Urban Design - Question of Cities

Architecture of walls in the neoliberal remodelling of Bengaluru

The city once known for balancing gated enclosures with open, tree-lined, planned neighbourhoods has turned alienating and disquieting with business parks, gated communities, and flyovers fragmenting it. Neoliberal architecture favours interiority and fragmentation. The obvious built form are flyovers which…

How development rules reshape childhoods in Mumbai’s rehab colonies

In Mumbai’s Lallubhai Compound, a resettlement and rehabilitation colony, children co-created the 13,000 square feet of derelict land strewn with trash into…

Urban imaginaries and spatial inclusion in Kozhikode’s
Gujarati Street

Once the hub and home of traders from Gujarat, the street has been transformed into an ‘art street’ with a new heritage-cultural…

What New Town did not take from the old city

All Indian cities have characteristics which could be adopted into the design of new towns but Rajarhat New Town neither referenced them…

Modern planning forgets traditional, eco-sensitive designs

Of the many design elements that have fallen out of favour is the jharokha, especially in hot places. The enclosed stone window…

A reality-based, sustainable urban planning order

The abysmal living conditions and perpetual stress for millions in cities like Mumbai are not accidental but the intended outcome of planning…

What do Mumbai’s buildings owe the street?

Modern architecture has become mesmerised by the skyline and silhouette, and forgotten the human scale, the intimate two metres at which people…

Woh kuche, woh galiyaan, mohalle kahan hain?

The narrow streets, winding lanes, and intimate localities were once the social spaces at the threshold of public and private life. Beyond nostalgia, their rapid erasure or deliberate destruction must be reflected upon. The aangan (courtyard) and kotha (terrace), for…

The vertical Panopticon: Architectural violence in
rehab towers

The multi-storeyed rehabilitation towers for slum dwellers, by their design, are nothing less than the intensification of the very conditions in slums…

Influencing change in cities through urban design interventions

Design holds incredible power to influence change in cities, address climate crises, break the prevailing order of exclusion, and renew nature-people relationship.…