Jan '23: Journeying into the New Year with Awards and Recognitions

A VK Group monthly newsletter

- January 2023 -

Monthly Highlights

VK:u urban Wins Ideas Design Competition For Development Of Intermodal Station (IMS), Katra

We are extremely proud to announce that the entry “Parivarttanam” by VK:u urban team, comprising of Adnan K., Ajinkya K., Tanvi K., Dhanashree C., Ghanashyam O., Jay B. and Krinjal J., headed by Ar. Vijay Sane, has won the Ideas Design Competition. The competition for the development of Intermodal Station (IMS) at Katra, Jammu, was conducted by the Council of Architecture to get the best modern, economical and sustainable design for the millions of devotees that visit the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Temple every year.

The project is developed keeping in mind the local ecology and sociology and national economy. With a vision to create a seamless integrated site, with potentials for growth and dynamic development, the IMS is designed after understanding the success and failure of national and international casestudies.

Read on to know more about the competition entry.

VK:a architecture Presented With Kohinoor Connect 2.0 Awards

Kohinoor Group organized a unique partner meet "Kohinoor Connect 2.0" to appreciate their association with vendors and partners with an Awards night on 3rd January 2023 at JW Marriot, Pune. Around 400 partners attended the glorious event where Kohinoor group shared their journey of 39 years of growth. As a token of appreciation, the group showed their gratitude towards the partners who have been supporting them consistently and ensuring the timely delivery of the project with high quality services. We are glad to inform you that VK:a architecture (Teams Sayaji and Kashibai) were identified as “Pillar of Kohinoor Award” and Ar. Anurag Mulay was awarded "Special Kohinoor Partner".

'Sustainability Initiatives' Honoured With Outstanding Service Award

For the past 11 years, Sustainability Initiatives (SI) has been doing remarkable work for urban sustainability under the guidance of Dr. Poorva Keskar, Ar. Hrishikesh Kulkarni, Ms. Angha Paranjape Purohit, Ms. Apoorva Kulkarni and Ar. Vijay Sane.

On the occasion of the birth centenary of freedom fighter and founding editor of Lokmat, Jawaharlal Darda, 'Sustainability Initiatives' was honored with 'Incredible Service Award' by Padma Shri Girish Prabhune and Special IG Shri Krishna Prakash (IPS) for its exemplary contribution in the field of environment and sustainability. The event was held on January 2, 2023 in the Auditorium of Patrakar Bhawan which was co-organized by Lokmat and Maha NGO Federation. Founder of Maha NGO Federation Shri Shekhar Mundada, Editor of Lokmat Shri Sanjay Awte, Shri Ravindra Dharia of Vanrai and other dignitaries were present. Dr. Poorva Keskar, Mr. Amol Umbarje and Mrs. Shivali Waichal accepted this honour on behalf of SI. Officials and representatives from various social organizations in Maharashtra were present for the program.

VK Group Breaking Grounds

Parivarttanam – Where Inspiration Meets Spirituality

As the name suggests, “change” was the guiding factor when designing the project. How can transitions between types of transport, linking local infrastructure developments to world-class inter modal Hub amenities resulting to a modern seamless spiritual journey? How can we introduce minimum disruption, and enhance the local ecology and the community?

The excellence of the design owes to the understanding of movement patterns, transportation infrastructure and user experience through various project of VK:u urban. Master planning and designing the Multi-Modal Transit Hub for Pune and the SwyftCities Mobility Solutions, prepared them with a better understanding of innovative vertical infrastructure as well as technologies that can be brought into this project to further enhance its grandeur. Insights from studies done for Smart City planning for Solapur and Pune had embedded in them the need to integrate open spaces for the community in public infrastructure. Understanding that the users and their narratives are KEY in such projects, and designing to help foster a symbiotic growth for the city and the citizens was the winning aspect of the proposal.

VK:u in association with VK:a have enthusiastically participated in (and won) several design competitions. When competitions are usually more demanding with tight timelines, why do we take it on? Competitions push architects to explore beyond the ordinary and how to successfully represent those visually. It gives an opportunity to learn and to find where one stand amongst national and international peers. In the case of IMS Katra, Ar. Vijay Sane has rightly stated the team got a chance to explore transportation design, circulation studies and economics of such large projects, providing the team with a newer skill set for bigger opportunities.

What did they enjoy the most during the process? The constant problem solving. “We looked at the layouts and the requirements and then would embed it into the site and this would have us go from the whiteboard on to the paper multiple times. We wanted to ensure our core principles of seamless transitions stayed intact and that meant it needed to be a no compromise design solution.” Parivarttanam has rendered VK:u with sharper design skills and faster problem solving skills.

Go through the design in detail

From the Editor's Desk

Tourism, Identity and Architectural Simulacra

Bilbao, Spain, is now a sought after city for tourists. But before 1997, it was just an industrial port town with high levels of unemployment. So what happened in 1997? The Guggenheim Museum, by Frank O Gehry, was built. The economic boom of the city due to the visitors to the museum was so drastic that the term “Bilbao effect” or “Guggenheim effect” was coined to refer to the phenomenon of iconic architecture resulting in economic upliftment of a city. It started a global craze of various cities wanting their own icons (or starchitecture), often at the cost of the building’s appearance outrunning the content and failing to perform its intended function.

But the relationship between architecture and tourism is not a new phenomenon. Paris has The Eiffel Tower and Sydney, the Opera House. What is the first image that comes to your mind when you think of India? Almost every tourism brochure has the Taj Mahal on its front page. Architectural heritage has been linked to the identity of tourism in India so much that even the newer infrastructure tends to imitate the archetypes and details – creating a simulacrum.

Simulacra are copies that represent or imitate a person or thing, often replacing reality with its representation. These can be witnesses in thematic resort or parks; the Global Village in Dubai being one of the largest successful example. Through icons and symbols, idealized architectural heritage of each region is reconstructed into a tourist product.

From the Pyramids, Temples of Ancient India, Statue of Liberty to Burj Khalifa, all have been the identity of the place and say the story of the time they were built in. But it is when tourism tends to depend solely on these symbolisms that it starts becoming a problem. Blind reproduction of such elements (not to be confused with restoration) can result in the creation of irrelevant spaces disconnected from the community.

The Heritage Street redevelopment project in Amritsar, Punjab, from Town Hall to Golden Temple, has essentially just created a new 'heritage façade' to the 170 shops that remain without any restoration. Adapting the concept of pedestrianized European 'mall streets', the component of the design and details are carved in latticework (jaali), similar to Rajput architecture from Jaipur. Under the pressure of global economics, architecture is turned into instruments of touristic show, often limited to surface articulation. In turn, it creates a significant split between the architecture and its location in terms of specific cultural roots.

While many other attempts at wannabe Bilbaos have failed, Gehry stress an aspect of the design often overlooked by imitators, which is that it works hard to connect to its surroundings: “I spent a lot of time making the building relate to the 19th century street module and then it was on the river, with the history of the river, the sea, the boats coming up the channel. It was a boat.”

Inspiration for the Month

City-sized Buildings: The Line between Fiction and Reality

Since the creation of vehicular transportation, our cities have been redesigned around it. Advanced road networks have allowed our cites to spread wider and wider to larger agglomerations, in turn, diminishing ground cover for forests, water bodies and altering even geological formations. While concepts like Virgin Hyperloop and Urban Air Mobility are exploring to make the transportation systems more environment friendly through electro-magnetic levitation, projects like The Line are trying to reduce the need to travel itself.

This concept of an arcology – a densely populated habitat with space for residential, commercial and agricultural needs, thus being a self-sustaining ecosystem - was envisioned by the architect Paolo Soleri in 1969. He started an experimental town called Arcosanti to demonstrate this, but it remains unfinished. The concept has inspired many science fictions, which has in turn influenced futuristic designs like NOAH (New Orleans Arcology Habitat) and The Line.

Smaller units like space stations and submarines already function as self-sustaining habitats for short periods of time. Will we be able to design, build and live in all-encompassing city-sized structures? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, watch the Skyscraper (2018) to wonder at vertical transportation systems and how supertall towers can become cities within the tower, housing functions from office, hotel, residential, observatory, restaurants, health clubs, retail shopping, grocery stores and other daily needs.

Read more about arcologies

Explore Arcosanti

Material In Focus

Self-Healing Concrete

Traditional concrete is a very reliable, but loses its properties when cracked.

In 2015, Henk Jonkers from Delft University of Technology invented self-healing concrete with capsules containing specific bacteria and nutrients for them added to the concrete: the bacteria were activated as soon as water hit. Cracked concrete was rebuilt with moisture, filled with limestone produced by the bacteria.

In addition to this bio-technology, there is another alternative from Korean researchers in which capsules of a certain polymer are added to concrete.

First Self-Healing Concrete Building

Book Recommendation

The Eyes of The Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa

First published in 1996, The Eyes of the Skin has become a classic of architectural theory. It asks the far-reaching question why, when there are five senses, has one single sense – sight – become so predominant in architectural culture and design?

Juhani Pallasmaa argues that the suppression of the other four sensory realms has led to the overall impoverishment of our built environment, often diminishing the emphasis on the spatial experience of a building and architecture’s ability to inspire, engage and be wholly life enhancing.

Architecture is not merely an object for visual seduction. This book encourages us to do more than just look at architecture, but to notice how buildings involve all our senses.

Breathe: Travelogue Series

Office Tour to Gujarat – Something Old, Something New and Something Renewed

Ar. Hrishikesh Kulkarni, associate partners and the team leaders of VK:a architecture took a trip to Gujarat on 7^th and 8^th of January 2023 as a productive break from the everyday hustle of office life.

The group visited The Statue of Unity at Kevadia, one of the largest tourism development projects undertaken in the country, covering an area of 20,000 square meters. Located on the banks of the Narmada River, nestled between the Vindhyachal and Satpura ranges, SoU is the representation of India’s engineering and technological power and efficiency. The landmark project is master planned by the American architects Michael Graves and the statue is designed by the Padmabhushan winning Indian sculptor Ram V Sutar. The area is carefully planned to grow into a tourism hub with multiple attractions catering to the diverse crowd expected to visit, including Arogya Van, butterfly garden, cactus garden, ekta nursery and valley of flowers. The sheer scale of the statue left the visitors awe-struck. The experience was heightened by the projection mapping accompanied by audio narration. Ar. Nilesh Ursekar got a chance to compare the macro to micro level planning to a competition project he had worked on for a memorial complex and exhibition Centre for the Pune Municipal Corporation.

A brief visit to the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) gave everyone a chance to see VK:a’s project site. Ar. Vishal Deshmukh pointed out how commercial buildings opening out directly onto the footpaths, without any compound or barriers, were more inviting and gave a better experience of the city.

The stopover at Adalaj Vav was a peek into the rich traditional past of Gujarat. In stark contrast to the modern tourist attractions, the step-well became a reminder to respond to the climate and site using passive techniques.

In the evening, the group took a stroll on the Sabarmati Riverfront to experience first-hand, a development project that has attracted much acclaim as well as criticism.

Apart from the SoU, The House of MG in the Old City was definitely the highlight of the tour. Though an authentic Gujarati thali at its restaurant ‘Agashiye’ was the intention, the interior renovations became a case-study of how an old structure can be adapted to a new purpose rather than being demolished. One of the oldest buildings in Ahmedabad, it was previously the residence of the Mangaldas family. The 37 roomed colonial mansion replete with courtyards and verandahs, has been thoughtfully converted into a boutique hotel and restaurant. For the musically inclined, like Ar. Azhar Indikar, the live classical gazals played on the sitar and table precariously set on the rooftop while dining on the Agashiye (Gujarati for ‘terrace’) was what made the experience memorable.

When working in large groups, it can often get difficult to coordinate between teams and share knowledge gained during a project. The tour helped facilitate bonding amongst team members, give them the chance to get to know one another outside of the office and start the New Year afresh.