bhiawandi . annual days and lecture series. visitors

bhiwandi

some time last week paul and me took a long arduous drive to bhiwandi to the offices for water supply, agriculture and small dams for data on the tansa river valley. and on the way we were caught in the smoke and squalor of the road and the heavy truck traffic of this industrial town that lies almost completely below a flyover by passing the main town. a truck scratched my side and i pitied the man and could not pick a fight .

a follow up the dutch trip took place in the conference room in school where we discussed collectives, partnerships and strategies for new alliances for architecture in the city.

the dinner at country club, andheri

the iudi conversation on 'alternatives to the master plan'

dad in college

mitali from the first year who won the gold in the commonwealth chess championship

in college the soap opera of the school continues. tears flow, tempers rise and it constantly seems like the world is falling apart at the seams- what with workshops where magic and music, graphic novels and the ubiquitous btech all compete for space- along with the cinema city exhibition being readied for berlin and the ‘looking east’ conference on asian cities. us looking at them?? regardless the chinese and the taiwanese guests were wonderful. joan du spoke of the shenzen area; professor shih wei lou of time and sheng huang showed his beautiful warm work` with a sense of humor that was most refreshing. especially after watching so many traumatized urban design proposals to save the cities of india. the recondition of design is assumed to be a problem- which means that the only way to see cities is through trauma. trying this. this is not to say that all is hunky dory. btu our resolutions to the conflicts within cities is always then based on some presumptions of what can solve them- and in the urban designers vocabulary these are – connectivity, merging, uniformity. this reminds me of the undisciplined city conference and the fundamentally unresolvable conflict between the vitality of the city and the static nature of policy.

as you can imagine, it is social life time all around too. medha is getting married in february and the kelwan was held in borivili which i could not attend because of the annuals. we met them the next day though along with the rest of the family.

atharva ayushka

and later we were surprised by kiran, karen, alison and feroz along with kiran’s girlfriend jessie from australia.

feroz, kiran, jessie, karen and alison

medha

arav

gauri