3:47 PM
TAIN
Since my return from Bhutan a week ago, I have been reading in the press a collage of views, nostalgia for better times, criticisms of individuals, wild accusations, hopes and fears for the future. Several themes emerge like corruption, lack of top leadership and gross incompetence. The answers are in all of these and in none of them. When it rains we curse the PMC, when it’s hot the MSEB and when it’s cold we forget all we’ve learned during the past eight months! We curse public servants, but neglect that our cell phones and broadband services don’t work either!
I myself cannot help but compare the little town of Thimphu where electricity is 7/24, where phones are dependable, where there is an adequate airport, where storm drainage works and the roads are reasonably level and functional....
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
TAIN Evenings presents...
Bruce Dunn is a Pune-based graffiti artist. While studying in school, Bruce began to draw on his shoes, marking the beginning of his life today. At the age of 20, Bruce has been a professional graffiti artist for the past two years. What began as something he did in his free time today is a source of his income.
With no formal training in art, Bruce began working with his natural talent and instinct. Today a student of FAD International, he is studying Fine Arts. And he’s continued with his graffiti work, ranging from shoes to caps to walls. Inspired largely from his surroundings, Bruce’s art also depends on the message that he wishes to c...
Saturday, January 22, 2011
"Open Spaces" by Christopher Charles Benninger, Architect.
Journalists often mistake me as a soothsayer, when I am a mere architect! They ask me what Pune, or some other city, will be like in ten or twenty years. I have no answer except to lament that, “If you choose the ten things you like best in the city, they will not be there in ten years!” The wide sidewalks are being thrown out to make parking spaces, the foundations get in the way of traffic and the hill slopes are up for grabs
While the urban population of India is swelling, the open space accessible to people is shrinking. In 1968, when I first came to India, there were a mere ten cities that could boast a population of a million or more. Today there are fifty-five and each of them are four times the size they were four decades ago!.
Unlike the West, a great deal of India’s social life...
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Changing Signs
We’ve done a post of horoscopes last year. The debate of whether a person’s disposition is a result of their sun signs or the external environment they are exposed to, is an almost never ending. And like that wasn’t inconclusive enough, they decided to change them completely.
We now know that the shift is only applicable to people born in and after 2009. But before this was clarified, the entire population of the world was in frenzy. Noone was sure about themselves anymore, and the thought of being a sun sign other than the one they were accustomed to disturbed everyone. Which brings us to the original debate again – is a person’s disposition the result of their sun signs or the external environment they are exposed to? Every person who I have spoken to about this, has said they couldn’t...
Monday, January 17, 2011
"Urban Icons" by Christopher Charles Benninger, Architect.
When I was a child an image of the Taj Mahal became my image of India! It seemed that the Eiffel Tower was also France; and the Great Wall of China was indeed that vast land. As I grew up and traveled I hung new facts, ideas, and concepts onto these images, in the same manner that children decorate Christmas trees making them more meaningful and complex. Looking back, I realize that these iconic representations never faded, nor were they replaced. These emblems became intellectual skeletons that held large bodies of reality, composed of many structured ideas. Thus, my icons were memorable images that anchored my awareness of reality and allowed me to expand my knowledge system within a structure that could be sourced when needed. One icon can lead me to more sub-icons, and so forth, providing...
TAIN Evenings presents...
TAIN is hosting photographer Giresh Baraya on the 21st and 22nd of January, 2011 in Pune. Other than being a car enthusiast, a passion which was inherent since a very young age, Giresh discovered his creative disposition in photography three years ago. Since then, going out anywhere, his camera has been his closest acquaintance.
Giresh believes that there is a special way in which we adapt to our surroundings. “We acclimatize ourselves with the stimuli in order to find ourselves in a place where we have always hoped to be.” And this belief has helped him absorb the various facets of design that his surroundings have to offer.
Should you wish...
Saturday, January 15, 2011
My space, your space.
In everyone’s home, there is one space that they can call their own. A space where they can sit in peace and quiet and think, a space where they can achieve inspiration of some sort. It could be a separate room, or just a corner of a room. It varies with different people, and various houses. Some people draw inspirations in their bathrooms, while some have more acceptable places like a study to be inspired in.
Nowadays, houses are spacious enough to accommodate more than one “space” and people can even afford to assign one entire room for their space. But in earlier times, they’d have to make do with a window ledge or a desk in the corner. Of course, no one has ever complained about that. There is a certain charm in snuggling against a window sill at the end of the day, and thinking or reading...
Friday, January 14, 2011
Home away from home, hotel away from home.
There are many hotels and resorts that advertise themselves as “a home away from home” and attempt to make their rooms and services as home-like as possible. While many people may like the pitch, and be glad for something that reminds them of home there are many people who want to know WHY.
Travel, ideally is for two reasons. For business or for pleasure. When traveling for business, being in a place that reminds someone of the comfort of their own home is something that works for someone. But while traveling for pleasure, one doesn’t necessarily want to be reminded of their home. They may want to be in the lap of luxury, without the warmth of home. They may want impersonality to dominate their vacation, rather than be reminded of the personal spaces they have at home. I mean, why would someone...
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
"ARCHITECTONICS : The Technology of Poetry" by Christopher Charles Benninger, Architect.
Architecture throughout the ages has been driven by a three tired agenda. High architecture from the Renaissance to the “Chicago School” was driven by similar agenda. There has been a continual battle against false styles that impale a fashion from the past upon modern technology in a manner that hides the true technology under stylized decoration. What you see is not what you get! This commercial, false style is known as effetism. Over history there has been a concern with new materials and technologies and there has been a concern with contemporary problems and issues. These three concerns have been the agenda of modern architecture.
Reform and Activism:
First, there has been the continual battle against false “styles” and fashions that employ motifs, details and pseudo technologies derived...
Saturday, January 8, 2011
"The Sustainable City" by Christopher Charles Benninger, Architect.
Cities are the engines that pull the economic development train. They are centers of social change, innovation, employment and economic expansion. They sponsor diversity, tolerance and are a refuge from oppression. They are growing faster than planned for and are yielding benefits to their hinterlands and nations. But unplanned, rapid urban growth brings a multitude of stresses on the people and upon the environment.
The Urban Crises of Sustainability
The environment suffers in multiple dimensions as the ground water is exhausted and replenished with polluted waste, poisoning the subterranean strata upon which city rests. Paving over and closing natural earth filters denies even normal recharge into the city’s aquifer systems. The water run-off flushes streams and rivers and carries silt...
Thursday, January 6, 2011
"Symbolism and Geometry of the National Capitol Complex of Bhutan" by Christopher Charles Benninger, Architect.
We are presently engaged in the preparation of the urban design of the Trashi Chhoe Dzong Capitol Complex covering about one and a half square kilometers. This design is a necessary precursor to the design of the various components of the capitol complex. In this activity we have to keep in front of us that we are not merely accommodating functional needs for space; we are creating the future symbol of the nation.
VENACULAR AS SYMBOLISM
Each culture, its society and the nation which governs it, has a unique identity! It is this identity which distinguishes one country from another, evokes national pride and empowers individual citizens with the courage to protect their culture and way of life from being over-run and dominated by alien cultures. Cultural identity inspires people to create...
TAIN Evenings presents...
TAIN is hosting artist Kumari Martha Meagher on the 14th and 15th of January, 2011 in Pune.
Kumari has trained academically as an artist at U.California Santa Cruz, SanJose State University, and under the painting masters Hiroshi Tagami, Diane Pieri, and Taoist masters in Taiwan. She has lived and pursued her art in Europe, China, West Africa and India. As well as outer travel , she has pursued the inner world; diving deep into meditation and dance. Her paintings are experiments of life itself. For her, the art of painting is one of deep listening, it is receptive, loving and aware of nuances, impulses and space.
Should you wish to receive...
