The Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation for an upcoming National Institute of Design at Jorhat in Assam. It is one of the first of four which are in the pipeline for the next 11 years. The government has allocated a good amount of funds towards this initiative. A request for proposal has been circulated by the Department of Industrial Policy (DIPP) for a consulting firm to advise on the project. Even though the new design institutes have been received with a good amount of enthusiasm and cheer, there has been concern amongst the design community that not enough thinking has gone behind the vision of the institutes.

A group of design thinkers, academics and professionals in India have launched a campaign called ‘Visionfirst’ that seeks to create a design education model by a collaborative thinking process and with a definite mission in mind. The campaign is spreading its wings because of conversations and debates on the interconnected online communities. As per Visionfirst, the requirements for the RFP seem suitably matched to a large civil engineering firm. Setting up a physical infrastructure is a part of setting up a design institute but not the end all. There is the whole academic realm, the vision behind the school which needs to be crystal clear which is why figuring out the core mission behind these new design schools is so important.

Sam Pitroda, the advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public information Infrastructure & Innovations was sent a proposal outlining the vision. His response has been positive and he has gone a step ahead expressing a desire to set up 40 innovation clusters in different parts of India serving different sectors of the economy. At present the core group of visionaries that include Rashmi Korjan, Uday Dandavate, MP Ranjan, S.Sundar, Jatin Bhatt, Jogi Panghaal, Ashish Deshpande, Amit Krishn Gulati, Poonam Bir Kasturi & Dinesh Korjan are looking for people who can commit to help create 40 innovation clusters across India.

The Visionfirst proposal proposes a rigorous co-creation process, events, workshops and roundtables that can be held across the nation. There is a definite requirement for different kind of stakeholders to be involved in the process that includes policy makers, students, teachers, entrepreneurs, NGO’s etc. There needs to be a heart to heart regarding what design education and thinking mean in India. For a country where the general public still thinks of a designer as a fashion design person, India still has a long way to go. The idea is not to install the infrastructure and then think of filling in the classrooms, the core needs to come first and then the rest could follow.

The conversations and debates that Visionfirst has sparked is one of the better things that has happened to the design community in India in some time. This might actually lead to rapid prototyping of ideas that call for a desperate need to re-imagine design education in India. Even the National Design Policy of 2007 sadly falls short of expectations, it does not include opportunities and growth for local and indigenous craft sector but just limits itself to export and luxury product industries. The students in general are trained for fashionable, narrow fields of design that include car design, packaging, hospitality design, etc. India is missing from these policies, agendas and syllabi. As the proposal states in its last line ” We need to readjust our dream for India and for India’s role in service of humanity. That is our new tryst with destiny.

References :

What kind of design institutes for India?

The VisionFirst Blog

Towards articulating visions of design education in India

Designwala recently organized a panel about local people regulating local spaces. The panel was timely given the political unrest in the Middle East and Africa with people standing up to reclaim their rights. The video for the panel will be posted shortly. Our three panelists Jyoti Hosagrahar, Lina Srivastava and John Geraci come from different backgrounds but there was a common thread of ideas that tied everything back to local people and community driven design and activism.

While all the discussion from this monday is still brewing in my head, I came across the slideshow for the redevelopment of the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad. Urban planner Bimal Patel’s office HCP Design and Project Management has been working on the project for close to 15 years. The long time that the project has taken is primarily because of the various scales of complexities that was involved in the project. One being the resettlement and rehabilitation of the close to 10,000 families living along the riverbank.

Image from HCP site 2007

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) set up the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corportation (SRFDCL) in May 1997 with a mission to revive the city center by reconnecting it to the river. The first phase of the project included a 9 km stretch of the riverfront. In 2003, the project was extended to cover a 20 km stretch.

Bimal Patel’s article in the WSJ about the project talks about a communication strategy that was put in place to communicate the projects vision and its benefits to the public. The primary communication strategy being circulating project reports. One has to take this with a pinch of salt since hiding details in small print is an established methodology to hide the finer details of the project from people. There is also a component of presentation which is a great way of getting the public’s attention and have them react to what is being designed in their city. Through these presentations the designers were able to communicate to the residents how world over waterfronts have been transformed into communal spaces for city residents. All cities are not the same, other governments are probably not uprooting thousands of slum dwellers from their houses either. There is a lot behind the scenes which still needs addressing.The question about rehabilitation looms large as there is no strategy in place for resettlement. Other issues involve environmental problems related to reclaiming land. The project is supposed to be self financing which means that a lot will depend on the sale of the proclaimed land to build a walkway, promenades, gardens, amusement park and water sports and slum rehabilitation.

Recently HCP put on an exhibition of the renderings showing what Ahmedabad’s riverfront would look like after redevelopment. A lot of questions about floods, slums, finances and implementation and traffic etc were addressed using diagrams and drawings. An interactive feature to get feedback on the project would have been really helpful as well. Giving the local people information is important but equally important is the getting their feedback on it.
The exhibition of the renderings of the riverfront were showcased in an art gallery in Ahmedabad in December last year for two weeks. The art gallery is not home to people used to going to community board meetings. Invitations were send across to wide variety of people to come out to see the images. The images were made realistic along with everything that an indian street cannot be seen without, the cows, dung, dogs and the messiness that forms India. The reaction to the renderings from the people who came to see them was positive. We don’t have the statistics on how many people came to see the images.

Working on such projects involve wide range of partners that include NGO’s, the local government, ministers, politicians etc who are are involved from the get go. However it is important to get the local people involved not just to look at the end product but to be a part of the process so that they can proactively get involved in the design discussions and not just the informal approval process. It is one thing to keep the people informed and its quite another to get them involved. Both need to go hand in hand so that the amount of skepticism and suspicion is reduced and people feel like they are part of a project versus mere spectators in a myriad web of bureaucratic policies and decisions.

The project was meant to finish end of December 2010. As everything in India, this is taking its time and we hope its worth the time it has taken. Ahmedabad is home to two premier design institutes – National Institute of Design and Center for Environmental Planning and Technology as well as the world famous business school Indian Institute of Management. It will be a pity if a project from a city with these institutes solely focuses on commercial interests that go with waterfront development without addressing the basic welfare needs for the displaced as well as the value of the waterfront for all city dwellers from all walks of life.

A lot of affordable housing work in developing nations like India is handled by the government. Government of India is not exactly known for its taste in architecture and design. An interesting story that I read in the Knowledge Wharton blog goes like this – the Tamil Nadu government built low income housing for milkmen who were squatters and without housing. Once the houses were ready and the milkmen moved in, they came to a realization that the buffaloes gave a lot more milk when they were housed in the quarters and were cosy and comfortable which meant that the milkmen went back to being homeless and the buffaloes lived in the low income housing. Not the scenario the government had envisioned while cutting the ribbon on this not so cheap housing project.

The government is trying to build upon public private partnerships by getting partners to deliver affordable housing units after repeated failure to understand this sector. Some huge Indian corporations like TATA are getting into the mix and proposing affordable housing as well. Inspite of all these initiatives, there is still no talk of design and the needs of the community that these houses are being built for.

Here is where the Micro Home Solutions comes in. mHS is a for profit social enterprise that wants to use an interdisciplinary approach to create affordable housing for the 62 million people in India who either live in slums or are without homes. It was started by a husband wife duo – Rakhi Mehra and Marco Ferrario in August 2009. Their organization links together architecture, finance and community to create a housing approach for the urban poor. The two projects they are working on as per a recent article on mHS in fastcompany is a sanitary shelter for India’s homeless and poor and an inter-disciplinary collaborative approach that would allow slum dwellers to organize and plan their homes.

Recently, the Bhartiya Samruddhi Finance Limited (BSFL), the flagship company of the BASIX group entered into a strategic partnership with micro Home Solutions. BASIX will act as the microcredit arm for the mHS wherein it will be providing financial and technical assistance to compliment its housing loan products for the low income/informal sector households. The housing and urban development corporation (HUDCO) had disbursed millions of dollars in loans to the poor of the country. This initiative was fraught with corruption and inefficiencies. Microfinance institutions have an advantage in this area because they know their customers and how much credit risk they are. This alliance shows how mHS is leveraging partnerships to deliver the most efficient product and services to the low-income households.

Affordability should not compromise design. The low income housing being developed for the poor comprises their sense of community, space and social life. A lot of such housing is given out to rent by its owners and the inhabitants go back to living in slums. The housing solutions that mHS provides are affordable, viable and scalable and their portfolio is diversified according to the need to family. As stated in their website – they want to bring about basic changes like better lighting, ventilation and efficient use of space. Their aim is to bring design where it is needed most : to India’s low income urban communities. The idea is to work on strategic ways to allocate resources and bring about better living conditions. The solution is not just one pit stop where the government gives out lower income housing to the poor for cheap but creates a tiered system of affordable self selection options from rentals to dormitories to buying a house. Multiple housing options with and strategic partnerships with housing boards, developers and associations can bring about a flexible plan that will benefit everyone and save government funds as well as bring about a slum free future for India.

mHS blog

Supertable (previously called the Mobile Activation Station) is a project  by Holobiont (Haruka Horiuchi & Frank Hebbert) . It was  selected as the winner of the ‘Grand Idea Competition‘ organized by Designwala this summer. Haruka and Frank won a grand or $1000 to make their idea come to life. Supertable is a portable reconfigurable table with built-in power distribution, lighting and storage. It turns empty stores into communal spaces. Once built, the Station will be available for short-term use in vacant storefronts along Rogers Avenue in Crown heights, Brooklyn.  Supertable will be built off of an easy set of instructions with easily available kit of parts. It follows the idea of hackable and DIY culture of building structures that are flexible, adaptable, reusable and community driven. Stay tuned for the Holobiont’s other community and urban planning projects in the upcoming second part of this series.

A new publication on Parsi housing in India, was recently released by the SID Research Cell, Center for Environmental, Planning and Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad. The book that has been titled – ‘Gaining ground – Making a new homeland’ is a set of explorations based on history, migration, growth, architecture and lives of the Parsis in India. The SID Research Cell has published close to ten publications with funding from TATA foundation. The following article is a set of excerpts from Shuchi Vyas’s conversation with Snehal Nagarsheth.

Shuchi is the Associate Development Director at The Akanksha Fund and a friend who has also written ‘Bringing vernacular architecture to a wider audience’ based on another publication from the SID Research Cell. Snehal Nagarsheth is a well known architect and Assistant Professor at the School of Interior Design CEPT and also heads the SID Research Cell along with Krishna Shastri who is the Head of Department at SID. Shuchi had an opportunity to speak with Snehal during her visit to Ahmedabad earlier this year.

In these excerpts Snehal talks about understanding Indian architectural history. She explains why architecture cannot be defined by styles and structures alone but needs to be understood in a more holistic way. According to her, compiling ‘Gaining Ground…’ was about winning the trust of the people involved and understanding their lives and history because understanding architectural history is not about standalone buildings and styles but about social connections formed by people.

(I have taken the liberty to categorize the excerpts from the conversation under various headings for a more comprehensive read)

ARCHITECTURE AS NARRATIVE

“At the department (SID CEPT), the faculty had been wondering how to discuss the history for interior design. Should it be the same as history for architecture ? When one looks at architectural history, it is actually to understand how people lived in those spaces and not just to see the styles and structures of the spaces. Then we figured out that this will be the way we would do it. We’ve been interested in narratives, and wanted to actually understand what people had to say”.

ARCHITECTURE AS SEEN BY PEOPLE

“This book is a small little project that builds indian history and you need many such projects to have a correct perspective of Indian history. Otherwise we are looking at our history, which is generated for us by the British or by the people who are studying India. Our intent is not to understand architectural history holistically, but to understand all the different threads that make up the history. It needs to be seen not only from an architectural perspective but we discuss the homes through its narrative by the people who live there, so they give us an experiential understanding of the space through time. We are then given an abstract understanding by the plans and elevations and then we’ve got this understanding which you develop by photographs. That is how we put the pieces together to understand a historical space.”

INDIAN HISTORY

“If one takes a smaller window to look at Indian history, our history might get a little clearer to us and it might even shift this larger overview the foreigners have built for us. Without having a deep understanding of India, a general overview of history was formulated by outsiders who ruled us for 300 years. If one looks at Indian history through a lot of small windows, all windows will connect revealing a panorama. We don’t really have a microscopic view of what India is all about. So we started looking at history in our department by saying that if you had to teach Indian history, would you just have this larger overview to fall back upon which talks about typologies, dynasty rules or is there something else that we can develop.”

SID RESEARCH CELL

“We got the project going by funding from the Tata fund. We have put together ten books since then. There are three monographs. The school has been doing a lot of documentation, so all of our documentation is converted into books. And then we had another research, which was the history of interior design. So we were lucky to have students because we have been talking about publishing work but we had not really produced books because it involved a lot of work. The whole Parsi housing publication started off as a school project. A thesis was going to be put forth for printing by the SID research cell. A similar project was being undertaken by the School of Architecture and their book covered more ground than what we were thinking about. So we expanded on the same topic of Parsi housing and then another student came by with photographs of Parsi Aramgah. Aramgah is a place where they bury their dead if they don’t have a tower of silence. We saw the photographs of these spaces, it was decided to convert this thesis into something bigger. The idea was to open and expand the topic of Parsi architectural history.”

STARTING OFF

“We have a photographer without whom this book would not have been possible. That is Cyrus Mobedji. He’s a Parsi, so we got access to a lot of places because of him. He has been a friend and since we were doing a book on Parsis, he helped us out. It is tough to get permission sometimes to document a house. Here we are actually invading their privacy so for them to feel that it’s alright is a difficult thing. It is a community, which has been leading a sheltered life for a long time, so to get access to really nice, beautiful old homes is tough.”

PARSI MIGRATION & IDENTITY

“If you are a minority just moving to another place, you don’t get benefits or you don’t come out so strongly as a community. When it’s a new nation, then moving in is slightly easier but in India you had a formed country and to come out as a really strong force in a country like that is commendable. They are a small community, today they are about 68,000 and I don’t think they exceeded ever over 1.5 lakhs. They were extremely well positioned and they really did very well for themselves. That made us think about what this milieu was like, which allowed them to survive. Then we realized that before coming to India they spent a short while, about twenty years at another location, which is like an island off shore, so they did not get to the mainland and they settled there for a while and then they moved. At that time, it is conjecture, but they figured out that to go further south of the main state, would be sensible.

They landed at the extreme point, which was Sanjan- that is like the last bastion of the Gujarat. which became their gateway. And the king there gave them the permission to stay and removed a lot of appearances, they couldn’t have their language, they couldn’t have their dressing, they had to marry according to the indian rites. They had to give up a lot but they maintained their religion and said they can’t convert. They removed distance in terms of appearances. They just melted into the background. They were absorbed because they spoke the same language, their mother tongue was Gujarati and they had their own religion but in India you have so many religions, so you had one more. They had a special status because they were given special permission by the king but they would be by themselves. They always strategically politically aligned themselves with the ruling class, because they were a minority, and aligned with the ruling body to get the benefits. The community benefited, all along. That gave them a kind of leap over a lot of the other communities. This community built off of various places but strategically they didn’t have an outward desire to build an identity.”

PEOPLE

“They are very passive people. They consider themselves Gujarati, they speak the same language so they were allowed to retain their identity. When you actually see their dwellings, they are not very different from other Gujarati houses. They live in almost the same style. At one point, though, when the British came, they aligned with the British. They had an exponential jump in prosperity. They emulated the British tremendously as a result you had this amalgamation of quasi-colonial, quasi-Gujarati individual that was developing in this milieu.”

CLASSES

“They also have classes. In Persia they had eight classes. Finally when they came over here, they only had two . One class preaches the religion and they are the ones who will probably do all the rituals at the place of worship, and they are the ones who are the traditional keepers of the religion. While you have the other class who are the followers of that religion. It’s not as though that the divide is as strong as in the Hindu’s but I think the divide does play a certain role in holding onto traditions. Also, they take Parsi first names so they go back to their roots when they pick their names. But that is the only thing they take from Persia, they do not have surnames that are Persian.”

LAST NAMES

“Last names in India came about largely because of the British because they had the tax structure, which is very formalized. So even for us, we had distinctions in our last names which was to do with what you do and where you work. Those were the initial ways of finding some kind of identity; they actually had to make a new homeland so they started taking on last names, which were Indian. It was a real fusion of things that happened within the Parsi community.”

TRADE

“I have a feeling that they were trading even before they decided to come to India. India was a part of the spice trade and there was the Chinese silk route which existed. Ultimately the spice route went up to the silk route so the trading went on for a long time. I have a feeling that they were pretty much aware of the fact that we worshiped fire and they worshiped the fire as well. The similarities were there in a manner of speaking. The Parsis probably traded along the western coast of Gujarat. They could have had smaller settlements. It is interesting how only their religious building is where they reflect back on culture, nowhere else.

After migration, a lot of investment for the Parsis was in cotton. The cotton boom that happened in India in the early 19th century was initiated by them.

It is interesting how we found that all the stone that was used to build Bombay came from the Parsis of Porbandar. Most of the yellow stone that is seen in Bombay comes from Porbandar. The Parsis of Porbandar had a very good relationship with the king who had the mining rights of the stone, while the Paris used to have an off loading facility in Bombay. That is how we realized that looking at this small little community of one lakh people, actually tells you a lot about the development in India, because they were aligned politically, they always managed to be in the forefront. Almost all the railroads that were made were all worked on by the Parsis because they were all engineers and were all educated, during the times of the British. It was not unknown that they built a separate identity, but the fact that they remained in the background allowed them to be accepted by both, the locals as well as the ruling class.

The liquor licensing came about by the British because almost everybody in India brewed their own liquor so you couldn’t tax it. The British banned the liquor practice so you couldn’t brew it and then you could only brew it through licensing. Almost all the licenses belonged to Parsis. To get the license it surely mattered that you knew somebody high up. You realize that there is a tremendous strong strategic move to align with the ruling class.”

LAND

“Some of the Parsi houses which are in the villages of Gujarat have huge tracts of land, because they were given a lot of advantages during the British times. They were used as people who were the in between for communication, for ruling, for everything. They formed this whole group of people who negotiated between the British and the local groups. And in that whole process, they had tremendous advantage, because if there was any declaration by the British they were the first to know. British were always looking for avenues of income, so lands which were forest land, which didn’t yield income for the British were given away. Tracts as big as 25,000 hectares of land or a jungle was given out to the Parsi community. That jungle then, was partly converted to agriculture. The British could then can tax the income from the produce.”

ARCHITECTURE

“They didn’t build with a specific style. We realized that consistency is what they were really addressing, and there was an intention to make this their new homeland so they didn’t do something specific architecturally . They did not go ahead and build, like you have the Portuguese, who came and built a style. However they transformed the English bungalow to Indianize it. That allows you to see how the bungalow becomes a simple village home. They asked for their basic architectural needs to be met. When they needed a well, they built wells. The women during menstruation live in a separate little chamber with an iron door which is present in many houses. So they built things, as per need, but an outward appearance to state a presence is never seen. Just 200 years after them, the Muslims followed. They couldn’t, state their difference at all then since they had fled from the Muslim persecution in Iran. There are about 50-60 houses all belonging to Parsis in Parsi villages in Gujarat, they are all landlords, and largely into agriculture. That’s where you see these bungalows, which became quasi-Indian homes. They’ve taken up this idea of the bungalow, the British bungalow, and it kind of gets overlaid with what they considered important.”

THE BOOK

“The book we have put together is not a very large book. It is difficult for us not to have a lot pictures because the Parsi homes are so beautiful. What is really amazing is the manner in which the spatial arrangements are done. The interiors are exquisite, it’s kept very beautifully, so we divided this book in four parts. The first part is before they moved to India. We looked at their background and their architecture which is only present in their religious buildings. They are called Agiari. Their homes are pretty much like ours. It’s not necessary that they would only have had Parsi craftsman build it.

For the book, we wanted to come up with a holistic understanding of history of Parsi housing rather than saying that this is the architectural style. We wanted to understand architecture as a cumulative process. A building up of what this architecture was about comes from understanding of architecture not as stand alone buildings but as connections to its people and their history otherwise we were going to end up probably just having an overview versus the details. We didn’t have styles of building, we actually didn’t even have extensive styles in clothing but we had people who had lived this history and contributed to the growth of India, mingled with the British, acquired styles from everywhere while preserving their religion and customs. Its a truely amalgamated religion.”

The book – ‘Gaining ground – Making a new homeland’ pays a homage not only to the spaces the Parsis created and called home but their undefeated spirit of survival as well.

Click here for the list of other publications and order form for publications by the SID Research Cell

Photo courtesy Danish Siddiqui for Reuters

A few years ago who would have imagined that the most expensive house in the world would be in Mumbai. But then India is full of surprises – on one end you have the most expensive house in the world at the same time 42% of India’s population is below the poverty line. In the past few weeks Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, India’s largest private sector enterprise has been in the news for his new billion dollar plus house that he will be moving into soon. He is touted to be the richest man in the world by 2014 as reported in Forbes magazine.

The house which is the world’s first billion dollar house is located on Altamont Road in an upmarket residential neighbourhood of Mumbai. The house which is 27 story’s high and believed to have a floor area larger than that of the Palace of Versailles is designed after consulting design firms Perkins+Will and Hirsch Bendner Associates.

A vertical palace; the first six-levels of which are dedicated for parking and an additional level for car maintenance, three helipads, a health spa, a fifty seat theater, multiple swimming pools, hanging gardens and a ballroom are a few of the included amenities in the building. It has been widely reported that the house will be occupied by Mr. Ambani, his wife and three children but managed by a support staff of six hundred.

Is such lavish display of wealth necessary and sustainable? The Guardian recently reported Indian Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh calling on business leaders to “eschew conspicuous consumption” and “be role models of moderation.” Reactions to the house have been mixed as how much Mr. Ambani spends on his house for himself and his family should not be anyones business as that is truly subjective. But many people also feel that an expensive house like that in a city where millions live in slums without basic ammenities is a criminal offence.

Mr. Ambani is ranked just two ranks below Bill Gates in the Billionaire’s list of Forbes magazine. Many people feel that he should follow in Mr. Gates footsteps of philanthropy. Mr. Ambani has defnitely created jobs and is looking to invest millions in the agricultural sector to help farmers and give them better returns but his investments are not contributions, they are calculated risks with gauranteed returns.

The house is named after Antillia a mythical island located in the Atlantic ocean. The irony here is that the house does not stand alone but instead stands tall overlooking downtown Mumbai. The house is not independant but is just as dependant on Mumbai’s neglected infratructure. I however do appreciate that Mr. Ambani chose a vertical structure over a horizontal one as land in Mumbai is sacred. The house boasts of multiple hanging gardens and it’s walls are covered in folliage – the living walls are intended to increase green space and combat heat island effect.

Photo courtesy Jasem Pirani

A friend of mine that lives in the same neighbourhood feels that the building is an eyesore. The building stands tall and does not relate in scale with it’s surrounding buildings. Another building in the same neighbourhood located on Peddar Road that runs parallel to Altamont Road is Charles Correa’s Kanchanjunga. This building also stands tall and has 32 luxury apartments and boasts of terraced gardens but has been adapted to fit in it’s surroundings. Correa’s Kanchanjunga is by far one of my favourite buildings in the city. In the case of Antillia contextual and cultural relations have been sidelined in the need for an iconic structure.

Antillia definitely puts Mumbai on the map of expensive homes but are we proud of this achievement? Everyone is entitled to luxury and comfort but living sustainably is crucial. A diverse design approach is also appreciated but not when it intervenes with pre-existing patterns within the local framework. Sustainability is not just about green roofs and hanging gardens it is also about integrating responsibly within an existing cultural context.

The second part of the video is titled ‘Indigenous Modernities’ based on the title of Jyoti Hosagrahar’s book with the same title. In this video, she talks about modernity in the context of the developing world. She brings up the perception of ‘Modern’ where it is equaled to western living vs it being understood as sustainable and practical response to day to day problems. To emphasize on that aspect of ‘Modern’, she talks about Old Delhi, Hinglish and FM Radio as examples of practical solutions, interactivity and modern living in the context of the old world. Jyoti Hosagrahar’s recent book Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (Routledge 2005) won a 2006-2007 award from the International Planning History Society.

For Jyoti’s video on sustainability, click here.

Jyoti Hosagrahar is faculty at Columbia University, New York and Director of Sustainable Urbanism International at Columbia University, and Bangalore, India. Architect, planner, and historian, she advises on urban development, historic conservation, and sustainability issues in Asia. Her research interests include urban heritage, cultural and environmental sustainability of cities focusing on the intersections of nature, culture, and the built environment, and postcolonial perspectives in design and planning. She serves as an expert for UNESCO on historic cities.

Hosagrahar is the author of Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (Architext Series, Routledge, 2005) awarded a 2006 book prize by the International Planning History Society. At Columbia she teaches courses on urban sustainability and postcolonial perspectives on non-Western architecture and urbanism. Recently, Hosagrahar has been extensively involved in the conservation and sustainable development of historic cities in India in partnership with UNESCO. She is directing the preparation of an integrated site management plan for the conservation and sustainable development of the heritage of the Hoysala towns in Karnataka.

Sustainable Urbanism International’s minimalist design and planning interventions aim to enhance local economic development, while enabling local populations to express their historically derived placed-based identities. SUI is involved in a range of studies, policies, and design interventions for historic townships through extensive community and stakeholder consultations. With Sustainable Urbanism International in partnership with The Energy Resource Institute, India, Hosagrahar has coauthored, ‘An Exploration of Sustainability in the Provision of Basic Urban Services in Indian Cities’. (TERI, 2009).

Stay tuned for Part -2 of Jyoti’s video where she discusses Indigenous Modernities. We will release that shortly.

The Mobile Activation Station by Holobiont

The Mobile Activation Station designed by Holobiont (Haruka Horiuchi & Frank Hebbert) has been selected as the winner by our three esteemed judges – Raul Smith Correa of ‘Faiscas‘, Soo-in Yang of ‘The Living’ and Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai. They win a grand or $1000 to make their idea come to life. The Mobile Activation Station is a portable reconfigurable table with built-in power distribution, lighting and storage. It turns empty stores into communal spaces. Once built, the Station will be available for short-term use in vacant storefronts along Rogers Avenue in Crown heights, Brooklyn.

The Bus Roots Project by Marco Antonio Castro Cosio

The second favorite project for the judges especially Soo-in is the Bus Roots Project by Marco Antonio. Bus Roots is a living garden on the roots of city buses. It brings life to a forgotten space and provides humans with a reminder to pause and let naturte help lead a healthier life.

Traffic Cones into Flower Receptacles by Daniel Ebuehi

The third favorite project for the judges, especially for Raul Smith Correa is the project by Daniel Ebuehi from Philadelphia. In an attempt to bring vitality as well as sustainability directly into the streets of Philadelphia – literally in the middle of the street – this scheme transforms the ubiquitous traffic cone into a flower receptacle that can be assembled to form a garden retreat.

Our special thanks to the third and final judge who helped us make the final decision – Bijoy Jain from Studio Mumbai.

This competition would not have been possible without the generous contributions from these amazing people and friends :
Ravisharon Kaur
Ramakrishnan Subramanian
Rahul Pande
Kiran Kannacheri
Saravanakumar Velayudham
Sameer Kumar
Keerthik Sasidharan
Saad Tabani
Ritwik Dey
Giana Gonzalez
Sonali Sridhar
Jairam Ranganathan
Amit Desai
Priyanka Gupta
Shweta Mudgal

A Grand Idea -Inhabit Section competition culminated on June 17th. A lot of  interesting entries came pouring in from all round the world. The ones published are a few that stood out. Our judges Raul Smith Correa from FAISCAS and Soo-in Yang from The Living are going over the entries and plan to pick a winner soon. The winner gets to develop a prototype of their design using $1000.

Vid de Gleria & Ziga Kresevic – Urban Rebagers

Robin Liu – Popup Bookstore

Haruka Horiuchi & Frank Hebbert – Mobile Activation Station

Jirawit Yamkleeb – Double Take

Marco Antonio Castro – Bus Roots

Hiroyuki Ichihara – The benches of Tsuchibokasi

Robyne Kassen – Monkey Bar Bike Racks

Jurriaan de Brujin – Metro

Yusuke Sakuma & Akihito Matsushita – Forest Bath

Dominik Chung – Park Hill, Sheffield

Daniel Ebuehi – Construction Cones

If you would like to see more than one design to come to life, please make a donation. The donations are tax deductible.

If you would like to see more than one design to come to life, please make a donation. The donations are tax deductible.