided great inspirations to writers, artists and likeminded people,  reason being, cities have very rich, eventful and intricate interaction patterns when it comes to life experiences and have rich interspatial fabric with dynamic interplay of light and shadow. Different cities at different time periods have lacked at different  fronts and same with the contemporary cities, but ever wondered why, the focus of literature and art has shifted from aesthetics to state of city amenities? Of late people have started approaching the cities very critically, finding loopholes, pointing responsibilities, and so on.



Of course these are necessary for the well being of citizens and development of cities, though understanding the constraints of contemporary cities, but cities still provide ample opportunities and inspirations for enthusiast with artistic inclination like writers, artists, photographers etc. to appreciate and document the beauty and existing state of cities from aesthetic point of view for the generations to come.    

Why we can't & shouldn't get rid of open spaces of city.

Holistic environmental economic view 

Open and Green Spaces have been integral part of the fabric of city historically and served as a democratic interaction place for citizens in the sea of individual private territories of a city. Though green landscape philosophy and clean ambient environment techniques have evolved and spread widely in course of time from open public realm to building interior, to terrace garden, to artificial air purifiers etc. but the material or psychological need of public open spaces in the city can not be replaced by any other present technology or method. So its not only the need of green spaces but the need of pubic space which validates the existence of such open and green spaces throughout the city and this need cannot always be evaluated on monetary terms. Government and municipal bodies  need to find out new innovative fiscal strategies to raise funds to operate and maintain such spaces rather than getting rid of green space for immediate economical benefit. 

Top 50 books of Urban Design

 

More coming....

Note: These Books are randomly chosen from an online digital database and has been arranged / composed randomly as well. These ranking are solely as per general judgment of blog author based on visual graphic appeal of book and title catchwords and these ranking does not represent any ranking in literary,  technical or any other sense.  This is only an effort to provide interested users and book lovers, a collection of relevant books and literature at one consolidated place for their ready reference. Further details of individual books are linked to the images. This note is in addition to the disclaimer section of this blog.