India’s Real Estate Boom & Architecture
And this one, since we have been talking about Government intervention and its pros and cons … city planning, including the aesthetics and architectural vision of a city, are the government’s responsibility.
In all the emerging markets, a real-estate boom is raging. Nowhere is this boom more pronounced than in India and China. You have recently read my piece, As India Builds, on India’s architectural destruction, tearing down old houses, and building new ugly ones in their places. You have also read Jorge Freyer’s piece on India’s enormous 500 Million strong consumer market. Can you imagine the housing needs of this emerging middle class?
It would be fair to assume that India will build at a furious pace over the next 30-50 years.
During my recent trip to Rome, I found myself thinking a lot about how India should build, in the context of how it has been building so far. In Rome in particular, but in Italy in general, I found a very good benchmark and example that India could follow.
Ofcourse, multi-storied apartment complexes will abound in the urban areas. But I prefer that they look more like this:
or this:
and not like this:
If you are interested in this topic, you can read my more detailed notes alongside pictures in my Flickr set, which I prepared for discussions with an architect in India.
too late sramana, architecture in India is kind of moving exactly the way you said it should not go. What with high salaries and with designs from Singapore architects the so called gated communities are everywhere. why do you think we should build Rome kind of architecture instead of a hybrid Indian one? you mean like this
To me, the pictures in your link look somewhat like stacked shoeboxes with a dome on top.
I am not saying we should build Rome kind of architecture. I am saying we should build “some architecture”. What we’re building right now is non-architecture.
We are building stacked shoeboxes.
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what you saw was neoclassical in its fullest bloom as propagated by hafeez contractor, the architect. he is single handedly changing the way India looks and its pathetic. I think recent large architectural projects in India are ugly.
O’ god Suresh. All i could come up with reading your message is a helpless groan.
No!
Please, No!
It is all a matter of personal preference. Classical style, say, Renaissance style of architecture, no doubt looks great, but it is very difficult and expensive to maintain, and damn expensive to build in the first place. On top of that, everything depends upon the client - who not only needs to have loads of money, but a refined taste as well.
Is it? To preserve a city, the government needs to have a policy, so that people don’t build whatever they wish to.
The problem is, India has no such inclination.
Cities that do a good job of preservation, do.
Often the city creating a master policy for architectural specs help constrain the evolution of the aesthetics.
Isn’t that what is missing, Surajit?
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I do not like the stacked housing design. Would hate to live in one of these
Unfortunately we will have the developers and “certain Mumbai based architect” who only believe in few water lanes and 5 feet of open land to be shared amongst 500 homes to be the “innovation”. We are heading towards worse times - don’t even expect it.