goldwynism

Notes

2012-02-04T03:10:00.001+05:30

I've joined vir.mueller architects as a trainee.

They only use the font Helvetica.
(Actually, Swis721 LT, but that's what Helvetica is called on Windows)

link via Rohan Patankar

My parents went to the US for a conference, where they met people from all over the world, and exchanged gifts. My loot: two awesome Indonesian bookmarks representing the Hindu mythology characters Srikhandi and Rama.

Found online:

here.

Currently reading What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that changed the world by Christopher Lloyd.

W

2012-01-19T01:50:00.001+05:30

Wikipedia is the only source of light in a "world without free knowledge".

I think this page/ announcement works so well; it needed to be simple and to the point. I love the extreme shadow and the soft black and the Times New Roman. This is nothing dramatic or radical or ohmygodshit!, but that's probably the reason for its success.

Of course, Wikipedia is not the only site protesting. But I do think that it does it more, well, elegantly, than the others.

On an aside: never realized how often I went to the Wiki page in a day; I just instinctively click on a link or google search result and then realize a split second later that it's been blacked out.

The history of Gotham

2012-01-11T10:23:00.000+05:30

The history of Gotham,
at
Wikipedia
and
Hoefler and Frere-Jones, the type foundry
and
the Helvetica movie website
and here:

Style

2012-01-11T08:32:00.000+05:30

If you live in South Delhi then you've definitely seen some of the great graffiti (ahem, vandalism?) out on the streets. NowDelhi/ Tahska has even made a pretty brilliant short film/ documentary on this:

Vandalrt from tahska on Vimeo.

From the style and signature (which I sometimes spot) I know that most of the graffiti done around my area is by Daku. It's all brilliantly coloured typography (and I mean the other meaning of brilliant, the one to do with bright and shining, complete with glinting edges); it's really good work.

There's a huge abandoned plot at the edge of my colony -used as a rubbish dump and public urinal- with a lone square very DDA-looking structure on it. I don't know what it is, but I've seen it on plenty of other huge abandoned plots- perhaps some kind of guard room, or something that hides an ancient well?

Anyways, that structure has now been vandalized. (Actually, it's been so for at least a month, and I've been planning to write this at least as long, but we'll talk about my procrastination sometime else.) This is the best graffiti work I've seen for real so far, outside of my computer screen. I mean, shit. It's just so good, the idea and, of course, the execution. Take a look:

looking up at the sky?

looking away from the rubbish?

both?

update
Ankurb told me to watch Exit Through the Gift Shop (which has all type in helvetica, btw). It's a great, really, REALLY, funny movie/ documentary/ mockumentary/ prankometary/ I-don't-know-whether-it's-true-or-not; I mean, it's so ridiculous it's completely unbelievable.

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Style is still my favourite.

On wit

2012-01-03T20:09:00.000+05:30

The Occupied Wall Street Journal is the mouthpiece of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.

So brilliantly funny. Also, I've said this before, I'll say it again, nobody tops Scott Adams. If you don't already flow his blog, you should. His recent posts documenting his US presidential campaign will have you LAUGHING OUT LOUD (and, if you're like me, annoying people around you by reading out loud too).

And, acceding to Adams' wishes, I'm posting the following disclaimer:

Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.

masala-waala

2011-12-28T18:41:00.000+05:30

:D

Today, on the way back from the metro station, via Hauz Rani, I met a masala-waala! He sells masalas, and, unbelievably, pasta (!) on his redi/ wheel-cart. He sits in this area every Wednesday. Shit, I never even knew there were masala-waalas like him, let alone masala-aur-pasta waalas. This made my day, and even made the cycle-which-fell-on-my-foot-two-minutes-later sorta worth it.

Update:

My all-knowing brother tells me that a masalawaala isn't that rare (he's seen them around the Hauz Khas Village) and, more importantly, what I thought was pasta are actually un-fried/ dry fry-ums. You know, those snacky things that blow up when fried. Still, a weird thing to sell.

isabgol and licences

2011-12-24T16:34:00.000+05:30

Packaging for Sat-Isabgol, which my dad has been having since forever. I think it's brilliant! So retro. Absolutely love the typography. Notice how elements are repeated on both the English and Hindi sides, especially love the 'R' of registered. It's cardboard, and the 'trademark registered' oval is embossed. And the telephone! I don't understand the significance, but I definitely like the style and the detail. Click on the image for a zoomed in view.

Got my driving licence! Very impressed by the authority- I gave my test yesterday morning and got it today by 3.30 in the afternoon. The envelope and the licence both have "Drive only if you must: use public transport" displayed quite prominently. And, surprised to note that Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit Systems Limited is a project partner with the Transport Department.

Winning and Losing

2011-12-14T15:47:00.000+05:30

Via Steven Heller's daily column at Imprint Magazine.
_
Housing's over! YAY!

_
In the latest issue of the Journal of Landscape Architecture, about the international design competition for the New Museum of Ancient India, Patna:

Five world-leading architectural firms are competing... each with their Indian architect partner firms...:

Coop Himmelblau (Vienna) with ARCHOHM
Foster + Partners (London) with C.P. Kukreja & Associates
Maki & Associates (Tokyo) with OPOLIS
Snohetta (Oslo) with Spacematters
Studio Daniel Libeskind (New York) with Morphogenesis

Whoa.
The museum, preliminary budget INR 350 crores, is slated to be operational by mid-2015.

Discoveries

2011-11-25T01:09:00.001+05:30

during the INTACH Heritage Walk through Old Delhi, 13 November, with Sohail Hashmi.

some BRILLIANT typography:

and some old and broken violins:

experiment

2011-11-25T00:40:00.001+05:30

Anuj and Kabilan at Sikandar Lodi's tomb, Lodi Gardens, 25/11.
Will they kill me?

At the Ghazipur phool mandi

2011-11-25T00:14:00.001+05:30

and

Then and Now, TOI

2011-11-24T21:09:00.000+05:30

Then and Now: How TOI covered the Tata change « sans serif:

'via Blog this'

Very interesting post on how the newspaper business has evolved. Business news about the TATA chairman-change goes from page 6/7 20 years ago to front page headlines today. I really appreciate the list of reasons, though I think one important aspect that was ignored is the fact that TATA is now a much bigger player in the game.

I've said this before, but sans serif is a great site to follow (though they have a very weird url: "wearethebest.wordpress.com". Seriously?!).

Till next time!

cinema

2011-11-23T23:19:00.001+05:30

Two short films I discovered today:
DILLI, an award winning documentary on Delhi (!) which talks about a lot of the stuff I have recently started thinking about, what with the Genda Phool Project, my dissertation and our inclusive housing project:

And THIS:

Hmm, which one is more awesome?

Sandbox

2011-11-20T21:58:00.001+05:30

via Lovely Package:

MORFOZE Polyhedron Soap

Such a great product + packaging design concept! A 3d contoured soap, which will, obviously, smoothen out with use.

MORFOZE is a hard soap concept, which surely will be liking to all who have had to face the principles of 3D-modelling software, designers, modellers, engineers and people who like everything unusual, everything that makes our life more interesting.

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I'm probably finding this extra awesome/ amusing considering I've been on Sketchup all day. But, yay!, design prefinal has now been postponed to Wednesday. Small mercies.

Love and type, 2

2011-11-18T23:02:00.001+05:30

Via this post at I LOVE TYPOGRAPHY:

Method of Action.

This is brilliant! A sort-of collaborative effort which offers exercises aimed at getting people better at design, entrepreneurship and gardening. Can't wait for it to launch properly, considering that it's already got two AWESOME (one more than the other) typography tools to play with.

Kern Type

Kern= the spacing between two letters.

Shape Type

Both these games are quite simple and depend on instinct- what looks or feels right. I was, obviously, better at kerning than shaping- 89 compared to a 79 in the latter. But great fun.

Also, again via the same post:

A 'learn to kern' T-shirt! Available here.

support structure

2011-11-17T18:33:00.001+05:30

The last slide of a Theory of Structures presentation on steel trusses, 20/09/2011, by J.C. Wason.

Notes on Design

2011-11-17T18:23:00.001+05:30

Good design is good will.

The genius of Paul Rand.

Intent is everything.
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Currently reading: Paul Rand, by Steven Heller, 2000

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Update:

Paul Rand's design for the NeXT logo, for Steve Jobs. He presented in the form of a book, which is so simple and brilliant. See Steven Heller's post on this and the book, here.

Buckminsterfullerene

2011-11-07T18:42:00.000+05:30

A deformable cover (1) - Coverjunkie.com:

'via Blog this'

Novum 11/11 – Making Of Cover from Paperlux on Vimeo.

Such fucking brilliant awesomeness. Shit. I mean, I've made Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes before, but the mechanized process is just awesome. I can't get over the suction thingies just sucking the paper up, around 02:42. I want to own this magazine too, just so I can play with the cover and the pretty colours.

Buckminster Fuller is the first famous famous architect I heard of, back in science class at school. I still think he's, well, somewhat superior to the other starchitects because he imagined nature before it was discovered- his geodesic dome structure is repeated in the carbon isotope named after him.

My attempt at the dome, around 2 years ago now:

Documenting Delhi

2011-10-26T02:46:00.000+05:30

Author Tarquin Hall introduced me to an unusual Delhi slum in The Case of the Man who Died Laughing (2010):

The slum, one of Delhi's largest, was inhabited almost entirely by street entertainers: puppeteers, snake charmers, bear handlers, musicians, acrobats, troupes of actors who performed plays with social messages, the odd story-teller, and jadoo wallahs. But the view through the scratched, convex windshield was depressingly familiar: a sooty ghetto of ramshackle brick houses smothered in cow dung patties. Plastic sheeting, chunks of concrete, and twisted scrap metal were draped over roofs. Canvas tents were pitched amidst heaps of garbage where filthy, half-clad children defecated and played.

Hall went on to describe the incident in such vivid detail that it was a clear, crisp movie playing in my mind- in fact, when trying to recall where I had previously come across the slum, I had to discard the idea of a movie/ video, it seemed that real. Anyways, and again, credit to Tarquin Hall, I was so enthralled by the book that I forgot my intention to google the slum: he never even mentioned its name, only that it's in Shadipur.

It's called the Kathputli Colony, where wandering magicians and entertainers settled sometime in the 1950s, on public land which was then barren, but now prime property, courtesy of the Metro.

The name seems familiar-ish now that I know what it is, as if it was always on the edges of my consciousness. I'm sure I've come across it before.

This post was prompted by this brilliant trailer (and appeal) for Tomorrow We Disappear, a documentary by American filmmakers Jim Goldblum and Adam Weber.

The slum land now belongs to a private developer, so it's most probably in its last days, soon to become another entry in the long list of lost traditions and quirks that made Delhi Delhi. I'm not saying that slums are good, and need to be conserved. But I certainly think that the art and culture of this particular slum needs to be saved- or at least, remembered.

Jim and Adam are attempting to do exactly that- their movie will document Kathputli Colony as it is today. (As far as I know, it does not aim at stopping the eviction.)

The clips they have are beautiful. Also, I love the music they chose.

This project is similar to HandpaintedType, by which graphic designer Hanif Kureshi is attempting to preserve the tradition of street-painting. You know, the painters who sit on roadsides and make posters/ banners/ car number plates. Before watching this video I never fully appreciated their skill. All I had were semi-curious half thoughts about how exactly they do it (especially since I've been required to draw guidelines for my text) - do they draw guides, do they use rulers, do they make a first draft, do they outline and and then fill-in later? Now I know, some-what.

Painter Kureshi from hanif kureshi on Vimeo.

Came across Tomorrow We Disappear on Kickstarter, which is an awesomely brilliant platform where creative-types can get funding for their ideas and projects. (In a seemingly-random-but-obviously-preordained coincidence, Kickstarter was mentioned in three of the blogs I follow, all on the same day. Crazy.) Discovered so many interesting and quirky and intelligent and crazy (good and bad) and so-obvious-why-didn't-someone-think-of-it-before ideas! Here are some of my favourites:

Ruler Pencils, rulers on pencils (product design) (!)
The Present, an annual clock (product design)
Typographic wall calender (graphic design)
The Montserrat typeface (typography) (another attempt at documenting the intangible culture of a place before it's lost)
Romo, the smartphone robot (technology) (so crazy and cute!)

How is it that expats/ foreigners/ tourists sometimes (often) know your city better than you do? Tarquin Hall is a British journalist, Jim and Adam are American, and recently I (with Delhi Dallying and friends) participated in a surprisingly tough Delhi quiz hosted by another British journalist, Sam Miller, and which was (surprise!) won by other foreigners (of unknown nationality).

Also, Happy Diwali!

Ek Anek Ekta

2011-10-24T21:51:00.000+05:30

Via Jabberwock and then Anita and Amit Vachharajani:

Ek Anek Ekta, 1974, animated short film for Doordarshan

How BRILLIANT is this short? I love, LOVE it. The narrative flows so well, and there are so many small instances which make the movie for me: the boy struggling to pick the mangoes in the beginning, the innocent voices, the secular, let's-all-unite! message, how the white people become colourful, the mala metaphor, my mom remembering the song and singing along!

Wonderful how small things can make you so happy.

In their blog Amit (illustrator/film assistant) and Anita (author) Vachharajani talk about an eclectic mix of thing- but most interestingly about old, retro Indian memorabilia- comics, magazines, TV. I would never have known that Amitabh Bachchan starred in his very own superhero comic! His alter-ego: the Supremo, helped by his loyal side-kicks, Vijay and Anthony. You can read about the Vachharajani's adventures with Supremo here and here.

...someone in China or India can do your work more cheaply than you can.

2011-10-21T16:50:00.000+05:30

I'm currently reading A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the World (Daniel Pink, 2005), and it's both nice and fucking-annoying at the same time. Pink (imagine having that as your surname) is basically saying that the world is a-changing, that previously looked-down-on 'right-brain' skills (such as creativity, looking-at-the-big-picture, empathy) are going to be more valuable than the traditionally admired 'left-brain' skills (such as logic and sequential thinking). To survive in this scary, topsy-turvy world where design, for example, is a better career option than engineering, law or medicine, we need to apply both sides of our brain- basically, a 'whole' new mind. While I love the title (and the cover, it's neon!), I'm not sure about the book itself.

First of all, my version has a ton of typos and grammatical errors, which I just don't understand. I mean, how could the editors/ proof readers/ whoever let this happen? This is a minor concern, though, and the main reason for my annoyance is quite different.

Pink (I just love using his surname) says -and I guess I agree- that the main reasons for the fall of the left-brainers are Abundance, Asia and Automation. Abundance, because there's so much wealth and so many products that the only things which differentiate one offering from the other is design or marketing or story-telling, and not the function of the product itself. Asia and Automation because, well, now either machines or low-paid workers in India can do the technical boring bits for much less money. So, the only way to survive in such an economy is to adapt and offer services which can't be done by the machines or the low-paid Indian workers.

I started getting annoyed pretty early on, because I kept feeling that Dan was saying (though not stating) that Asian workers were not capable of doing such creative work, that America, UK and Canada were somehow more evolved countries which had already made the shift from the Information Age to the "Conceptual Age". Somewhat irrational, I know, but I just hate the American arrogance or whatever which makes it seem that now the menial and routine work can be outsourced, and whole-brained people must "rise" in the first world for it to maintain its supremacy. This theme recurs throughout the book (I've read till page 183 of 247) and makes me gnaw my teeth every time. I mean, first you promote globalization, because you want a wider market for your products, and then, when globalization also means that you have to compete in the global market for work, then it's a bad thing?

But Pink doesn't really say that. What he's saying is that "we" need to deal with it, and adapt ourselves. Yes, I know, I'm not making much sense, even to myself, and I also know that this book was written in 2005 by an American for Americans and I've already said that I know I'm being irrational. But I really, really hate how Pink goes on and on about Asians (especially Indians) now doing the routine left-brain work. I feel like he's constantly deriding their right-brain capabilities by assuming that Americans are in competition with Asians only for left-brain jobs. This, when everyday I come across so many examples of amazing design work done by Indians, when I hear that the science stream topper from my brother's school is studying design at NID. This is my issue with the book: I think that the whole world is waking up to the power of right-brain thinking, and not just the western, "advanced" world.

By some weird quirk of fate (ha) I came across this article the same day I was feeling all pissed about the book, and the author made me feel better about Americans in general. The author says:

When you say of the Indians, “evidently, the quality is good enough,” I can tell you that yes, it is, and often it is better. There is a lot of design talent beyond our borders — educated, clear thinking, visionary, with great enthusiasm and a tremendous work ethic. To us insular Americans, this may be shocking. Get unshocked, and get ready to play. It’s a good thing.

and this is the attitude I was looking for, not the let's-develop-new-skills-that-the-Indians-don't-have-so-we-can-maintain-our-domination. Argh, I feel as if I'm being excessively critical again, but I can't help it. And I have to say that in spite of all this, I do think that the book is pretty good, it does talk a lot of sense, and it offers some much-needed advice. I may not love it, but I do like it.

On an aside, Before and After Magazine's "design talks" are pretty interesting. They have some nice free stuff to download/ watch too.

Also, came across this neat illustration when image-searching for the book cover:

The artist's "visual notes" for the book.

Designing the life and death of

2011-10-15T23:28:00.000+05:30

How the Newsweeklies Covered (and Designed) the Death of Steve Jobs - Grids - SPD.ORG - Grids:

'via Blog this'

Amazing article on what went on behind-the-scenes at Time, Bloomberg Businessweek and Newsweek. Reading about the sheer energy and the commitment driving each team-member as they worked towards the absolutely brilliant covers and spreads is exhilarating. And since the decision to go with special issues focusing entirely on Jobs was so last-minute (for obvious reasons) the office environment doesn't seem much different from an all-nighter the day before the final for a group project. When you're just so crazily focused on making the deadline, it's like a major case of tunnel vision. Seriously, you have to live it to believe it. Rohan, Varun and I got the crazies while trying to finish ANDC: I reached home at 3 in the night, no lunch, no dinner, but many phone calls and lets-abuse-the-battery-backup-limitations-of-our-laptops sessions and even more place hopping later. We went from Ghaziabad to Indirapuram to hostel to New Friends to Julena to ITO to hostel to Julena, all in the course of some 7-8 hours, in the pursuit of a working plotting machine.

I want to own all the three magazines. Time and Newsweek for the brilliant cover-photographs, but especially Bloomberg Businessweek because the cover-back spread is printed on a metallic silver base. Gah.

Art is for everyone

2011-10-14T01:32:00.000+05:30

From Art Direction Explained, At Last!, an imaginary (but well researched) conversation between legendary graphic designer Pierre Bernard and maverick adman Pascal Gregoire:

GREGOIRE: Wait a minute! Weren't you also mixing codes with your Louvre logo? You used a black-and-white photograph of a cloud as the background for the word LOUVRE, spelled out in all caps. The letters look like they have been carved out of marble, yet they float in space. It makes no sense.

BERNARD: I was trying to convey the idea of grandeur, something associated with the Louvre institution, but also with the concept of public space and the democratic values attached to it. Originally, I had proposed a logo inspired by I.M. Pei's pyramid, but he vetoed it. It was written in his contract that the only triangle would be his triangle. So I decided to evoke the presence of the glass pyramid by integrating in the design of the logo a photograph of the cloudy Parisian sky as seen through Pei's iconographic skylight.

I learnt many things from this anecdote. One of which is: I.M. Pei has a hell of an ego.

Portfolio

2011-10-12T18:48:00.002+05:30

As part of my course, we need to spend our 8th semester (starting January 2012) getting work experience and training at an architecture firm/wherever-the-hell-you-get-an-internship.

This is what I've come up with:

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Would love some feedback! And if you spot a typo please tell me about it, I might still be able to correct it.

God knows. Or does he?

2011-10-10T00:31:00.000+05:30

This flow of creation, from where did it arise,
Whether it was ordered or was not,
He, the Observer, in the highest heaven,
He alone knows, unless... He know it not.

From the Hymn to Creation, the Nasadiya Sukta, in the Rig Veda.

So, there's no answer. How... quirky.
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I'm currently reading Introducing Hinduism: A Graphic Guide. So you can blame it for my sudden philosophical slant.

ideo-

2011-10-03T02:15:00.000+05:30

Words divide, pictures unite.
and
Words are pictures too.

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Ideograms and ideographs convey ideas without explicitly stating them.

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From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

idea
late 14c., "archetype of a thing in the mind of God;Platonic `idea,'" from L. idea "idea," and in Platonicphilosophy "archetype," from Gk. idea "ideal prototype,"lit. "the look of a thing (as opposed to the reality); form; kind, sort,nature," from idein "to see," from PIE *wid-es-ya-, suffixedform of base *weid- "to see" (see vision). Sense of "result ofthinking" first recorded 1640s.

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From V for Vendetta (2006):

But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and Iknow, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But who was hereally? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man,because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed first handthe power of ideas, I've seen people kill in the name of them, and diedefending them... but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it...ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love... And it is not anidea that I miss, it is a man... A man that made me remember the Fifth ofNovember. A man that I will never forget.

and

Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath thismask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.

From the V for Vendetta graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

of news and other things.

2011-09-20T01:15:00.001+05:30

Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre

The oldest photograph of a person, 1838.

From wiki:

Boulevard du Temple, Paris,3rd arrondissement, Daguerreotype. The purportedly firstpicture of a living person. The image shows a busy street, but due to exposuretime of more than ten minutes, the traffic was moving too much to appear. Theexception is the man at the bottom left, who stood still getting his bootspolished long enough to show. Look closely and you will also see another mansitting on a bench to the right reading a newspaper. Also in the upper lefthand side you can also see another man standing under the awning of the 3rdbuilding from the left. What looks to be a woman standing under the streetlantern at 10 o'clock from the man getting his shoes shined and another one inthe big white building,1st row 3rd window down. Notice the child in the topfloor window of the white building in front. Note that the image is a mirror image.

10 minute exposure time is so crazy. I mean, none of the carriages (cars?) are visible, and it's not like they're super fast either.

Got this from the 1000memories blog post How many photos have ever been taken? which has some other crazy stuff. Sample this:

I just don't understand why it's all so PINK.

Not really a surprise, but still, I DID NOT imagine that Facebook would have so many more photographs than other libraries.

This post is via Charles Apples' blog on newspaper/ magazine design. Also discovered via him: the Nueseum website's Today's Front Pages webpage which, well, showcases the frontpages of newspapers from around the world (but mostly within the USA). The Nueseum also displays newspaper frontpages outside its building along the public sidewalk.The Nueseum's in Washington, and while we didn't visit it, I remember clearly its very dramatic (and impressive) facade:

Excuse the random composition. Taken when on the move.

I wonder: is this mannerism, as defined by Robert Venturi? An example of the decorated shed and not the duck. Fits in well with the WordWeb definition of mannerism: A deliberate pretence or exaggerated display. In any case, I think it works really, really well.

Some other interesting links:
sans serif: on the latest behind-the-scenes happenings in Indian news and media. Offers pretty much what the tagline offers: the news. the views. the juice.
Information is Beautiful: on infographics- simply put, graphics which covey information. Some really-fucking-brilliantly-amazing work. (via Rachit)
History of Graphic Design: Just how beautiful is this site? Sigh.

Development and Dignity

2011-09-17T19:14:00.001+05:30

Warning: long, long rant ahead.

In the fourth yearof architectural training, you do only one design project: housing, which is,frankly, large and detailed enough to occupy the entire semester. Every yearthe faculty decides on a common theme and students try and attempt their ownversion of it. Last year (or was it the year before last?) the theme wasfuturistic housing. So everyone tried to make funky forms and what not.

This year we haveto design inclusive housing, the meaning of inclusive being not exclusive,but the real debate arises when you try to define it further: inclusive to whatextent? What do we want to achieve: social inclusivity -differentraces, ethnicities, genders, ages, disabilities- or economicinclusivity -different classes- or maybe even both?

As part of theclass's preliminary research, me and my housing partner, Varun (it’s done inteams of two) were told to present on this very issue (before we found out itwas to be our theme). I don't want to get into the inclusive debate, because Iam frankly sick of talking about this, needless to say Varun and I spent many,many hours thrashing it out. Not surprisingly -especially considering thegovernment policy of 'forcing' private developers to provide for a minimumamount of EWS (economically weaker sections) and LIG (low income groups)dwelling units in any housing project- we started talking economics andcapitalism and socialism and the whole brouhaha.

Varun is staunchlyon the capitalist side. He sometimes wonders whether a completely liberaleconomy with little or no government regulation might not be the way forward.As for me, while I felt sorry when I saw the living conditions of the poor, apart of me also felt that they couldn't afford the things they needed becausethey didn't have money, and that was OK, because we live in a fair economicsystem where only the purchasing power maters. I did economics in school, andit seemed pretty basic to me- the market forces of demand and supply governeverything.

As secondaryresearch for my dissertation, my guide asked me to watch Story of Stuff and The Economics of Happiness. She also asked me to read economist Amit Bhaduri'swork: The Face You Were Afraid to See and Development with Dignity, and both make compelling (if slightly repetitive) reads.I also recently finished reading Introducing Capitalism: a graphic guide. This blog post is, in essence, my understanding of and thoughts onthese books.

I just love the cover design of The Face You Were Afraid to See.

How awesome are the photograph, the font, and

the yellow against the stark black and white, all put together?

Bhaduri inparticular makes very convincing arguments against liberalizationand globalization. In a globalized economy and in a free tradesystem, producers from a still developing country are required to compete inthe world market. The only way they can succeed is if they reduce the price ofthe commodity they are trying to sell (less price as compared to alternatives,more demand and thus profit). This is generally done by reducing the costsincurred in producing that commodity: labour, raw material, land, etc.

To reduce labourcosts, most industries opt for mechanization and try to increase theproductivity of each individual worker, thus minimizing the total number ofworkers. This works perfectly well on a micro level, for one firm. The problemarises when all (or most) of the producers start doing the same, especially ina labour intensive country like India.

When so manyemployers reduce jobs, the demand becomes much greater than the supply, andworkers are happy to work in worse conditions than prescribed by the law justto make a living. Also, every worker becomes immediately replaceable,promoting the hire-and-fire system and casualization of labour. This is a lotlike the informal construction labourer market- there assembles a huge crowd ofsuch labourers near Kotla Mubarakpur who are looking for work on a day-by-daybasis. Because there are so many competing for so few jobs, they willingly workfor less than the daily wage prescribed by the government. This whole time,neither the builder nor the industry owner is doing anything wrong because theyare just accommodating the market forces- higher the supply, lowerthe price. They would have to be seemingly stupid to pay more for the labour.

Our traditionaleconomy was based on labour-intensive agriculture and other allied fields. Withindustrialization came the shift to the secondary and tertiary sector. Inrecent years, in order to ‘stay on the good side’ of international financialorganizations such as IMF and the World Bank (the same reason for the move tofree trade, which most benefits the first world members) the government hasdecided to promote private-public partnerships, wherein the government acts asa facilitator for the corporations. In fact, the relationship between politicalpowers and big corporations has a long mutually beneficial history. The governmenthas often used the Land Acquisition Act, for example, to take land away frompeople who had been living on it for generations (with little to nocompensation) for ‘public purpose’ and give it to industrial giants at rockbottom prices- subsidising for them the initial cost of land, and in the caseof the mineral rich Chattisgarh and Jharkhand, the raw material. No doubt thereis substantial exchange of money on the side. This, I think, is where thecorporations are at fault: they are willing to pay bribes to facilitate thistransaction, instead of relying on the basics of economics and capitalism- thelogic that they could have bought out the original owners simply by appealingto their self-interest. The government should also stay out of it; there areother ways of encouraging industry.

This also meansthat these people have no options but to look for jobs in other sectors. Inessence, this means that there are many -the majority, in fact- who areunemployed or marginally employed in the country and who thus have very lowpurchasing power. They are unable to contribute significantly asbuyers. But, yet, our economy is experiencing very high growth, eventhough the majority is pitiably poor. This is because money is increasinglygetting concentrated in the hands of a privileged few: the rich aregetting richer, and the poor are getting poor, at least relatively if notabsolutely. The rich demand more and more products, and the industry respondsby producing for them. This is what is driving our economy.

Thus, the majordemand in the market is for products for the rich- products which by virtue oftheir character require specialized, often large scale, productiontechniques and technologies, not to mention marketing and management. Bhaduri'soft stated example is of bottled water- we havemany expensive variants of in the market even while a significantportion of our population has no access to potable water. This is almost likethe Great Famine (1845-50) when the Irish were too poor to buy food, and thepopulation reduced by 20-25%. But, at the same time, Ireland was a net exporterof food- for example, corn was shipped to Britain where it could fetch a betterprice in the market.

Small scaleproducers are unable to compete with the big businesses and corporations, notjust in terms of technologies but also the economies of production and scale. Thisresults in a sort-of poverty trap, with the added result that the rich arebecomingly increasingly indifferent to the poor, who are unable to contributeeither as buyers or sellers. The only way out of this cycle would be bettereducation, health and other public service, but under the new economic policiesthe investment in these sectors has fallen considerably.

Going by how the marketsoperate, under no regulation, producers would logically only produce thosecommodities for which they could get the most demand and best price. In today’sinequitable conditions, this would mean that even while the poor can barelymake a living and thus going without roti,kapda and makaan, the rich aredriving our economy forward to never before seen heights.

Obviously, then, high economic growth does not necessarilymean economic development. The growth is powered by the increase in purchasingof the power, and, against conventional knowledge, this growth is not trickling down to the poor. Allthose clichéd sayings that ‘there are two Indias’ is actually true.

This inequity isonly rising. Bhaduri thinks that it’s only a little while before the economywill crash and burn. Like what happened during the Great Depression (1930s).Right before, in 1929, 0.1% of America’s population controlled 34% of thewealth, owning as much money as the bottom 42%.

America was ablestand on its feet again with the help of Keynes’ and Roosevelt’s ‘The New Deal,’which focused on increasing public expenditure and greater regulation offinancial institutions and trading. The policies focused on always ensuringthat there was money flowing in the economic system. After the Second World War,America’s plans to help the impoverished European and East Asian countries –theMarshall Plan- also hinged on this. They provided a significant amount in aid,but with the proviso that 90% of it be matched by the receiving government (therest 10% being a repayable loan with interest), and also that the recipientsco-operated in an open market. Thus, most of this money was spent on Americangood and the policy meant that more money flowed back into the Americaneconomy.

Anyways, my point is that even America imposed stringentcontrols on its economy in the early stages, at least until the 80s when MiltonFriedman started questioning the importance of government intervention-Monetarism. Of course, both Monetarism and Keynesianism hinge on ever-increasingconsumption -disparaged quite famously in the Story of Stuff- with its associated negative cultural effects.

So, maybe, like Bhaduri advocates, the Indian governmentshould also impose more regulations and dramatically increase publicexpenditure on basic rights like education and health, and also on sharedinfrastructure, thereby creating employment.

Take the example of South Korea -a rich and developedcountry- which got there by following a form of “State Capitalism” whichincluded protectionist tariffs and government expenditure in infrastructure. Onthe other hand, many African countries who got aid from the World Bank and IMF -providingthey opened their markets- are still struggling.

I’m not against free trade and liberalization andglobalization, I just think that maybe the Indian economy is not yet ready for acompletely open market. Maybe we should encourage free trade in some sectorswhile still protecting the others.

Argh, this is such a confusing issue where every turn meansa new minefield. It seems that these days Varun and I are always arguing aboutthis, and our opinions are never fixed, nor our ideas clear, because we arenever able to completely defend our reasoning to each other. Bleh.

Love and Type

2011-09-15T23:34:00.002+05:30

WhatFont

Great Google Chrome app which identifies (most of) the fonts used on a web page.

FontStruct

Free (and easy) online tool to create fonts. There is also amazingly awesome amateur work up for download.

THIS IS SO MUCH FUN!

work-(hopefully)-in-progress

Meet Your Type

Brilliant, hilarious type guide by FontShop. More of their education resources here.

Open publication - Free publishing - More education

***

Why do all these typography websites have two word names with no spacing?

Daryaganj

2011-09-15T22:36:00.000+05:30

On the Daryaganj Walk, March 2011, organized by students of Sushant School of Art and Architecture, Gurgaon.

Check out more photos here.

Does Daryaganj get its name by virtue of its (earlier) location along the river?

Hauz Rani

2011-09-15T21:41:00.001+05:30

As experienced on the walk back home from the Metro station

I’ve lived in my present home for 17 years. The Hauz Raniurban village has always been right next door, but I didn’t really become awareof it until my brother discovered AvonVideo Selection, where we could rent movie DVDs for as little as 50 rupees.Suddenly we were going to Hauz Rani every other day, at least until that guystarted home delivery/ pickup.

Then the metro started. The Malviya Nagar station isactually on the edge of Hauz Rani and Saket, and the closest to home, about 15minutes away. For some time I took the long way home, along Press Enclave road.I don’t even remember how I discover the shortcut –I think I saw some people goingalong it and decided to follow- but I now go via the village.

There is a steep stairway (going up) which open out onto avery large piece of undeveloped land where weeds and shrubs and urinating menreign supreme, though there are some trees. On the right is a high wall, behindwhich, on a slightly higher level, I assume, are houses. In the past month acouple of food and paan shops have cropped up here, and they very conveniently usethe wall top as their sill.

The path bends right and the wall continues, though thepaving does not. Suddenly you have to battle through mud, kitchad and water logged holes. A little further away, and due tothe benign grace of some enterprising fellow (or a cow gone crazy, because thevillagers do keep cattle) thereappears, literally, a hole in the wall, portal to the Hauz Rani I know. Thewall is now on my left, and on the right are bright turquoise and pink painted2-3 storey narrow houses. This lane, about 2 metres wide, is literally theirfront yard, and since many keep their doors open, I’ve often caught glimpses ofold men reclining on charpais and ofwomen doing pochcha, squatting withtheir sarees hiked up. Most housesalso have their toilets opening onto the streets, small 1m squarecompartment-like rooms with only enough space for a Indian style WC. I always feelcompelled to look the other way whenever I see anyone entering or exiting, asif I’m invading their privacy.

This is something I very often wonder: do the villagers mindthe sudden influx of passersby through their previously anonymous galli? Or are they happy, seeingopportunity for enterprise? I’ve already mentioned the new khana-peena-paan shops, and there also a couple of small groceryshops on the galli, though I don’t know if they came up only after the Metrodid.

I also never feel awkwardwhen passing through, however short my shorts are, unlike on the latter leg ofmy journey when I have to go via a part of Malviya Nagar I like to call the Sardar Colony (no offence intended),since the whole neighbourhood seems to be populated by Sikhs (and I’m not joking, houses have quaint nameslike Pahalwan Niwas and the colonygates have very prominent shield-and-kirpanembellishments).

I think it’s because the Hauz Rani villagers are so busyworking or cleaning or playing (in the case of children), and there are alwaysyouth in Malviya Nagar who seemingly have nothing to do, or are at least busytaking a break whenever I pass through. As a result -and I’m not saying thatthey misbehave, because they don’t, but they are obviously people-watching-suddenly I feel as if all eyes are on me, walking alone on a very quiet(especially after the hustle-bustle of the Hauz Rani lane) and wide 5 metreroad (this short-cut is not as busy, but I see new people discovering it everyday –yahan se bhi gol chakkar aayega kya?).

The part of Hauz Rani that I’ve just described, the face ofthe galli, is all I associate withHauz Rani. So whenever I find out something new, I’m always very surprised. Forexample, recently a small group of us decided to design an intervention in thearea for a competition, and I discovered that the village is actually muchlarger, going all the way up to Khirki and the Saket malls, and that is has aover-700-year long history. I found it so very disconcerting- I felt as if I wouldnow have to alter the image I had rendered in my head. In fact, when I say HauzRani I still mean this area, eventhough this is almost definitely an extension of the original village.

(I also found out why there’s a Hauz in the name, even though there’s no evidence of a lake or waterbody nearby, which I had previouslywondered about. Click here to go to avery interesting essay -'Perceiving ‘your’ land: neighbourhood settlements and theHauz-i Rani'- by historian Sunil Kumar on the hitherto lake and the changing relationshipbetween the village and affluent Saket.)

Below is my mental map of Hauz Rani and the Google Earth image of the same area. I've also marked out the route I take on another Google Earth image.

Open publication - Free publishing - More hauz rani

Freedom

2011-09-12T20:45:00.000+05:30

can be dangerous and deadly and everything in between.

-Professor I.M. Chisti on 17th August, 2011.

RIP

2011-09-07T00:22:00.002+05:30

The phool mandis of Delhi are gone.

From this...

to this.

Here is the only online news post on it I've found till now. How superficial can you get? I mean, Teachers' Day? Doesn't this shift deserve an article on its own?

sunshades

2011-09-06T23:17:00.007+05:30

The shading devices used in the SRCC building.

It's an absolutely gorgeous building which me and Rohan visited back in the summer holidays- so we saw it when classes were off and the Delhi heat was at its worst. The climatic response is very cool (pun not intended): basic orientation and different designs for different facades, colonnades, deep recesses, projections, ventilators, sun shades -the picture above being only one of many types used here.

Any idea who designed this? Preliminary online research just yields this very introductory article on SRCC's architectural style, with no mention of the architect himself.

***

By the way, Rohan, Varun and me have expanded on our Delhi Dallying seminar and have started The Delhi Blog. Check it out!

. . .

2011-03-23T10:35:00.003+05:30

Recently, I realized that there is no one version of a city. Of course, I’d heard it said before: so many different authors, so many stories. But it hadn’t struck me, not affected me; I never thought about the other facets, so they weren’t there.

I’ve lived all my life in Delhi. Since I joined college I’ve been commuting by the bus, and anyways, the road is for everyone. So I did see the poor, the working class, the informal sector. Sometimes I admired them, for they never let an opportunity for moneymaking pass. There are people who get on the bus at one stop, hawk their wares (Delhi maps, sets of pens, pencils, tablecloths, lighters) and get off at the next one. What I’m trying to say is: I wasn’t unaware. Maybe I was just uninterested.

This last winter I learned about the Genda Phool Project. Himanshu Verma, an art curator, had launched it to ‘save the phool mandis’ of Delhi. When I heard that he was looking for some help mapping the flower markets, I volunteered. We explored the Meharauli, Fatehpuri and the Connaught Place mandis. Again, I saw the people, loved the experience, the hustle and bustle and feel of the informal markets. But I wasn’t sure about the project. After all, what was so wrong about shifting them all out of the city into a brand new, swanky flower mall?

Slowly, I understood. These were real people, and this would affect their lives (and of those connected to them) in ways I couldn’t even contemplate: economics, the commute, the supply, loss of customers. But the worst realisation of all was that I couldn’t answer the question: Why were they being moved?

I’d always trusted the administration, the politicos and the ‘experts’. When the demolishing of all the illegal colonies and unauthorized commercial activity was going on, I thought, good. They deserve what they’re getting; the Master Plan says they can’t be here, so how can they be here? But now that the band-aid had been ripped off, I suddenly saw the other side.

The mandi people were making an honest living, occupying MCD/DDA space, yes, but they weren’t obstructing anything; rather, they were giving life to a dead zone. The Plaza in front of the State Emporiums on Baba Kharak Singh Marg is idle at all times, except those three-four hours every morning when India’s largest phool mandi brings it alive. And moving them out would serve no purpose, besides making Delhi even more antiseptic and sterile, seemingly ‘world class’. Does world class mean losing its own identity, becoming more linear and ‘city’ like, while pushing all that make it different from New York and Shanghai under the carpet? Slowly, we were losing our urban heritage; these mandis were just a small part of a larger agenda. We were too busy with “what will foreigners think?” to understand that if we ignore all that gives us character we might just lose our appeal. An older Times of India campaign shouted ‘Delhi: from walled city to world city.’ Why couldn’t we have both?

The seminar we organized for Utopia this year, Delhi Dallying, on the imageablity of Delhi, and a Delhi 2050 discussion I subsequently attended, both reinforced this opinion. The speakers again brought to life this other part of Delhi, the labouring poor, who, I realised, were cogs in the framework of Delhi. Without them, while the city might not come to a stop, it would certainly lose most of its steam. The informal sector engages with the city on so many dimensions that we only see the tip of the iceberg. Surely, if I could realise this, so could the bureaucracy. I was left wondering: did people genuinely not care, or was it just a ‘not in my backyard’ mentality? Certainly all of this was happening not because of the ‘hostility of the poor, but because of the hostility of the rich’. There was this ‘class war’ being fought in the city without my knowledge. I wanted to know: Why can’t we be more inclusive, more accepting?

The kabadi bazaar in front of Red Fort has already been moved, and the Darayagnj book market has just barely been saved from a similar fate. I don’t know about the kabadi bazaar, but I’ve explored the book market (and discovered some amazing finds), and I know that it’s a brilliant use of space. Darayganj is closed, and would have been empty on Sundays, if not for this. Even all these weekly sabzi markets that pop up, they all add value, identity and meaning to the areas they occupy. They give character, and of course, there are the issues of energy efficiency and economics and reducing the number of middle men. Do we really want to replace all the sabzi mandis with malls, all the phool mandis with malls, the book market with malls?

Most of us would probably answer a vehement no!. I realize now that we’ve been asking the wrong questions. It’s not ‘What do people think? Do they care? How do you make them want to care?’ as much as ‘This is what is happening, the full and the whole of it. What do you think?’

The problem is, we’re never asked.

Acoustic Design of a Recording Studio

2010-11-21T11:03:00.002+05:30

Building Sciences and Services project with Ammani Nair.

Open publication - Free publishing - More acoustics

Again, thanks to Gaurav, Nikhil and Akshay! Sorry for all the bother.

An Architect

2010-11-21T00:58:00.004+05:30

Part of a Theory of Design project. Profile and critique of the work and design philosophies of architects Robert Venturi and C.P. Kukreja.

Open publication - Free publishing - More venturi

***

This one's not really done- the portfolio list isn't even close to completion and the case study's not the best either. But since the 'design party' is on Thursday...

Open publication - Free publishing - More kukreja

A Tale of Two Cities: Bhopal

2010-11-02T19:25:00.006+05:30

Like Amma said, our attempt to make it big.

Short film about our experiences in Bhopal during our class trip. NOT the final cut, there's still some work left (minor editing, improving the sound quality, correcting the title, etc). But we decided to put it up because we have no idea when all of that that will get done.

Presenting:

A Tale of Two Cities: Bhopal

And YES, we've called ourselves the Archifellas. Obviously, a play on A Capella. We're really proud of the soundtrack :) Wrote the lyrics, made the music (no instruments!), though the style is obviously inspired by the Madhya Pradesh tourism ads.

The Archifellas are:

Ammani Nair

Amri Chadha

Ishan Khan

Maulik Yagnik

Rohan Patankar

Varun Bajaj

and me :)

Gangtok

2010-10-24T21:44:00.005+05:30

Holiday homework for Theory of Settlements. Group project with N. Navneethakrishnan.

Open publication - Free publishing - More sikkim

***

My dad's family also moved to Sikkim during the trade boom. They've been there since the early 1930s, maybe before

Near Hauz Khas

2010-10-06T23:09:00.011+05:30

Planned to explore the Hauz Khas monuments today. But a last minute movie plan (Dabang, fun, but only if you don't think) meant that my brother and I only had time to explore the Deer Park and Green Park monuments.

Deer Park is on the way to Hauz Khas village, on the right of the road leading in from Aurobindo Place market. The Green Park monuments I'm talking of are at the beginning of this road, right next to the market.

Deer Park is actually a jungle, interspersed with seemingly random jogging tracks and infinitely more random exercise bars and balancing beams and other 'fitness' equipment. And it's full of insects. A word of advice: either wear full length clothes, or apply insect repellent. Otherwise you'll end up like I did, with a couple of dozen bites all over my arms and legs.

There are three tombs in the forest, and even though I had Lucy Peck's brilliant 'Delhi: A Thousand Years of Building' to guide me, we wasted precious time trying to find them.

1. Bagh-i-Alam ka Gaumbad, late 15th to early 16th c., supposedly one of the finest Lodi tombs in Delhi. And it was pretty impressive, though unfortunately the interior was inaccessible, and there seemed to be nobody around who would open the gates for us. Peeking in through the bars revealed the beautiful inside of the dome- it's got some awesome plaster work. The tomb also had a 'wall mosque' adjoining it - just a wall on the west side with a mihrab. The sign says that its roof had probably fallen in.

2. Tuhfewala Gumbad, 14th c. Pretty plain. Some guys were playing tash inside and blasting Akon and Justin Bieber. Baby baby baby oooooh.

3. Kali Gumti, 14th c. Small. And black.

I was disappointed that there were no signages leading to the tombs or even ASI information boards (barring ones for the small wall mosque near Bagh-i-Alam and the Kali Gumti). These monuments were obviously poorly maintained, and slightly vandalized, but honestly, they still had charm, shrouded as they were in greenery.

***

We took one of those Vodafone e-ricks back to Aurobindo Place. There are actually 6 monuments in this area, but one of them (Biran ka Gumbad, late 15th c.) is some distance inside Green Park, and since we were really running late we had to miss out on it. These are different from the Deer Park tombs because they are very much maintained. Every one of them has an ornate sign outside and a detailed information board with drawings. They also have some pretty fancy lighting.

1. Choti Gumti, late 15th c. Very, very small. But exceedingly pretty. The cream plaster was beautiful.

2. Sakri Gumti, late 15th c. Literally 'narrow dome', easy to understand why. Most probably a gateway and not a tomb. An old man was sleeping inside, complete with jute mat and water bottle and slippers left outside.

3. Barah Khamba, 14th c. Dome supported by twelve pillars of varying sizes. I remember our History of Architecture teacher telling us that there are many Barah Khambas in Delhi, not just the one which gives Barakhamba Road its name.

4. Dadi ka Gumbad, late 15th c. Big, and very impressive.

5. Poti ka Gumbad, late 14th c. Right next to the Dadi ka Gumbad, and so seems even smaller. The Dadi-Poti Gumbads, though very close together, have nothing to do with each other and the names have no real history. I guess they just represent the sizes.

***

Had fun, but am sorta disappointed about not getting to see what I really went there for: the Hauz Khas complex. Dunno when I'll next get the time.

Nehru Memorial

2010-10-05T19:30:00.011+05:30

Slept away the first few days of the holidays. But I was really bored today, so when I read that the Nehru Planetarium has organized a sky show on Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, I dragged my brother to the Teen Murti Bhavan to see it. The complex (huge, around 45 acres) houses the Nehru Planetarium, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, and the auditorium. It's called Teen Murti because of a group of three statues, a WWI memorial to soldiers from Mysore, Jodhpur and Hydrabad. The main building, a classic example of colonial architecture, is designed by Robert Tor Russel, who also designed CP. It was built in 1929-30 as the residence of the Commander-in-Chief of the British Indian Army, and after independence, in August 1948, it became the official residence of PM Jawaharlal Nehru. After his death in 1964 it was converted into his memorial.

We went to the Planetarium first. Outside there are a series of pretty awesome educational exhibits, some interactive, on astronomy and the universe, although some don't really work. But they really do explain seemingly difficult concepts easily. They were facing some problems with the Chandra movie, and so they screened 'The Ultimate Universe' instead. This was my first time in a planetarium, and it was brilliant! The movie, about the universe in general, was great and really informative, though slightly too long and boring. The visuals were amazing, and the whole experience was almost 3D.

Very surprisingly, right outside the planetarium, and part of the complex, is a protected monument! The Kushak Mahal was built by Feroze Shah Tughlaq as a hunting lodge. Quaint and surrounded by greens, it's really one of the lesser known monuments of Delhi -I can't even find an appropriate link!

The museum was boring, and most galleries were old and not really maintained. There was a new exhibit called 'Nehru, the Architect of Independent India', which was better, though honestly, still boring. The recorded speeches were interesting. One you had to listen to the normal way, on headphones, but for the other one (Nehru announcing Bapu's death), you lifted the receiver of one of those old-style telephones. Pretty charming. Since it's a personalia museum, parts of the Teen Murti House -the sitting room, study, and Nehru's and Indira's bedrooms- have been preserved. These were also great, and shit! the amount of books they had. The best bit about the museum, though, was undoubtedly the recreated Central Hall of the Parliament as on 14/15 August, 1947 midnight. There are figures of the speaker, and all these people, GB Pant, BR Ambedkar, C Rajagopalachari, etc., at least 12-13 of them, sitting on the benches, all listening to an animated figure of Nehru, complete with head and eye movements, delivering the 'Tryst with Destiny' speech. You could sit with all of them and listen. It was awesome.

We also went to the auditorium, where they had a play going on, which, sadly, we were too late for. The building is nice, one of those which bridge the inside and the outside. Our next stop, the nearby canteen, was pretty dark and dingy, but mostly because greenery covers all the windows! Really weird.

I enjoyed the day, and the planetarium was amazing, but, like I said, I was disappointed with the museum. And considering that it's a stop on the HoHo bus tour as well, I expected better.

P.S. The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library has a whole host of events lined up during the CWG. Unfortunately, I won't be in Delhi for most of them. Damn :/

Update, 06/11/11:
You can read more about the complex in The Modern Architecture of New Delhi: 1928-2007, a brilliant little book. Discovered that the architect of the Teen Murti Bhavan extensions is Padma Shri Mansinh M. Rana, erstwhile Chief Architect of the NDMC.

Science

2010-10-02T12:49:00.006+05:30

Science is beyond awesome. It's the brilliantest, most awe-inspiring thing ever. I always knew this, of course, but lately I've been reading a lot of science-ish books, and watching a lot of Discovery Science, and I'm completely overwhelmed by all the amazing things that science enabled me to know. When I think of all the secrets that scientists have unravelled, and all those that they soon will, I, well, I can't even contemplate the scope, because I know so little of their discoveries. All I feel is this extreme sense of well being that I was born and live in this age, where people want to know how, and why- this age where we are encouraged to question everything. And, when someone finds one of the answers (which, in most cases, leads to even more questions), they are able to, and encouraged to, share them with the whole world. And then come all the discussions, and debates, and further experiments. Science never stops, and I love that. People never stop questioning.

And science is so frickin' vast. I read What on Earth Happened, and that was about everything. In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman gets upto all sorts of antics, and in terms of science, he definitely doesn't limit himself to just theoretical physics. He's experimented with biology, and chemistry, and 'magic' tricks, and ant behaviour, and electronics, and so much more. Even Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics cover such a large range of topics, and I know they're about economics, but economics is also a science. Right now I'm reading Genome, and I'm flabbergasted by what all comes just under genetics, and how interrelated all science is. Behaviour and psychology and physiology and genetics are all different facets of the same body, and they work together to make us who we are. Next on my list are The Code Book, George's Secret Key to the Universe and A Brief History of Time, and anything else I can get my hands on. Science is seriously fascinating and knowing is seriously addictive. I can't seem so stop.

Edit, 13.10.2010:

From Genome, pg. 271

The fuel on which science runs is ignorance. Science is like a hungry furnace that must be fed logs from the forests of ignorance that surround us. In the process, the clearing we call knowledge expands, but the more it expands, the longer its perimeter and the more ignorance comes into view.

So, so true.

Fruition

2010-09-27T19:32:00.008+05:30

Got a Jury Commendation for our (group project with Varun Bajaj) entry to the IGBC Green Design Competition 2010!

It's a national level competition, open to all architecture students. This year you had to redesign or retrofit your department of architecture building. If you're really interested, you can get the brief here.

Other winners from our college include Anuj and Kabilan who won first (w00t!), and Ammani and Amri, and Aditya Wallabh (who partnered with his sister at MANIT, Bhopal), who also got a commendation.

Open publication - Free publishing

If you can't see the above, you can also see our entry here.

Emblem

2010-09-04T00:01:00.013+05:30

Noun; em-blum

1. Special design or visual object representing a quality, type, group, etc.

2. A visible symbol representing an abstract idea

***

Zirma

Travellers return from the city of Zirma with distinct memories: a blind black man shouting in the crowd, a lunatic teetering on a skyscraper's cornice, a girl walking with a puma on a leash. Actually many of the blind men who tap their canes on Zirma's cobblestones are black; in every skyscraper there is someone going mad; all lunatics spend hours on cornices; there is no puma that some girl does not raise, as a whim. The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind.

I too am returning from Zirma: my memory includes dirigibles flying in all directions, at window level; streets of shops where tattoos are drawn on sailors' skin; underground trains crammed with obese women suffering from the humidity. My travelling companions, on the other hand, swear they saw only one dirigible hovering among the city's spires, only one tattoo artist arranging needles and inks and pierced patterns on his bench, only one fat woman fanning herself on a train's platform. Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.

***

Zobeide

From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream they set out in search of that city; they never found it. but they found one another; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream. In laying out the streets, each followed the course of his pursuit; at the spot where they had lost the fugitive's trail, they arranged spaces and walls differently from the dream, so she would be unable to escape again.

This was the city of Zobeide, where they settled, waiting for that scene to be repeated one night. None of them, asleep or awake, ever saw the woman again. The city's streets were streets where they went to work every day, with no link any more to the dreamed chase. Which, for that matter, had long been forgotten. New men arrived from other lands, having had a dream like theirs, and in the city of Zobeide, they recognized something of the streets of the dream, and they changed the positions of arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain, no avenue of escape.

The first to arrive could not understand what drew these people to Zobeide, this ugly city, this trap.

***

Baucis

After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveller directed towards Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foliage.

There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downwards they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence.

***

Dorothea

There are two ways of describing the city of Dorothea: you can say that four aluminium towers rise from its walls flanking seven gates with spring-operated drawbridges that span the moat whose water feeds four green canals which cross the city, dividing it into nine quarters, each with three hundred houses and seven hundred chimneys. And bearing in mind that the nubile girls of each quarter marry youths of other quarters and their parents exchange the goods that each family holds in monopoly--bergamot, sturgeon roe, astrolabes, amethysts--you can then work from these facts until you learn everything you wish about the city in the past, present, and future. Or else you can say, like the camel-driver who took me there: 'I arrived here in my first youth, one morning, many people were hurrying along the streets towards the market, the women had fine teeth and looked you straight in the eye, three soldiers on a platform played the trumpet, and all around wheels turned and coloured banners fluttered in the wind. Before then I had known only the desert and the caravan routes. In the years that followed, my eyes returned to contemplate the desert expanses and the caravan routes; but now I know this path is only one of the many that opened before me on that morning in Dorothea.'

***

Eutropia
When he enters the territory of which Eutropia is the capital, the traveller sees not one city but many, of equal size and not unlike one another, scattered over a
vast, rolling plateau. Eutropia is not one, but all these cities together; only
one is inhabited at a time, the others are empty; and this process is carried out
in rotation. Now I shall tell you how. On the day when Eutropia's inhabitants feel
the grip of weariness and no one can bear any longer his job, his relatives, his
house and his life, debts, the people he must greet or who greet him, then the
whole citizenry decides to move to the next city, which is there waiting for them,
empty and good as new; there each will take up a new job, a different wife, will
see another landscape on opening his window, and will spend his time with
different pastimes, friends, gossip. So their life is renewed from move to move,
among cities whose exposure or declivity or streams or winds make each site
somehow different from the others. Since their society is ordered without great
distinctions of wealth or authority, the passage from one function to another
takes place almost without jolts; variety is guaranteed by the multiple
assignments, so that in the span of a lifetime a man rarely returns to a job that
has already been his.

Thus the city repeats its life, identical, shifting up and down on its empty chessboard. The inhabitants repeat the same scenes, with the actors changed; they
repeat the same speeches with variously combined accents; they open alternate
mouths in identical yawns. Alone, among all the cities of the empire, Eutropia
remains always the same. Mercury, god of the fickle, to whom the city is sacred,
worked this ambiguous miracle.

What the hell is roflcopter?!

2010-09-03T18:49:00.002+05:30

Ha.

Link via Ankur Banerjee, quote from Rachit Agarwal.

Journey

2010-09-02T20:13:00.012+05:30

Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino, 1972) is not a book about cities. It's a book about people: Marco Polo and Kublai Khan,
and the residents of the imagined cities, the kings and the prostitutes and the adolescent and the anile, the strangers who meet everyday, the traders moving to and fro between the cities. But most of all, it's about the traveller- it's about his (or her, if you want to be politically correct) perceptions and dreams and desires and emotions, his past (which influences his present and future), his inferences, his expectations and his understanding of the city.

Calvino recognized the feel of the city- not the physical, but the emotional aspect of it. In fact, he is entirely brilliant at recognizing and naming and writing down emotions- this book really makes you feel. And so, when you remember the cities, you remember the metaphysical- the blend of fantasy and reality described. Sure, they might be supplemented by some physical aspects- like a clock tower here or a dome there, but these are also just ultimately symbols of the people who lived there and what the traveller was feeling at that point of time, visible symbols of an abstract idea. It's all about perception, and that is different even for fellow travellers.

The author imagined so many different cities, each with its own character and people and emotions, and Marco Polo appreciated them all differently. He talked of the beauty of the whole and of the beauty of the part. Often he looked at the cities from two different viewpoints, both his own; like the two sides of a coin. Other times one side was just a lie, a facade, and the real city was on the opposite face. Sometimes his descriptions were easy to understand, and sometimes you had to reread them to grasp the full meaning, the subtext. You then had to fill in the blanks, think about what you inferred from the thoughts and images and visuals.

Nothing can exist in isolation- or, at least, it can have no purpose in isolation. Here too, the cities are connected, yes, but we are always looking at the micro level of the city, and so are, I think, fooled into thinking of it as independent entity on its own. And so when Calvino does zoom out, it seems a revelation. He does this often, in fact; during the course of the book you suddenly realize a lot of things you always knew in the back of your head, but which you had forgotten while reading about these individual cities. But, also, when you look only at the macro scale, and forget these singular parts, you again lose sight of the plot.

Because there are so many short descriptions of so many cities, by the end of it they start running together and thus lose their differences. From the reader you become the jaded traveller, and Marco Polo and Kublai Khan’s analysis of the rise and fall of cities, why they are what they are, how they’re different from, and yet the same as, one another, really becomes the focal point. I don’t know whether this was intentional or not, and of course, in a way they were always the focal point, but what I’m saying is that whatever role the cities played before is lost by the end, at least for me.

The short chapters, if you can call them that, are very disjoint, but remain connected, I think, because of the writing style. It’s very, very descriptive, long sentences, generally simple language, but lots of new words -I learnt quite a few: ephebe, lavabo, auguries, sirocco, odalisques. Like most good books, the writing stays with you a while; even now, while I'm writing this, I know that my sentence structure and wording are somewhat inspired from the book.

I enjoyed this book, and though I probably won't ever reread it, right now I feel as if it'll stay with me for a long time. In a way, it's answered a question I've often thought about: can a traveller, an outsider and a foreigner, ever truly understand another city? When he visits this other city, how does he perceive it? What is different, if not different from his own?

---

Remembered this quote from Travel and Living, and along the way, found two more, which I think describe perfectly what this book is about:

“Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

Citified

2010-09-02T17:45:00.004+05:30

the opportunist and the privileged

Read

2010-08-31T18:54:00.004+05:30

Slightly abrupt ending, but it made me laugh.

Urban Planning - a short story

Again, by Amit Varma, published at India Uncut.

Locomotive

2010-08-05T23:00:00.008+05:30

When I was about seven, my cousins came over for a short trip and we went on a day excursion to the Doll Museum and the Railway Museum. (The cherry on top, though, was the Hero No. 1 show we went for later that day. Govinda was wildly funny those days.)

I chose to write about the Railway Museum because I actually remember it, even though it was over thirteen years ago, and I have a pretty bad retention span when it comes to stuff that happened to me. At first there were only vague images, and feelings rolling about in my head, but modern technology (aka google) helped jog my memory. And I’m really glad of the chance to revisit it, because it was such a good day. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it- I haven’t yet.

The Railway Museum, in Chanakyapuri, is ‘the focus of Rail Heritage of India’[1]. I remember it as being huge, and it is, spread over 11 acres. It’s also very green. Most of the engines and carriages on display are on tracks laid over landscaped gardens.

The museum’s home to the Fairy Queen, Guinness certified as the world's oldest operational steam locomotive. It has, honestly, a pretty awesome collection of locomotives. There’s just something so charming about all those gleaming old-style steam engines. We got to explore inside some of them too, I think, and I distinctly remember going inside at least one coach, with its plush seats and wood finish.

The main attraction for us, though, was, of course, the toy train. It runs on a miniature track through the museum. You cannot imagine the joy that we seven-and-eight-year-olds felt when on it. Like I said, the feelings still stay with me- fighting for the window seat, the wind blowing through my hair, the excitement of it all.

Later we went for ice cream to the cafeteria, which I remembered as being in the middle of a lake. Google Images confirmed its location on the side of a much smaller man-made pond. But it looked exactly the same: a circular structure, open on all sides, with the restaurant on the first floor. When I think about it now, it seems like a really nice design. It has an amazing view, of the lawns and the water, and the outdoor seating meant that us kids could ‘hang out’ separate from the grown-ups, leaning on the railing and talking of dolls and trains and ice creams and whatever else seven year olds talked about in 1997.

That day was enchanting. Frankly, when I decided to write on this topic, I wondered for a second if I had such fond memories of the Rail Museum because I had fond memories of the whole day- whether it was the place or the company. But then I realised that I remember nearly nothing of the Doll Museum, and so much of the Rail Museum. (And, well, ALL of Hero No. 1. But who can forget that?) The place is fascinating, and so utterly charming. I enjoyed it- it’s right up there with Appu Ghar and that video game arcade that opened in Saket for a (too) short period of time.

[1]http://www.nationalrailmuseum.org/nrm/new_nrm/indexhome.jsp

Awesome Awesomeness!

2010-08-05T19:34:00.003+05:30

Neave.

That's the website of Paul Neace, a British interaction designer. It's oh-my-god brilliant. And the GAMES! Shit. Space Invaders and Frogger and Pac-man and Tetris and Snake and all-that-you-remember-as-holy-and-sacred.

Is it me or are they more addictive this time round?

P.S. Thanks to Rikki for telling me about this!

Requiem for a Me

2010-08-03T20:02:00.005+05:30

OBITUARY

Bhavika Aggarwal

1990-2066

Surrounded by family and friends, Bhavika Aggarwal passed away this Sunday at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences after succumbing to a sudden attack of periodontitis.

An intermittent architect and enthusiastic conservation activist, Ms. Aggarwal was most known for her interior decoration work. Educated at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi and at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, she got the opportunity to work with greats such as Varun Bajaj and Aditi Gupta early in her career, though she concentrated most of her efforts towards small scale projects. Her notable works include the interiors of the Snobsman Hotel, New Delhi (in collaboration with furniture designer Uzair Siddiqui) and the Yara chain of retail stores across India, as well the design of her personal residence in Vasant Vihar. Ms. Aggarwal was also noted for her attempts, with social activist Ammani Nair, to mainstream the cause of recreational reading, and she helped design and set up a number of public libraries. Her experiments with environmentalist Amri Chadha regarding sustainability and blue architecture occupied most of her latter career.

Ms. Aggarwal retired from professional life in 2057. She would have been 76 this May.

What's the big deal about blogging?

2010-08-02T22:03:00.003+05:30

Amit Varma answers the question in his most recent post. He publishes India Uncut, one of the most popular Indian blogs, and is also the author of My Friend, Sancho, a humourous look at the reporter-solving-a-crime-and-falling-in-love-at-the-same-time genre. An easy-read which I would definitely recommend, but then I like most stuff. Ammani found it quite average.

Theory of Settlements: Book Review

2010-08-02T19:42:00.007+05:30

Angry River

by Ruskin Bond, 1972

Illustrations by Trevor Stubley

Published by Rupa & Co.

It was a small island, set in the middle of the big river, yet large enough for Sita and her grandparents to live there, together with their three goats, their hens, their vegetable patch, and the peepul tree.

Then one day, as the monsoon clouds were gathering, Grandmother was ill and had to be taken by boat to the nearest hospital. Sita was left alone, and the river swirled angrily around the little island. It rose higher and higher as the rains came down, and Sita climbed into the peepul tree. But the old tree groaned and shook in the wind and the rain, it left its place in the earth where it had been standing for years, and moved to join the river, carrying Sita with it.

I enjoy reading. I've gone through quite a large number of books, and while I like to think that I remember them all, there are some that I have never forgotten. Angry River is one such. I found it, one day, in the bookshelf out in the drawing room. I was very young, but Angry River, like most of Ruskin Bond's work, is meant for children. It has a big font and is beautifully illustrated.

I always liked Ruskin Bond, though I haven't read much of him. I've read some Rusty, and I remember The Woman on Platform 8 from school. But his work is different; it has an almost haunting quality to it –not in the supernatural way, even though both Angry River and, especially, The Woman on Platform 8, seem to have some of that. It is just somehow more evocative than other young fiction. It always seemed as if there was a hidden meaning, a subtext in there somewhere, though I never quite understood this until I reread Angry River for this assignment.

I won’t go into the story, although I highly recommend that you read it. A warning though, there are some spoilers coming your way. Along the course of the book, Sita finds herself on a boat with the boy who rescued her, Krishan. Since they don’t want to spend the night on the river, they make way for the flooded forest on the banks.

It’s beautifully described, the magical quality of the moonlit water as it winds through the tall, tall evergreens, with their submerged trunks and overhanging branches. I can almost see the patterns the moonlight makes on the now calm water through the closely packed trees, and feel the damp and smell the wet earth. The flooding has forced the animals out and snakes, stags, elephants are all looking for shelter and dry ground. But Sita and Krishan are safe because the animals are too busy to bother with them. Even Sita’s exhaustion and fatigue and the sense of safety she now feels are perfectly depicted- as she falls asleep in the gently rocking boat you truly somehow identify with her. With morning the wet of the night is replaced by the warmth of the sun, and Sita and Krishan find their way to a nearby village while light falls through the still dripping branches.

The entire book is wonderfully written, but this episode stays in my mind as something beyond ordinary. The simple words and uncluttered language of the narrative add to the appeal. With this I suddenly remembered that you don’t need fancy words or embellished phrases to make an impression; it is the content that truly matters.

Vagitus

2010-07-31T15:43:00.005+05:30

The cry of a newborn. From Latin vagire, to wail.

Welcome!

Most of you reading this already know me. Those who don't, well, hopefully they will, soon.

The purpose of this blog, to cut a long story short, is to pass. I'm a third year student of architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. Our Theory of Settlements teacher will only grade our assignments if they are up on our blogs. So there you go. The cyberspace now has about 70 odd more bloggers, including me, and most probably, you.

Third year is scary. Barely a week's gone by, and the work's piling up. But that's not really it, we're all used to work; it's the content. Third year really needs you to put yourself out there: share your thoughts and beliefs and reasons. And I don't just mean this blog, other subjects -Architectural Design and Theory of Design, for example- require the same.

Frankly, it's scary.

Sharing yourself with friends is easy. Sharing yourself with your faculty, with people you now "know" for two years but don't really know at all, with random people who will stumble upon this blog? Not so much.

When you're talking, you can use expressions, and gestures, and when you're talking to someone who knows you, sometimes you don't need words at all. This, it requires us to put our psyche into words and sentences and paragraphs. Like I said, scary. Intimidating as shit.

But, now that I've started, I hope to really get going. I'll try to be as regular as possible, and not be as boring as possible. However, those of you know me also know that I'm great at this thing called velleity (new word, came across it while trying to find a title for this blog).

Like I said, I hope to change.