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. 

Blue Infrastructure strategies for Green Infrastructure

Water and related infrastructure collectively plays a vital role in wellbeing of city. Urban quality of a city can be accessed on the attention given to its water resources by the city planners and authority which includes conservation measures, utilization strategies and quality of water resources.  Quality of Water is the scale on which urban health can be measured. Water has its whole spectrum of influence from drinking water to sanitation to micro climate to green cover and varies in scale and operation from pond to river to sea and flood. Conserving and creating and managing blue infrastructure of city is the way towards greener infrastructure  and sustainable future

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. 

Rx Design Capsule !!!

By - Anoop Jha

For  better Product and Project Health

Design Architecture Planning

[Handpicked Books]

Walkability demands flexibility : new approach to neighborhood planning

By - Anoop Jha

Number of available choices defines quality of urban environment and experience

Walking and jogging  trail

Image shows actual walking trail around a lagoon in some part of Santa Barbara, with different route options for people to choose from, one shorter complete loop around waterbody and other longer route which also includes dotted segment. Close view  of lagoon is an incentive to walk extra length of dotted route otherwise people can take shorter route if they are in hurry or tiered. There has be different available exit choices for people, to make any pedestrian or walkable plan successful whether its planning of park or commercial complex or mega exhibition pavilion.

[Handpicked Books]

Tracking morphological changes and development dynamics of a City

By - Anoop Jha

Reinventing landscape in the heart of Delhi – A case of Central Park, Connaught Place

Lively and green Central Park of Connaught Place is situated right in the of heart of Delhi, enveloped by colonial architecture and streets radiating from its centre. Above, it’s a ground for recreation, occasional festivals and celebration and below its transit hub with massive underground network of metro rail system.

Visible changes in Central Park character

This park has gone through several physical changes, adopted new landscape strategies to adjust to the social and infrastructural needs of time, as apparent from the changing views of satellite images captured at different time of last decade. Some of these landscape changes can be due to emergence of underground metro system and in view of recent Common Wealth Game as part of city revitalization projects. Though changes in any city are not mush apparent as experienced in day to day life, but these changes can be easily noticeable if observed for a long span of time.

Study of changing morphology and understanding the built dynamics of any city or part of it can be a very interesting subject as well as very valuable input for planners to project and decide the course of future development of that city. It can also enrich the knowledge of planners and will helps understand the nature, behavior and temperament of city. Fortunately there are many tools and much data is available for the study in this direction and will be available more abundantly in the future. May be its time to review and revise the planning course structures as well in the light of emerging technologies and data inflow which was not the case few years back. 

Missing active layers of master plan

By Anoop Jha

Mapping of Active Layer, a new way of planning Cities

Layers in City Masterplan  

Master planning process through out the recent past has remained somewhat similar across the regions and continents in spite of technological advancement. From the technical point of view (apart from creative side) development of city master plan needs a totally new approach. We need to use the technology, tools, and resources available in a best possible and creative ways. 

There are two sides of Masterplan one is creativity, other is logic. There is always some logic that goes into preparation of masterplan. Masterplan is outcome of logical interpretation of gathered data related to city and region, based on the inferences derived from the analysis of data, hence richer the data-set more sound would be the masterplan. Planners talk about smarter cities but there master-plans look like same old conventional map, most of the city planners do not understand that its high time that master planning process need to change.

Either Planners are unwilling to take a new approach to develop masterplan by exploiting the potential of available technological resources or possibly age old development guidelines are so lenient and flexible that they do not feel the need to do so. 

Its high time that Urban planners should understand the significance of active mapping layers

Apart from usual layers of masterplan like Landuse, Infrastructure, Transport Network, Settlement, Built mass, there are numerous other possible layers which can prove vital for the city planning and which are currently being ignored, Lets call them "Active Layers of Masterplan". Theses layers are dynamic and qualitative in nature in a sense there behavior keeps changing and locations shifting, but after analyzing for certain period of time a recognizable pattern emerges which can be further act as an additional layer and criteria for developing a holistic and realistic masterplan. similarly we can have many more layers and criteria to further articulate the masterplan. These no. of active layers tend to increase as we understand the significance and impact of such criteria on city planning and lives citizens, as well as when we mobilize the resources to collect as much data as possible, no. of layers also tend to increase with the advancement of mapping technology like, GIS, satellite image interpretation, etc. one Very crucial thing to understand related to these layers in totality is that all of these layers can be directly or indirectly related to and influencing each other. thence all the permutation and combination between these layers in terms of impact, should be carefully studied to logically  arrive at a holistic situational analysis and furtehr prepare masterplan. Some of the possible "Active Layers" which can be included in planning process can are as follows - 

MISSING ACTIVE LAYERS OF MASTERPLAN

- City Noise Layer /  Decibel map of city - (for livability assessment, landuse and transport planning) 

- Heat / Temperature mapping (for livability, built mass  orientation and location of city axis and public spaces, plazas)

- Day Shadow land Light Layer (for livability, built mass orientation and location,  public spaces location, walkability)

- Night Light mapping (desirability, safety and security, walkability, nightlife, understanding cold public spots,)

- Tecom and Mobile Signal mapping (accessibility, density flux analysis, concentration and movement pattern of population) 

- Time series density mapping

- Movement and Density pattern in seasonal variation

- Social interaction mapping

- Accessibility mapping,

- Mapping of Public Semi-public and private domain

Pedestrian Vehicular conflict : why can’t we seem to find a solution?

By - Anoop Kumar Jha

Missing Human Behavioral Analysis aspect in Transport Simulation Model

No matter how functional and mathematically sound a transportation plan and related infrastructure design for any city or stretch appear before implementation, there is always a conflict between vehicular and pedestrian circulation which appears only once the transport plan is in place and functional, it’s the story of every city and every stretch. Blogs and forums are filled with discussions and captured photographs of such pedestrian vehicular conflicts.

It’s a conflict between pedestrians desire to take easiest and shortest route and transport planners age old scientific approach planning with modern simulation tools. Its conflict between “human desire” and “scientific approach”.  

In a country like India, apart from education and enforcement there is one missing crucial aspect which leads to pedestrian vehicular conflict in urban setting, that is understanding of human behavior and learning from past and other projects mistakes. It appears that common man collectively always appear smarter than the panel of planners, designers and implementation and enforcement agencies, because no matter how sound they make any system or transport plan people always find out loopholes in it. People are willing to take the dangerous shortcuts, break the law and even risk their life to reach the destination quickly. There is almost similar pattern and language of such human behavior across the cities and towns of India when it comes to intra city travel, but transport planners do not seem to observe and learn from such cases. Its high time that they should observe, document and incorporate human behavioral analysis in the transport simulation model to arrive at a successful transport plan for a city. 

Transport plan, systems and tools also need to be regionalized or localized, because what works in Bogota  or America or Europe might not work in Delhi or Surat or Jaisalmer  if replicated in-toto. 

An unexplored solution for sustainable Urban Planning- Study of traditional rural settlement patterns

By- Anoop Jha

Traditionally rural settlements have a very distinct informal character which is always fresh and delightful which is somehow missing in our contemporary cities no matter how well it is plan. That human aspect and scale that we find in rural settlements is increasingly being lost in the rigidity and functionality of new urban planning.

[Handpicked Books]

Villages and rural communities are there since time immemorial. They have evolved and learned there planning lessons from their own experience. Every Village appears to be uniquely adapted to region, its local micro ecology and culture, it has evolves in a course of time accommodating changing requirements and absorbing the growth.

Study of rural morphology can be a source of inspiration for the Urban Planners. It can throw a light on sustainability principals which can be further replicated in urban setting with required modifications. There is a serious need to understand the logic behind the specific spatial form and variety of existing rural settlements and what makes it more human, and whether we can learn something from these and use it in next generation of urban Planning.

Some of the satellite images taken from different parts of India showing rural morphology-