Design sense....do you have it?

“This city has a legacy of textile production, so there’s immense variety of fabrics in the local market, plus there’s a history of both industrial and craft production, karigari. Craftspeople here understand what it means to make export-quality products, and time-based commitments; the city and the craftspeople here are already geared towards that,” he says. Varman is part of a small-sized Ahmedabad-based fashion brigade that includes Shyamal and Bhumika Shodhan and Anuradha Vakil. One of Varman’s essential crafts-partnerships is with 56-year-old Sitaben. An expert at traditional bead embroidery, she learned the craft when she was 16; these two found each other at a crafts bazaar held at NID. When Varman and I visited Sitaben’s home in a traditional Gujarati pol (traditional housing cluster), she chided him for looking so thin, telling him “Tu khaata nahin hain.”

They talked as equals, and she spoke with confidence about her work.

Access to good craftspeople with varied expertise is as crucial to architecture. Soenke Hoof is Doshi’s grandson-in-law and a partner at Vastu Shilpa, which Doshi set up in 1955. Hoof’s entire career has been spent in Ahmedabad since moving from Germany 12 years ago. I asked him if he thought the relationship between designer and artisan is different here. “I’ve only practised in Ahmedabad, though I have worked on projects in other places. Here, I find a craftsman is eager to do a good job because he takes pride in that. In many other cities, that eagerness is missing.” Another designer confided, “Unlike in many other places, a Gujarati craftsman will never take your design and give to another designer.”

(Because I have always been mad about design.)

Read it all here

The changing face of urban India

Look around you.

(That is, with an mindful eye, an eye that "remembers".) 

Chances are -- immaterial of which Indian city you live in -- you would have seen a lot of greenery disappear in the last couple of years, and a lot of open spaces too.

Across most cities, this happens only around the suburbs, mostly because the city proper is already choc-a-bloc "developed".

But, among many...it is also happening in once-relatively-more-living (and saner) areas. As the cost of land (available for buildings / real estate) goes up...keeping it unpaved becomes an impossibility. An economically unviable proposition, if you will.

Most of this so called development is supposed to lead to "wealth creation." After all, for many people a house (or a flat) or any other property is nothing but an investment...something that will appreciate, something that will make them wealthier in the years to come.

And yes, all this "development" is supposed to be inevitable and an indicator of India's status as a "developing" nation.

But is it?

Can our already cluttered, close-to-asphyxiation polluted, highly overpopulated cities survive if we do away with whatever little soul that remains in them -- in the form of green and open spaces?

And, is it the right way to "develop", the right way to aspire to catch up to international standards of living, to give our citizens a quality of life at par with the US or UK?

(Especially considering the fact that...urbanization is not something that can be rolled back.)

Lets take the case of the UK, how much of greenspace does it have? How much of it is built on?

"
The urban landscape accounts for 10.6% of England, 1.9% of Scotland, 3.6% of Northern Ireland and 4.1% of Wales. Put another way, that means almost 93% of the UK is not urban. But even that isn't the end of the story because urban is not the same as built on.

In urban England, for example, the researchers found that just over half the land (54%) in our towns and cities is greenspace - parks, allotments, sports pitches and so on.

Furthermore, domestic gardens account for another 18% of urban land use; rivers, canals, lakes and reservoirs an additional 6.6%.

Their conclusion?

In England, "78.6% of urban areas is designated as natural rather than built". Since urban only covers a tenth of the country, this means that the proportion of England's landscape which is built on is…

… 2.27%.

Yes. According to the most detailed analysis ever conducted, almost 98% of England is, in their word, natural.

Elsewhere in the UK, the figure rises to more than 99%. It is clear that only a small fraction of Britain has been concreted over."

I wonder how much of India is built over. And how much of it can still be called greenspace.

But...oh wait.

We are a "developing" country. Ha!

Read more here


            

Hello world!

Hello there blog, so I am back.

After a bit over a year.

I know its a real long break to take...but what to do, the photography of birds (and their showcasing on Stray Birds ) is exhausting, to say the least.

That apart, my life isn't exactly "settled" or anything...and definitely not into a "writerly routine".

Anyway, for whatever good it be, I am back here, and hopefully for the good.