“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. 

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.    

Top 150 Books of Architecture

 

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.