Rx Design Capsule !!!

By - Anoop Jha

For  better Product and Project Health

Design Architecture Planning

[Handpicked Books]

Breaking the monotony of planning

By - Anoop jha

Interesting twist to parking plan

Parking Grid

Parking lot circulation showing innovative approach of planning grid which serves two purpose

1)It gives a holistic touch to industrial style rigid  parking grid with main organic collector route

2)It puts a desirable physical limitation on speed of car in parking area due to its curvature and alignment

Is Aesthetic Judgment a vague and biased Decision Process?

By - Anoop Jha

Design Aesthetics beyond Time and Formulas

Tangible aesthetic lies in the material beauty of built form, reflected in form of carefully crafted and designed products, carefully sculpted statues, flowing rigidity of architectural pieces with beautifully created three dimensional spaces, wonderful patterns of urban settlements and city grids.

When it comes to appreciating or judging aesthetics of any design form, same work of architecture or piece of art are judged differently by different individual and communities. There are some famous quotes regarding the same –

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder",

Margaret Wolfe Hungerford ('The Duchess'), Molly Bawn, 1878

"Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates          

  them."

David Hume's Essays, Moral and Political, 1742

“Beauty, like supreme dominion

 Is but supported by opinion”

                        Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanack, 1741

Source: phrases.org.uk

It appears that it’s very difficult to appreciate the aesthetical beauty of form and art without being influenced by past experience, reason being human mind immediately tries to simplify and associate any piece of aesthetics with something resembling to past experienced, mind desperately need some scale  and benchmark to compare with. Since every individual and community has their own set of experiences based on conditioning, culture, geographical region, history, livelihood etc. hence they have their own scale and benchmark for judgment. While the object remains the same analysis differ. Surly there are thumb-rules of aesthetic judgment but they also seem to be biased. Beauty and aesthetic is eternal and beyond the grip of time and formulas and should be approached slowly and carefully while being skeptical to our own criteria of judgment.

Perception of space – a function (f) of season

Seasonal variance in Perception of space

Technically there is unlimited space around us. Space in terms of perception is the space surrounding us in our field of view, what we are concerned here is the finite perceivable space by people which might vary as per surrounding built mass, undulating terrain, presence and intensity of light, environmental conditions, seasonal variation, etc. 

when it comes to seasonal variation it can be divided into primarily two parts winter and seasons other than winter. Winter provides a unique opportunity to experience a different kind of environment in terms of perceiving space around us which is because of presence of Fog and Mist, it is an exhilarating experience to walk in fog, or observing surrounding from window in winter during fog, it is so mysterious in its own sense, since the field of view is limited due to thick fog there is an element of surprise, you are curious to know and see what is beyond the visibility of fog, the same landscape that is dry and monotonous in summer is so attractive, versatile, ever-changing and inspirational  that you want to capture the that moment and view frame into your memory. This is all because winter provides perception of finite space, a limited field of view. 

Containerized office buildings – how we have accepted it as a part of daily life!!

By - Anoop Jha


Actual Mechanical Ambiance Vs Desired Holistic Environment

Majority of contemporary so called modern office buildings and towers where people as employees spend almost half of their life lack a healthy ambiance, environment and micro-climate, though it might have cleared all the statutory requirements, might have followed all the guidelines, might have amazing interior finishes, decorated with beautiful and almost real plastic plants.

Some signs that you are working in a Containerized Office 

Lighting

Shear ignorance to natural light and view,

Sole dependence on Artificial lighting,

Absolute absence of task lighting concept,

Light glare and  shadow,

No correlation with time of the day 

Same ambiance every working-day/hour 

Climate control

No consideration for individual's temperature requirement

extra hot and cold pockets distributed over floor-space,

No correlation with indoor-outdoor weather

Other interesting Traits

Being watched for work-productivity in the name of security

Feeling isolated from outer world

There is urgent need to analyse and assess the existing office complexes across the region on different qualitative and quantitative parameters and come up with an exhaustive list of recommendations  can further be consolidated in a set of mandatory Architectural guidelines.

Some Recommendations to design a holistically habitable office complexes-

Breathing building skin and building envelop (Ideally like Human Skin)

Visually connected to outside world (gives pleasant view, correlate to weather or at least gives sense of time)

Day light linking (Saves energy as well) 

Task lighting as per sitting arrangement / furniture layout (prevents Light Glare and Shadow, and gives a sense of personal space) 

Accessible pleasant weather (let the pleasant light breeze come in, let them touch and hear the falling raindrops) 

Sensible Cooling & Heating with ability to personalize (increased productivity, less medical leaves)

Contemporary Architecture of India in flux

An observation on architectural character, practice, reason of flux, and control instruments     

There used to be a defined boundary of what is called “Contemporary Architecture” in every era since past few centuries, but the boundary of contemporary architecture at present, in the middle of first quarter of 21^st century, has become a multi-domain experience with organic boundaries of different school of thoughts melting into each other. Earlier there used to be some set of rules and inspiration, material and climatic constraint, to govern and guide the aesthetic elements of localised architecture which in turn used to give defined architectural and urban design character to neighborhoods and city, but apparently we are losing that cohesiveness in contemporary urban fabric because there is no virtual or enforced control over the aesthetics of architecture at present In the developing countries like India, which is tissue of urban fabric. That does not imply that we want another Chandigarh, its for sure, we don’t want another Chandigarh by Le Cob., that is an old story, needs and lifestyle of people have changed, so the architecture and planning.

There are guidelines for the construction and execution but no rules or guidelines for architectural aesthetics, and its solely on the mercy and idiosyncrasy of either Clients who have their own idea of what contemporary architecture should be (i.e. they want their house to be either like the house of “Mr. X”, or more lavish and grand than “Mr. Y”, or exactly like the house featured in that architectural magazine “Z”) or it depends on majority of young architects for which its more about pressed necessity of earning bread & butter rather than using and  implementing the hard earned architectural knowledge , most of which are either victim of commercialization, crippled and forced to follow the market trends (which in fact doesn’t have any architectural  trend except copying from other contemporary developments or from history or from google image search results).  

If you inspect deeply you will realize that this apparent chaos of architectural design and aesthetics is actually nobody’s fault , at least not of any individual  because it was bound to happen and its all because of  technological advancement, which makes information and tools abundant. Architects as well as clients are immensely exposed to influences from all across the world due to free and unlimited information, architects  were never so free to  experiment with design and form of buildings due to computer modeling and simulation as well as unlimited possibility that structural design provides at present due to advance technology, equipments, material etc. There is no constraint of material, you have all the construction material at your disposal in any  part of the country, there is no architectural constraint of climate, because architecture has increasingly become active rather than passive,  you have all the equipments to control and maintain the indoor climate. But amidst all this, if the architecture and city planning need design guidelines, development control regulation, urban design guidelines or a separate nodal governing authority to maintain the aesthetic and cohesiveness of city, so be it.

Ever - Shrinking Living space in Urban Area

By- Anoop Jha


Pigeonhole like housing clusters

Constant influx of population to urban areas leads to shortage of living space in city, and developers and governments are trying to find the ways to accommodate this ever-growing population into already populated city, they collectively come up with some economic housing solution with ever-shrinking living footprint and decreasing level of lifestyle, which almost resemble pigeonholes (dovecote).

Daily space curve of a common Urban Man

post by : Anoop Jha

An average working person in a metropolitan city goes through a funnel of fluctuating space experience following a somewhat definite pattern on an average working day – from home to public transport to office to public transport again and back to home. Let’s call it “Daily Space Curve”. It’s a space footprint available to a person on an average working day, distributed across a day and across the standard route followed to complete the day activities.

Individual Space Curve

Daily Space Curve can prove to be one of the comparative scales while studying and comparing the standard of living or livability of different cities. Larger the space footprint available to a citizen more livable and desirable would be the city.

[Handpicked Books]

Pressed Necessity - Invasion of natural desire for a respectable “Social Space”

Urban public transport provides a faster way to commute, but it comes at a cost of something which cannot be compensated with saved time or money i.e. “Social Space”, but most people often seem to ignore the fact or somehow they have accepted to pay this cost. Every human being either individual or collective, have a natural desire to create and maintain their sphere of private space in a social setting which is like a virtual bubble around them, primarily for their inherent security instinct, let’s call this bubble “Social Space”. Social space tends to grow in size as the size of group increases, from individual to crowd.

Social Space Bubble

While in public places an individual subconsciously try to defend their social space trying to maintain a respectable distance from people surrounding them. But in crowded public places mostly in intra-city commuting through overcrowded MRTS, BRTS, Buses, Local Trains etc. people invade into each other’s social space bubble due to increasingly limited space that different modes of transport offers due to ever growing population, irrespective of their like or dislike. 


[Handpicked Books]



Bigger the city more acute is this phenomenon. More the people are packed closely more uneasiness they feel. There seem to be no other choice for the common citizens.

Pressed Necessity of Public Transport

Social Space : Desired Vs Available

It appears that most of the public transport in any city caters to the population much higher than their design capacity, at least higher than the footfall or ridership taken into consideration while designing the system, because if we assume the ridership figure of any functional public transport vehicle at present as a designed capacity of that vehicle and divide it with the usable space available inside the vehicle, the figure of ^“Area available for an individual inside a public vehicle (Metro coach / bus)”  hence achieved  would be far less than what it has been designed or planned for, or what we call “standard area requirement per person per vehicle / coach. It’s a pressed Necessity of the time, but there is an urgent need to find a better solution to respect the personal space of people in an urban setting.

See related articles by - Anoop Jha


http://planningurbanoregional.blogspot.com/2011/10/daily-space-curve-of-common-urban-man.html.