MIRRORED METROPOLIS
The exhibition is embedded within the Asia-Pacific-Weeks 2003 in Berlin, of which India is the focal point. The exhibition will be realized with the support of the German Class Lottery Foundation Berlin.
India is one of the countries with the highest population rate in the world. Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta belong to the biggest cities worldwide. Life in these pulsating cities and their architectural and conceptual ideas for the future are the topic of the exhibition. The discussion of dimensions as well as the coexistence of old and new will play prominent roles. Over the last years in particular, new exciting strategies of urban development were formed and emerging offices also gain influence within governmental concepts and structures. The exhibition brings together four Indian architects whose works reflect diverse engagement with the ‘city’ and urbanism as conceptual bases. It covers aspects of urban form, spatial organisation, notions of new urban community, interventions into the existing situation, and new solutions. It will bring out the specific and unique character of Indian architecture as applied to urbanism and the City, and the need for these specificities to be recognised in an increasingly globalised context.
S.K. Das, based in Delhi, has produced work ranging between master plans of cities, neighbourhoods, social housing and public places, with implications for public policy. He interprets urban form and fabric as dominantly emerging out of socialisation of space and built form. He has been in both practice and education for 29 years, locally and internationally. His projects include those in New Bombay (now Navi Mumbai) and New Delhi. Mr. Das has been the Director of the Sushant School of Architecture and continues to be a visiting professor at the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi. He has won the National Award for Community Architecture from HUDCO and the Indian Institute of Architects.
Anil Laul is a Faridabadi-based architect specialising in institutionalised housing solutions for low income communities. His works bring out new spatial and technological dimensions to delivering housing at low cost to poorer urban communities, including aspects of material production and assembly. He has been a visiting Professor at the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi, and has founded one of the building centres financed by HUDCO.
Rahul Mehrotra is a Bombay-based architect who is actively engaged with the city in the restoration of heritage zones and buildings. He has also worked on design solutions that give continued relevance and new meaning to older urban spaces in the city centre, the Fort area of Mumbai. He combines practice with occasional teaching internationally, and heads the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) in Mumbai.
Bimal Patel is an architect from Ahmedabad who has designed several public buildings and worked on the waterfront development of the Sabarmati River, to make it accessible as an active public place that holds the city together. He is a member of the visiting faculty at the School of Architecture (Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology) in Ahmedabad. He has won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. The exhibitions aims at a broad public giving insights to India’s urban culture and demonstrate the tradition of modernity as well as the modernity of tradition by means of new architecture and their conceptually diverse background cityplanning. A great past connected with a strong orientation towards the future makes India an exciting field for investigation and research.
The exhibition features four Indian architecture offices - Anil Laul, Faridabad, S.K. Das, Delhi, Rahul Mehrotra, Bombay, Bimal Patel, Ahmedabad - and introduces their work of the last years. Each architects work will be shown by means of sketches, maps, models and photos.
Curator of the exhibition is S.K. Das, Dehli, Project manager Aedes Ulla Giesler.
Speakers at the opening are
Kristin Feireiss, Berlin
Mr. T.C.A. Rangachari, Embassador of India in Berlin
Günter Wankerl, from the Building and Housing Department of the Federal Ministry of Transport in Berlin
Dr. Peter Seel, Project Manager of body.city India, from Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin
Hilde Léon, architect, Berlin
S.K. Das, architect, Delhi
