Do parts of architecture in Pretoria, Canberra and New Delhi look similar? Australian professor Dr. Christopher Vernon has some
answers for KISHORE SINGH
FOR THE RECORD, Dr. Christopher Vernon is the lean, lanky professor who is a bit of a cliché' in fiction. In real life, he's slightly otherworldly as those who lecture on architecture tend to be. Particularly when they begin to specialize on the works of only a few architects. And it is his special interest in one of them that has brought .......

Vaastu Creates New Business Opportunity For Environment Friendly Interiors

VAASTU, geopathic energy, electromagnetic radiation, sick building syndrome... All of them relate to buildings and their effects, ill or otherwise, on inhabitants.
Practitioners say that they have answers to treat symptoms of the illnesses that cannot be attributed to any reason other than the buildings in which a person lives or works. All of them present a business opportunity which in India, at least, has not been .......

The Venice Architecture Biennale has lots of clever gimmicks. Pity they forgot about buildings, says Jonathan Glancey

Monday September 18, 2006
The Guardian


German pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale. Photograph: David Levene

In Italo Calvino's mesmeric novel Invisible Cities, Marco Polo describes the enchanting, illogical and sometimes dire cities he claims to have visited during his travels through Kubla Khan's huge empire. The Khan is unfazed when Polo reveals that he ha.......

Speaking at the Architect 2006 to mark the inauguration of the annual Sessions and the National Conference on Architecture, Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, Prime Minister said “In a developing country such as ours, architectural skills are called for an increasing volume and frequency”. He said that the increase in the construction work in the country is a sign of progress and development which in turn is a sign of healthy economy.

The event was held at the BMICH for three days.
He said the countr.......

Sim cities

Visualise this. Houses on one-acre plots with low tiled roofs, two car garages and picket fences, picture windows, neatly curtained, looking out on trimmed lawns — a transplanted subdivision of New Jersey, complete with rambling ranch-style homes? No. Just a private housing estate in suburban Bangalore, built as promised in the brochure, along American lines. I drove around, trying to figure out why they appeared so out-of-sync in the hot Bangalore sun. An American answer to every .......

The zeroes in ‘India’s Century’


Our Prime Minister is a cautious man, not given to hyperbole, but one of the things he likes saying is that the 21st century is going to be India’s century. If he had travelled with me on the two journeys I took last week he might hesitate to make such a boastful claim.
The first journey was to Hissar. I drove from Delhi and on either side passed the small towns that represent India’s new urbanisation. They were, without exception, hideous and terrif.......

Spirit in the skylight

Mario Botta designs buildings to worship in - no matter if you are Christian, Jewish or Muslim. By Jonathan Glancey

Mario Botta began his career working for Le Corbusier. This is remarkable given that this Swiss-Italian architect was born in 1943 while Le Corbusier, the great modern master, died in 1965. Botta was a student at the University Institute of Architecture in Venice when Le Corbusier set up an office in the city to design a new hospital. It was never bui.......

Cyberspace Fosters Real-World Relationships
A study entitled "The Strength of Internet Ties" (by the Pew Internet & American Life Project) found that email and other forms of digital communication strengthen the relationships between friends and family, according to this BBC article.
The report hasn't made it online yet, so I've not had the opportunity to peruse the findings; however, the initial story by the BBC doesn't surprise me. John Borland and I spent a year writing a book about the dev.......

Situated on the outskirt of the glitzy of India, the Jhunjhunwala farmhouse embraces traditional nuances interlaced with the modern, creating a simple blissful retreat.

The Jhunjhunwala farmhouse is a dwelling indifferent to the traditional rules of décor and throws open challenges that create an altogether different kind of glamour. Whether it is the harsh summer heat, torrential monsoon rains or the biting chill of a northern winter, each season enhances this environment-friendly private h.......

Interior designer Anshu Pathak makes three festive patterns for IDI

Rangoli in Sanskrit means 'rang" or colour and 'avalli' or a row of coloured creepers. It's a creative expression of folk art through the use of colours. Its origin can be traced to the Puranas. According to a legend recorded in Chitra Lakshana, the earliest treatise on Indian painting, a king and his kingdom were steeped in sorrow at the death of the high priest's son. Everybody prayed to Lord Brahma, who moved by the praye.......

New Eco-Friendly Commercial & Office Buildings
Save 40% Power
STARTING from factory premises around two decades ago. Eco friendly business practices are now making an entry into the board-rooms. And for a change, it's nothing to do with pollution control boards or court directives.
As the pressure to cut costs mounts, more and more companies are moving into green buildings to cut huge electricity bills. By opting for natural light and providing better heat insulation, the new generation of en.......

The man who has mastered the innovative art of illuminating monuments, now has his eyes set on the Taj....
A GERMAN 'ARTISTE' who was in the Capital recently, might well give event-managers in the country some new candy to chew on. Gert Hof has single-handedly pioneered the direction of "mega-events" in various cities all over the world and is a little more than your usual light designer. Using music, light, pyrotechnics, high altitude fireworks, neon art, illuminated balloons, theatre, lasers .......

INTRODUCTION
The cultural and social revolution brought on by telecommunications and information technologies is rapidly transforming the field of architecture. We live in an era of accelerated change, in which data speeds invisibly around the globe and the flow of information has superseded material exchange. and complex digital infrastructures have inscribed themselves within our recognizable mechanical and urban patterns. Metropolitan populations, previously culturally bound and physically l.......

Section 1: Getting Started in Affordable Sustainable Housing
1. Defining project priorities and adopting standards
2. RFP for design of/consulting on a green building project
3. Interview questions for selecting a green building consultant and/or architect
4. Contract scenarios for green building

Section 2: Key Design Decisions in an Affordable Sustainable Housing Development Case Study: Pine Street Neighborhood
1. Introducing Pine Street Revitalization, Hazleton, Pennsylvania
2. S.......

PRINCE CHARLES IS RIGHTLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE ILLS OF MODERN SOCIETY, BUT IT'S GLIB TO BLAME ARCHITECTS
IT IS NOW more than 20 years since the Prince of Wales gave his famous speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in which he referred to the proposed extension to the National Gallery in London as looking like a municipal fire station — "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend". His words made headlines around the world and despite widespread crit.......

There was a time when many of us lived in high-ceilinged, fat-walled homes. These would have cool nooks and crannies for children to play in summer afternoons. Nowadays, nooks and crannies seem harder to come by; our houses have shrunk, joined to other houses on the sides and piled one on top of the other. If there is a nook here or a cranny there that remains free of furniture, it doesn't feel as cool in summer as it used to.

Where have all the cool nooks gone? Somewhere along the line, our .......

Dubai: Wealthy Gulf Arab investors have only to snap their fingers and someone in Dubai's burgeoning community of Western-trained architects will design the impossible - or the unthinkable. The emirate is fast becoming an architect's playground as more and more outlandish structures take it closer to its dream of being the world's most visually striking metropolis.

Architects are flocking to the city of 1.3 million where a construction boom fueled by another surge in Gulf petrodollar wealth i.......

As the death toll keeps rising, it seems certain that the tsunami on December 26 killed more than the 140,000 who died at Hiroshima. A search for culprits has begun, but is misdirected. The real culprit is nature.

Ecologists have created the myth that nature represents a harmonious equilibrium threatened by human excesses. In fact nature's apparent harmony is a short-term illusion between cataclysms. Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything reveals enough natural dangers to make man.......

I am Gaia, the Earth Mother, the planet you live on. Not just a ball of mud and rock and water, but a living organism, more intricate and mysterious than anything that your sciences and your technologies can ever conceive of.

Seen from afar through space cameras, I am beautiful beyond words. A radiant entity of blue and green, the colours of peace and tranquillity. But this benign loveliness is just one of my manifestations. As I have shown, I have another avatar of unleashed fury and unimagi.......