IIA NATCON - 2016 Bengaluru - My Experience
The Indian
Institute of Architects (IIA) conducted its national convention (Natcon 2016)
at Bengaluru, hosted by the Karnataka chapter. This was the centenary year of
IIA and hence much as expected of the event. I attended the event and share my
experience of this through this blog. This was the second National Convention I
attended, the first one being the Chennai one in 2013. This Natcon was held at
the convention centre (kalinga hall) of The Lalit Ashok Hotel. Three of my colleagues
Ar. Khalid, Ar. Thingom and Ar. Suresh from MEASI Academy of architecture accompanied
me to this conference. Had a chance to meet my B.Arch classmates Ar. Prasad and
Ar. Karl Marks an advantage of attending these conferences. Many more from IIA
TN were also present.
Writing a
blog, is something I consider as a responsibility because I see things don’t
get documented or taken forward. Many people speak great ideas in these
conferences and lectures, but people just listen and move forward. I think it
should be documented and may be it will be useful for people who were not there
in the conference. I had done it after the Chennai Natcon also. The novel idea
is that it should be useful to others in future.
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| Myself with Ar. Thingom (left) and Ar. Suresh (middle) at the venue |
Day 1: 1st
December 2016 (Thursday)
The event
started with the inaugural function and presentation of the awards to different
life time achievers in the field of architectural practice and Academics. The
Baburao Mhatre gold medal 2016 was awarded to Ar. Raja Aederi. It is awarded to an architect for his
outstanding contribution to the field of architecture. I had come to hear about
this person for first time only when he was called for the award. The Madhav
Achwal Gold medal was awarded to two people Prof. N. Altaf Ahmed and Prof.
Ashok Laxman Chhatre. This award is conferred to person for his contribution
towards the field of architectural education. Presently working as Asst. Prof.
at MEASI academy of architecture under the leadership of prof. Altaf it was a
matter of pride to me to having witnessed the award ceremony live.
Something
that was Unusual:
In this
NATCON something unusual happened. Usually when these kinds of conventions are
held a big list of speakers is given and at the last minute they put a regret
message saying that some speakers have not turned up and hence someone else is
filling up. To my surprise, I think all speakers were present and nothing was
changed or replaced. Credit should go to Ar. Prem Chandavarkar and the
supporting team of architects for having meticulously curated the event to
perfection. The second unusual thing that happened and should be noted is the
presence of speakers from different backgrounds and not only architecture and
urban design/planning background. Usually in architecture conferences and
events its only the architects who speak, but in this conference people from
different backgrounds presented their ideas.
I am going
to give a brief of what each session was all about and the points pondered
upon. Here I would like to say, I am going to talk only about the points which
I could capture within my limited capacity of understanding and not anything
more than that (may be it covers only 25 to 30 % of what was discussed). If
anything is wrongly understood and described by me I am open to correcting
myself and also apologise for the mistake beforehand.
Keynote
address by Rahul Mehrotra:
The key
note address by Rahul Mehrotra, an architect and urban designer, was an eye
opener and lived up to the expectation. I am quite sure a part of the crowd who
had registered for the conference would have done so only by seeing his name. A
lot was spoken about. The talk started with a brief history of various
developments in the context of city planning and schemes by governments. It was
surprising to know in 1986 “National commission on Urbanism” initiated by Rajiv
Gandhi with Charles Correa being the head of the team commissioned to do a
study and a report was made. The special aspect of this report, along with all
other general parameters, was something called as spatial structure of cities, something
which might have led to good urban form. No one knows what happened to it and
why was it not taken forward. In 1992 liberalization brought in global capital
and led to the formation of two worlds summed up by a picture of Slum and tall
Bombay buildings in the presentation. Then JNNURM came and now the smart cities
Mission. He questioned as to why cities or example like GIFT city Gujarat and
Amravathy the new capital of a new state were being put forth by the government
and this will lead to cities which will not have their own DNA. Stress was laid
on temporality of the city with example of Kumbhmela considered to be an
ephemeral city, how it comes into existence with in no time and then after work
is done again becomes empty. Examples of governance like Bankara in West Bengal
with a population of 60000 but still governed by only a village panchayat and
not a municipality. The difference between the rich and poor and the divide
existing in cities also was stressed upon with examples. He also questioned the
standards developed by the government in some cases. For example, the number of
toilets, in one study around only one toilet was present for 1440 people in
Dharavi. In another study it was around one toilet for 800 people. Govt. data
says around one toilet for 150 people are there. The govt. aspiration is to
provide a toilet for 50 people, which was quite a low standard when the govt.
is promoting the building of toilets as the main agenda. It was an engrossing
lecture calling the young architects to go to these semi urban areas which may
become truly urban areas in the near future and it requires proper planning and
growth. To be able to achieve this, architects should indulge with the city and
its people and try to understand the overall aspirations of the people to design
them. I don’t think I have done justice to what was told actually but this is
what I could understand on the whole.
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| An usual scene at the conference if you go there on time in the mornning - Later in the day halls get filled up |
Day 2: 2nd
December 2016 (Friday)
Session 1: Architectural
Practice and city:
This was a
session with three speakers namely Alfredo Brillembourg, Neelkanth Chaya and
Tatjana Schneider with Vijay Nampatti as moderator.
Lots of
points described with each of the speakers sharing their experiences. The first
speaker discussed his experience of projects in Venezuela. One of the important
things pointed out was that there was a disconnect between architectural
education and practice. He said it was really difficult for him to practice
what he was taught in the university in America and hence he needed to unlearn
things and had to practice in entirely different way. This I think was a
important point which does actually holds true to our country also. He also
told that the city should be considered a hybrid dichotomy of both formal and
informal giving ways to design considering both. Prof. Chaya, the second
speaker of this panel started of saying he had changed the whole of his
presentation, thanks to Rahul Mehrotra’s Key note lecture. This was in positive
note though. He brought out the fact that architects today are working for the
elite people who are from top of the pyramid and following 19th
century paradigm. With reference to Rahul Mehrotra’s call to architects to
design the growing cities, Chaya reiterated on what kind of architects do we
need for the purpose. These architects should be the 21st century
architects with the following attributes. A capacity to listen, take
intelligent actions in concrete milieu, capacity to tell and convince and tell
people what has to change, pick up stories grow them and multiply them. This
architect should be a participant than a master. He even told that Howard Roark
type of architects (From Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead) do not fit in the future
society and would like to burn the book as an exercise. He also reiterated that
it was the necessary that the architect concentrates more on the process than
the product which has been the trend in present context.
Next
speaker of the session was Tatjana Schneider. She gave the idea of how
sometimes architecture is product based and sometimes how it is process based,
but according to her both were not good. In product based architecture is seen
in isolation, sometimes for global performance (example Guuggenheim museum by
Fran O Gehry). When it is looked as process architects tend to whitewash
projects with people and by doing so
sell public assets. According to her we should move towards” an other
architecture, of architecture based on values” where architects think of
responsibility rather than power, equability rather than exclusion, rhizomes
rather than projects and transcalarity rather than mono-dimensionality. In the
panel discussion later, some questions were raised on how the architects are
going to be trained to cater to these needs of growing cities and how these
approaches can be taught in schools of architecture. It was proposed that
applied research like giving students real task in real city scenario will
help. Also channelizing student towards critical thinking was emphasized.
Day 2: 2nd
December 2016 (Friday)
Session 2:
Rethinking urban public space:
I was not
able to attend this session as I had to go to the Friday prayers. Very
unfortunate though. Would have been happy had the organizers taken this factor
into account and not had the session at that time.
The
speakers were Dhiru A Thadani, Neera Adarkar and Franz Ziegler. Moderator for
this session was Kalwan Mehta.
Day 2: 2nd
December 2016 (Friday)
Session 3:
Governance and social justice in the Indian city.
This was a
session with three speakers namely Pankaj Joshi, Keerthi Shah and Sheela Patel.
This session was moderated by Himanshu Burte.
First
presenter of this session was Pankaj Joshi a conservation architect and
director of UDRI (Urban Design Research Institute). He started of with problems
in Mumbai and later concluding that same type of problems was present in
different cities. Discussing the 74th Amendment and sharing his
experience he told the audience that when people are involved they try to
contribute. This he proved by saying that the present Mumbai Landuse Plan of
2015 received 65,000 suggestions/queries and the revised new plan got 85,000 of
those. He also stressed by giving numbers that Local Area Plans (LAP’s) should
be implemented seriously. This he said on the basis that 69% of urban and 74%
of rural India is informal. He rued the fact that, slum rehabilitation projects
are being planned in a very bad way showing an example of a development through
a photograph where in four 39 storey towers stand only around 10 feet apart.
Second
speaker of this session Keerthi Shah started with the topic of good governance.
With an introduction on good governance he looked into three cities which are
considered to be capitals in different senses in our country. Through this he
wanted to see if we have done good governance. First city was Mumbai, our
financial capital. 50% of the population in this city lives in slums. Second
city was Delhi, our political capital, which is presently considered to be a
gas chamber (pollution). Third city was Varnasi, our religious capital and he
pointed how we have ruined river Ganga. His contention was, when we have not
taken care of so important cities, where does the point of good governance
arrive. He had a very different take on looking at slums. He said that there
are a lot of problems overall which poor are solving through slums. This was a
very interesting way of putting it through and with this point he reiterated
that slums have developed as we as government have failed to provide facilities
to the poor people. He told that, considering the different type of problems in
today’s Indian cities, we need to have an indigenous response rather than a
copied one. He closed his presentation
by giving ten points on what could possibly be done for better future. Some of
his points are listed below. He proposed that we ought to change our mind-set
and to question the inevitability of urbanization. With respect to growth he
told we need to look into qualitative growth rather than quantitative growth. A
different model of development is required.
Third
speaker of this session was Sheela Patel from Society for promotion of Area
resource centre (SPARC). The first and foremost point she made was very much
apt and quite a reality which many people may not accept. The point she made
was that governance and social justice we believe are available to everybody,
but according to her it’s a myth. It seems at least 30 to 70% of population in
city is illegal, informal or criminalized. If this was the case the claim was
that the people will agitate and try to get what they should get. An example of
to demonstrate the above point was given. It was about how people of Dharavi
came to roads when some proposal against them was made and how within 5 minutes
the main roads of Mumbai clogged bringing the city to standstill. This was her
contention that if we don’t do well then people will fight for it. Later during
the panel discussion a very important question was asked. The question was very
simple. Is it that the things done by the government are not done rightly and
if done rightly it will be ok or if it is a deeper problem. The second
important question was on is NGOisation of govt. good or required. One of the
panellist answered that if the 73rd and 74th amendments
in the constitution are properly take care of may be no NGO’s will be required.
Only because these things are not taken care of properly by the Govt. do these
organizations come into play. One of the comments also made after this session
was we are talking about problems, problems and problems. Do we have solutions?
It was said identifying the problems is first step towards solutions.
Day 2: 2nd
December 2016 (Friday)
Keynote
address by Saskia Sassen:
Topic: Who
owns the city?
I have to
admit here that it was a lecture I sat through but unfortunately could not
grasp most part of it. This was because of the intense way of putting in
business numbers and explaining how corporate sector is taking over the city
(again my understanding). Reference was
made to how globalization is indirectly leading to homogenisation. Investment
from foreign investors investing in different cities with example of Qatari and
Chinese national’s investment in London.
Day 3: 3rd
December 2016 (Friday)
Session 4:
Resilience in the Indian City:
This was a
session with three speakers namely Harini Nagendra, Arun Jain and Aromar Revi.
This session was moderated by Sanjay prakash.
First
speaker of this session was Harini Nagedra from Azim Premji University. She is
a professor of sustainability there. The talk started with a general idea how the
world is urbanizing and that by 2050 around 50% of India will be Urban. The
next point was interesting where with some statistics she claimed that it is
not the old cities (already grown ones) which are fastest growing but the
smaller newer ones which have faster growth. This was to say that there is
still opportunity if we cater to these smaller cities. To have better cities it
should be planned organically. Examples of cities with respect to draught in
summer and floods during rains were presented and this happened as we have
planned without looking into the ecology of the city. Nature is essential to
cities was the point stressed upon. With case example of Bengaluru three points
were stressed upon. As cities grow they disrupt the local loop of nature
dependence. This was emphasized with how the Bengaluru city being in a
semi-arid zone the people created water bodies and lakes to hold water and
later after the introduction pf piped water these lakes are gone. The second
point was on the how idea of nature dependence changes as cities grow. As an example
the usage of lakes earlier and now was stressed upon. Earlier the lakes were
utilitarian (washing, drinking water, etc.,) but now lakes are more or less
visual or for draining. The third point was that the how the natural species of
plants and trees are still surviving in the places of the urban commons and
still being maintained. Cities should be looked as a metabolism which should
work together and not only visual.
Second
speaker of the session was Arun Jain, an urban designer and urban strategist
from Seattle. He started with explaining some fundamentals of cities and its
growth. According to him cities are collections of organized complexity and
they are incomplete open ended systems. He then related to the gap between
planning practice and planning theory. Simulations are not predictions, is what
he says. They may not be the conditions for what we are planning for. These
planning parameters give us information and data but they are knowledge. We
have to use our knowledge and plan accordingly. We should concentrate on
behaviour sensitive design. We should try to map complexity, give integrated
solutions by keeping the process honest, which is the real challenge was his
conclusion with regards to planning the cities for future.
Next
speaker was Aromar Revi, Director of Indian Institute of Human settlements,
Bengaluru. He started off with saying city is a system of systems and these
systems have to be understood. According to him every country in this world is
a developing country as they keep on developing. He looked into the sustainable
development goals listed by the UN and said a lot has to be done to reach these
goals. In the panel discussion, the first question was an interesting one. An
architect from the audience asked that he is a small architect and how can look
into city etc., at that bigger scale. He can deal with only small buildings at
that level. He was answered by saying that as architects we are obliged to look
into the bigger picture and it was necessary for us to always zoom in and zoom
out. It was also emphasized that a small building still belongs to the larger
ecosystem of the city.
Day 3: 3rd
December 2016 (Friday)
Session 5:
“Designing” the Indian City:
This was a
session with three speakers namely Dr. Bimal Patel, Aneerudha Paul and Swathi
Chattopadhyay. This session was moderated by Bijoy Ramachandran
First
speaker of the session was Bimal Patel, Architect, Urban designer and President
of CEPT University, Ahmedabad. He started off with explaining how bridges are
designed, where the parameters are very objective and defined. He compared it
with design of house or building and mentioned that the difference between
these two is that the latter is open ended. He then questioned if we can have
these kinds of parameters for cities. His notion was that we cannot predict
anything (population, economic base, trade dialogues, technology, life style,
politics etc.,) with respect to cities. This he explained on the basis that the
present “planned” cities have not taken the course that the planner had given
for these cities. So the future was uncertain and we need to look into it very
seriously. According to me his ideas were very simple wherein going by example
of New York city he says the only thing that was planned was the grid and that
helped the city grow in a structured manner and helped in providing with
necessary infrastructure later. He says as in the case of Indian cities the
urban growth happens first, that is people settle in areas first and then
infrastructure arrives. This scenario makes it difficult to provide that
infrastructure without any ordered organization. Here he clearly mentioned that
he did not advocate grid planning but road networks to be given in any desired
fashion for the city to grow so that later things can be added. He also talked
about the standards. How these standards in building bye laws are affecting the
affordability of poor people towards constructing their houses. An example of
how a house could be constructed at a lower price if standards were not present
or relaxed. A difference of 3 lakh rupees was shown in a calculation in which the
house with all standards cost 10 lakhs and the one with our any costs 6.7
lakhs. He compared it to buying two cars. That is I can afford only a Nano but
I have to buy a Mercedes. I don’t know if the points put forth are right or
wrong, I am not the one to comment, but what I liked the most in the
presentation was the clarity of thought and the simple way it was put forth so
that it could be understood. This presentation was the one which I enjoyed the
most.
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| Ar. Bimal Patel during panel discussion |
Aneerudha
Paul, Director of Kamala Raheja Vidhyanidhi Institute of Architecture, Mumbai
was the next speaker. The main focus of this presentation was on how to collect
data and interpret in the right way. According to him the practice of learning
from counts and figures may not be right and it will be better if we learn from
narratives. He shared the experience of mapping and working in the slums.
Swati
Chattopadhya from Univercity of California at Santa Barbara was the next speaker.
The topic was hacking the city. Again this lecture was something beyond my
capabilities to understand. A word ‘Fungibility’ was used whose meaning I did
not get then. She also disagreed on Bimal’s contention that the streets should
come first. A lot was spoken about Durga Pooja and pandals.
During the
panel discussion at the end of the session a lot of questions were raised. One
of the main questions was to have standards or not to which Aneerudha paul said
very basic standards need to be there which Bimal said maybe we can do away
with them. One member Neerja Tikku suggested that we cannot just put to thrash
all the things planners have been doing till now and said meay be relooking is
required but all that has been done till now may not be wrong.
Day 3: 3rd
December 2016 (Friday)
Session 6:
Unpacking the smart city:
This was a
session with three speakers namely Partha Mukhopadhyay, G. Sampath and A
Srivathsan. This session was moderated by Kapil Gupta.
First
speaker of the last session was Partha Mukhopadhyay from Centre for Policy
research, New Delhi. This presentation was again an engrossing one. One of the
main things told was about how smart cities mission zoomed in on the first list
of cities selected. Basically about the criteria of selection cities to whom
funding in first phase will be given. The marking scheme was like this, that
is, 35% weightage for prior performance of cities (example JNNURM scheme), 50%
for Plan for the pilot area and 15% for plan for the rest of the city. Citing
this he said the cost given for the pilot projects differing for different
cities and in some cities the pilot project itself was close to total allotment
of funds given to the cities through this scheme. He said the AMRUT mission was
better than this smart cities mission. He also questioned the liking of some
people to build cities like China and Singapore.
Second
speaker was Mr. Sampath from The Hindu, New Delhi. This presentation was one in
which we can say that the concept of smart city was decoded or deconstructed.
Through a series of slides he moved forward explaining how this idea of smart
emerged and how a lot of silicon companies may have stake in it. According to
him this smart city mission is a discourse through which the government wants
to achieve political goals rather than any civic or urban development goals. In
addition to this the main agenda of this mission is privatization in which
cities will be an abstraction with no history or politics and technology will
be the given divine (religion). This might convert the city into a company which
will get denizens for revenue. He concluded by saying city is not an app.
Third
speaker was A Srivathsan, Academic director CEPT university, Ahmedabad. He started
off with defining smart city to be a hybrid between Cybernatic and democratic.
He argued that it is a rhetoric of state speaking (like public holidays,
building monuments etc.,). This was also a presentation which questioned the
real intention of smart city. In all, all the three presentations were either
condemning the idea on the whole or the idea of its implementation.
The
conference came to an end with the conclusion address given by conference curator
Ar. Prem Chandavarkar. I will write about this concluding note in a separate blog.
Thank you....!!!
Hope you enjoyed reading !!!!
Muzakkir G. M. Bijli
This is something i did whenever some presentations went boring !!!!
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