Everyday City

The Registrations for the CEPT Winter School in Ahmedabad are now open! There's a wide variety of courses and one of these is 'The Everyday City'. Sharing the details of this course below. Dates: 1st to 17th Dec 2015 Location: School of Architecture & Planning, CEPT University, Ahmedabad In India, as in other parts of the world, some of the physical development of the city is influenced by the everyday practices of its people. The urban spaces are continually transformed by social, cultural, religious, political, economic and other practices. Currently, these practices intermingle with each other and with the streets…

The City authorities have decided to redesign and redevelop some of the historic markets in Bangalore. In an article in the Bangalore Mirror, 'Is this the end of the road for the city's iconic markets?', we read that the government believes that a joint venture model will give the markets a facelift and help get higher revenues. I can't help thinking about who has been "designing" our Bazaars? I'm thinking of 'bazaars' as not just the market buildings, but the cluster of push cart vendors at the street corner, the street bazaars, the market precincts that sometimes spread over much…

I was on my way to a temple in Dodda Mavalli because it was Gowri Ganesh and I had been told it would be a day when devotees would come both to the Maramman temple and the Ashwath katte next to it. I was just curious to see what the rituals were like on this day. The autorickshaw driver abruptly stopped at the end of a narrow lane much before we had reached the temple. In front of us, there was an open space between small houses and there were tempos parked there. Small idols of Ganesha were being carried…

The questions: ‘what is art for?’ Or, ‘why man creates?’ have been asked before and answered many times in many different ways. And yet, I want to ask again. It is like the question ‘what is the meaning of life?’ and the only answer to that question that makes sense to me is “forty-two” – the answer that the science fiction writer Douglas Adams brings to us in his book ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. Perhaps, it means that there is no answer, or at least no meaningful answer. Here, I am sharing photographs of the two kinds of…

One thing led to another. I was looking for feedback on sketches of the street life at Russell market and that led to the suggestion: “Why don’t you try meeting Mr.Zaffar Sait? He has been an old resident of the neighbourhood” So, that’s what I did and then couldn’t help but turn it into a post just so that others would have the chance to listen to this story as well. So, here is the account of life in Bangalore in the 50’s as narrated by Mr.Zaffar Sait, who belongs to one of the most well-respected mercantile families of the…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUwxV7_pYyE&feature=youtu.be The film was taken in 2010 and the background music is a recording I made from the loudspeakers that played on Bull temple road during the Kadlekai Parishe (Groundnut fair) that same year. The purpose of the film had been a simple one - to record how people use space on an everyday basis. It was a time when the street vendors had not yet been evicted. That happened in Jan 2012. The reason cited by the government for the eviction was that the gandhi bazaar main road was becoming very congested. But, was this the only solution? In…