In this issue

Although LA Journal has been featuring various perspectives, discussions
and projects based on the subject of Urban Design, this issue – Designing
Urban – brings to forefront the discourse in a formal way. We welcome
urban designers Rajat Ray and Biley Menon, who have curated this special
issue as guest editors.

B.V. DOSHI A EULOGY 1927-2023

He left us too early - he was young. Everyone has a story about him.

4 mins

DESIGNING URBAN INSIDE

Minor identity of the circulation spaces in the building may be turned around by metaphorically conceptualising them as public streets. In the showcased projects, those public elements break out of that metaphorical state to become real in themselves and start affecting the overall organisation in their favour. Either through independent production of the public realm in Correa's Salt Lake City Centre in Kolkata or by an independent representation of a formal complexity in Somaya's Indore campus, and for Hundredhands and Architecture Red, where the urban designers are able to generate a substantial and dominant spatial realm, where public and private places remain almost seamlessly integrated. Studio Lotus converts a gated private part of the city into a public space by partial transformation and brings the city directly into the site.

9 mins

DESIGNING URBAN INSERTION

The insertion of the large parisar around Kashi Vishwanath Dham by displacing old fabric creates a new identity which however seeks to mitigate the necessarily produced form-al’ disruption by attempting to camouflage the alienation itself as integration and primarily through representation. Whereas, the formal and spatial insertions in Patna Riverfront Development provide additional support to current human activities and the identities of the series of interventions are acquired not by any representational scheme but primarily by their functional role, thus making the public domain more amenable to ritualistic celebrations at an individual level or to a large mass of people.

10 mins

DESIGNING URBAN OUTSIDE

For many people Street is the city, or City is the street. 'Urban Design begins where the building plot ends'. Pradeep Sachdeva retextures the entire floor and designs new edges in Chandni Chowk of old Delhi to empower pedestrians over the vehicles reducing an overload. Prasanna Desai in Pune, StudioPod in Mumbai and Studio Code in Delhi introduce robust street furniture and lighting even with soft landscapes and signage to make a street a destination by creating spaces of pause next to the parallel lines of movement neatly categorised, dedicating them to pedestrians and vehicles of diverse speeds by different paving textures.

10+ mins

Read all stories from Journal of Landscape Architecture

Journal of Landscape Architecture Magazine Description:

The only professional publication exploring the practice of landscape architecture and its allied fields in India. The publication provides a forum for information flow, exchange of ideas and viewpoints, and showcases breadth and variety of works and research in the field of landscape architecture in context of Indian region. Since its inception in 2001, it has been attempting to widen the visibility of landscape design, and bring the profession of landscape architecture closer to public realm.