Nov '22: Golden Dialogues, Moving Towards A Sustainable Healthy Future

A VK Group monthly newsletter

- November 2022 -

Monthly Highlights

Golden Dialogues 01: The Role of Placemaking in Urban Revitalisation

The first session of Golden Dialogues, curated by VK Group as part of their year-long Golden Jubilee celebration, took place on 14th October 2022, at the Navalmal Firodia Auditorium, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) Campus, Law College road, Pune. The dialogues are envisioned as a series of 5 panel discussions on the topics crucial to the changing urbanscapes of India by providing a platform to put forward the perspectives of various stakeholders in the transformation of the city. The session presentations and discussions revolved around the theme’ Role of Placemaking in Urban Revitalisation’. Ar. Anita Khandekar, chairperson of Indian Institute of Urban Designers (IUDI) Pune Chapter, opened the event with thought provoking ideas of the importance of placemaking. She stressed that “placemaking is not just the making of parks or pedestrian paths, but the act of understanding the interactions and inter-relationships taking place in a space and designing a cohesive unit that creates a greater value for a community.” The panelists Ar. Vijay Sane, Ar. Rohit Gadiya and Ar. Nakul Rege spoke of their work around the theme, their views, challenges faced and their learnings from the process. The interactive panel discussion that followed, moderated by Ar. Priya Gokhale, founder and chief coordinator at WIDE Angle Forum, put forward multiple ideas of placemaking, the role of a designer and citizen in the process and what is happening in these places after they have been designed, executed and used. Mr Aniruddha Shahapure, Chief Knowledge Officer, Pune Smart City Development Corporation Ltd. (PSCDCL) closed the session with a reminder of the need to be inclusive when creating these places – of climate, energy, environment, administrators, politicians and ofcourse, the people. Don't miss the next session, in which the panel will discuss about the Climate Action Plan for Pune City.

VK Group Celebrations

Diwali

21 October, 2022

2 years of Vk:o Operations

8th November, 2022

VK:o operations was established 2 years ago to handle the complex management and operational demands of the ever growing VK Group. Headed by Ms. Apoorva Kulkarni and Ms. Deepa Bhokil, the operations team has helped boost the productivity and efficiency of the organisation. Read on as our Director of Operations, Ms. Apoorva, explains how operational consultants can add value to architectural practices.

Capacity Building: Training Programs

Preparation of Working Drawings by

Mr. Bandu Fuke

10th November, 2022

Making Impactful Presentations by Pragati Leadership

11 - 12 November, 2022

Mr. Bandu explained in detail the processes that are involved, from preparing working drawings to the issuing of GFC drawings on site. The sessions covered topics such as dimensioning, nomenclature and hatching drawings, and how to coordinate with consultants site engineers and clients.

The workshop on Presentation skills stressed on the 4 P's of impactful presentations: Plan, Prepare, Practice and Perform. It also gave the participants insights on how to build rapport with clients by knowing their audience and through improved conversations.

VK Group Breaking Grounds

Beyond the Mandatory - Towards Sustainable Living

Imagine waking up to the sound of birds chirping, and you step out to your balcony to the view of lush greenery. Did you assume you were in a remote forest, away from the city? What if you got everything you imagined in your city home?

The 10% mandatory Recreational Green (RG) for a construction project is often begrudgingly provided and left as lawns or playgrounds. What happens when the open areas are given as much (sometimes, even more) importance as the built space?

When Vk:a designed the Westview Reserve in Punewale and Kohinoor Kaleido in Kharadi, the open space took the center stage (literally). Both localities cater largely to the IT crowd, who spends a majority of their day (and night) in front of a monitor, indoors. While designing, the residential buildings were aligned towards the periphery, opening up the central area. The multi-level car-parks ensure more space on the ground – more than 1 acre in each site. Inspired by a vision to create not only a healthy lifestyle, but also to motivate the youth of tomorrow to learn and play outdoors, the central space is conceptualized as a mini forest with designated camping area, butterfly garden and amphitheater.

Keeping true to its name, the Westview Reserve is to be densely planted by native trees and plants, further detailed in collaboration with the landscape architects ‘Ravi & Varsha Gavandi’. The ‘forest reserve’ extends out and flows into the buildings, welcoming every resident out to the open. Comprehensively detailed by the internal Vk:a Landscape team, Kohinoor Kaleido responds to the water scarcity of the Kharadi region with a rain-water harvesting Eco-pond. An orchard space is provided to encourage urban farming and a demarcated area for a weekly farmer’s market for buying local produce. Other amenities like swimming pool, clubhouse, children’s playground and courts are provided on the parking podiums.

When people cannot go out to nature, thoughtful designs can bring nature to them. With high-density development being the vision of the future, bringing all the necessary amenities within walking distance is the first step towards a self-sustaining community.

Watch The Future of Skyscrapers

Value Addition of Operations Consultants in Architectural Practices

Worldwide, Operations Consultants are being hired by business owners, especially architects, to improve the efficiency of their design teams. At its simplest, operational consulting is the provision of expert advice on any process within an organization, team, project or workflow. Over time it has been proven that Operational Management Consultants help protect, transform and sustain an architectural organization for years to come. Some amongst the many benefits are:

Save Time: Without the proper know-how and expertise, business owners (architects running their own firm) don’t always thoroughly understand what it takes to get by when it comes to operational processes. Tasks like accounts and financial management, taxation and audits, HR (a huge responsibility in itself) , quality control, social media, IT support and so much more, cause the owners to shift their attention from what they do best to help achieve organizational goals.
Financial Advice: A company’s profits are often undercut by inefficient practices and processes that can be eliminated or improved. Operations consultant can easily spot these issues and offer an analysis of how they affect your profits. They help you come up with strategies that will increase your earnings, look at preventive measures to avoid long term losses, which makes solid financial advice that will improve an organization in perpetuity. Operational services are further used in developing and implementing targets / service delivery models, executing cost reduction programs and optimising business processes.
Improved Products and Services: A business’s lifeline is its service or products, and customers are likely to patronize ones because one provides a solution to a dilemma they are facing. An Operational consultant will help optimise one’s processes, methods, improve thinking and derive new methods to make one’s products and services better.
Outside opinion: Since they come with a bird’s eye view (outsiders looking inwards), they bring in the critical suggestions required at the time of market fluctuations, managerial alterations, and high employee turnover.

In these times of optimal utilization of knowledge, it’s advisable to value the Operations Team as your best allies in the ever-changing market place.

Not convinced? Read more on the topic

From the Editor's Desk

~~Architecture and~~ Well-being of Architects

As usual, I sat down to write for this month’s editorial piece – this time, on the topic “Architecture and Well-being”. Amongst all the books, articles, studies and exhibitions that prove the influence of architecture on the health of the occupant, I stumbled upon Michael’s useletter which talked about the role of compassion in the profession.

In the education and practice of the profession, we constantly hear complaints about extreme workloads, unpaid overtime and gender discriminations. There is rarely any attempt to address these issues, other than isolated projects like the research on Architect’s Well-being by Naomi Stead in Australia and some newsletters by architects like Michael and Tyler (which confirm that these feelings are shared world-wide). Of all the findings, what I found most interesting (and relatable) was how “many respondents were committed to their profession and took pride in their work but said they would not necessarily recommend a career in architecture to others.”

What can we do to improve the situation? Since many of the issues need an organizational or a whole-of-profession level change, one can merely point these out and hope each individual at various levels in the vocation would take the conscious decision to systematically reduce the negative impact. So how have some improved their work-relate wellbeing in architecture? Educating clients to make them understand the time and complexity of processes that goes into design, increasing fees to ensure genuine clients (and lesser deadlines) and dedicating time for socializing with friends and family have helped some maintain sanity.

If you are an architect and if you have some time, I would love to know if/how your workplace implements a culture of wellbeing or what you wish would be done. Just hit a reply to this mail!

Architect's Mental Well-being Toolkit

Inspiration for the Month

Big Data and Cloud Computing in Architecture

Big data technology in construction by Nikolay Garyaev and Venera Garyaeva

If you search the words ‘big data’ ‘cloud computing’ and ‘architecture’ together, even Google will return only results on cloud architecture. As architects, we often tend to skip everything that contains these terminologies as they seem ‘not applicable’ to us. But with the IoT (Internet of Things) everything is connected to everything now.

Simply put, the large volume of data being constantly collected and processed from phones to fridges to cars, is called big data. And cloud computing allows this data to be stored at a common location, which allows it to be accessed from anywhere in the world as and when the need arises. Now if we think back on the technologies we use in our buildings, we realize we are already applying many of these concepts, but not to their fullest capacity.

Accessibility: In collaborative projects such as Keppel Land were VK:a architecture works with other international architects, cloud computing could allow architects to access files from multiple locations. It can help reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Smarter buildings: Big data could be used to collect and analyze data about their inhabitants to ensure better indoor comfort and optimized usage of energy. Additionally, big data could be used to track the performance of buildings to identify problems and make changes accordingly.
Smarter cities: Imagine how efficient our urban planning and infrastructure could be if the data of urban space usage is analysed to discover patterns and that knowledge was used to make decisions! Market trends can be forecasted to create cities according to arising needs.

A word of caution: they should not be a substitute for field work to understand the unique client, context and climate, but as a supplement to the process.

Know more on Big Data and Smart Buildings

Material In Focus

Mycelium: Building with Fungi

Mycelium is the fibrous root of fungi which can act as a binder when mixed with other materials. It can be a sustainable alternative to cement. Ecovative Design in New York has been researching on various environmentally conscious structural products that can be made with mycelium, like MycoComposite™ and AirMycelium™. It is being explored as a preferable material for insulation boards and temporary pavilions.

Characteristics: When dried, it is very durable and resistant to water, mold, and fire. High thermal and sound insulation properties. It is naturally biodegradable, reducing construction waste.