‘Heritage’ Furniture – a new line of urban furniture for Chandigarh.
The current focus of the international market on Chandigarh’s so-called heritage furniture has jeopordized the fundamental purpose of furniture: to be used, not idealized. The analysis of this situation leads to the question: what is the right way to preserve a furniture’s design heritage? Chandigarh Urban Lab proposes that instead of literally preserving the old furniture, the city should continue to design for the present in [...]
View PostHybrid Housing – new typologies for a growing city.
Here are three new housing typologies, hybridizing the lessons learnt from the passive solar, naturally ventilated and daylit, modular, Modulor based, modernist Chandigarh ‘heritage’ housing, with the high-density, ‘organic’, non-regulated housing of the urban villages like Burail. Share/Bookmark
View PostIncremental Housing: A New Typology
Village_53 Burail + Marla. This type takes the density and diversity of housing in the urban village and combines it with the order and control of Chandigarh’s marla houses. We have studied and understand that even in the most organized housing schemes there is expansion that takes place. The goal of type 3 is to [...]
View PostThe Case for a Chandigarh BRT
Vibrant, booming cities all over the world have turned to bus rapid transit in response to roadway congestion. Modern interiors and smart platforms serve millions of passengers each day while reducing vehicle miles travelled, improving mobility to all residents and providing rapid sub-regional transport. Flexible, quick to implement and cost-effective, BRT is the perfect match [...]
View PostChandigarh’s Theaters: An Analysis
Formal, economic and geographic diagrams of the original Chandigarh theaters. Share/Bookmark
View PostCataloguing: An Overview
The “designed” furniture, as the smallest module of the master plan, and the kinetic street furniture, as the smallest element of the informal city, provide a microcosm with which to understand the issues facing Chandigarh at the macro level. The juxtaposition of the Modernist furniture and kinetic street furniture parallels the larger preservation issues facing [...]
View PostFetishization of the Kinetic City
When studying the kinetic modern furniture of the informal sector, it is easy to romanticize the ingenuity (Jugaad) of the people who construct their environment. Therefore, it is critical to eliminate the National Geographic-esque beauty of the people and their environments in order to document and analyze all the furniture of Chandigarh on equal terms, [...]
View PostModern Indian Cinema – a Brief Overview
Cinema became increasingly popular in the early twentieth century throughout the world. Unlike theatre performances, cinema has historically been, and continues to be, affordable for the common man. Much like theatre, cinema allowed for films to narrate social struggles and depict daily life in the city for broad audiences. Following India’s independence, the [...]
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