One architect who had nurtured a ‘dream for Bangalore’ in terms of its infrastructure, buildings and urban spaces was architect Vimal Jain, the founding partner of the architectural firm, Architecture Paradigm.
The 41-year-old creative designer, passed away in November 2013, succumbing to injuries sustained from a freak accident at a project site. A bunch of architects and his close associates in Bangalore have come together for initiating an annual event in the memory of Vimal Jain.
“There would be three components of the event that would be in memory of our dear friend Vimal,” says a senior architect involved in organising the event. The ‘In-Conversation’ series (November 30, 5pm, IISC, Tata Auditorium) is aimed at bringing creative professionals, thinkers, urban planners, policy makers and activists together in re-imagining urban spaces in Bangalore.
This debut event will feature the renowned architect Charles Correa and Jyotindra Jain conversing on ideas of art and architecture and their role in shaping the built environment and urban landscape at large.
“We see this event as a way to begin addressing Vimal’s concerns,” say the organisers. Vimal was intensely professional who sought to engage with the larger community for seeing a city being developed meaningfully.
A few months before he passed away, he had brought a group of architects together to talk about starting a series of design workshops, study precincts in the city and propose design interventions to improve and enhance the existing building conditions.
On November 29 and 30, a collaborative workshop ‘Appropriating Urban Space in the city’ will bring the selected 40 students and young professionals under one roof at the Visvesvaraya Centre (Life Insurance Corporation headquarters) near Vidhana Soudha to look at ideas, proposals and blue prints that could help this building breathe more life, with not just people-involvement, but aesthetics and design parameters to make urban spaces become more participatory.
Designed by Charles Correa in the 1970s, the Visvesvaraya Centre, originally conceived as a composition of buildings around a vibrant public plaza in the city, has the ground and first floor today totally being inaccessible and hidden from view by the surrounding structures.
The workshop will focus on this government building and its potential to become a better urban and public space, with architect mentors as Prashant Pole, Nagaraj Vastarey, Vijay Narnapatti and Soumitro Ghosh to help the young teams come up with proposals.
The ‘In-Conversation’ with Correa and Jain will ideate on art and architecture playing roles in urban landscape. How architecture and art can collaborate together to bring about a social-change in built environment, how the art-infuse in urban landscape can have collective implications and how creative practitioners can come together as ‘think-tank’ for a city development are what the stalwart-duo is expected to bring about.
While Correa is the recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and was the Chief Architect for ‘Navi Mumbai’ the new city of two million people across the harbour from Bombay, Jain is an art and culture historian, a scholar on folk and ritual arts of India who was the Director of the National Crafts Museum, New Delhi.
A half hour documentary, ‘Into the Unknown’ directed by Sankalp Meshram (November 30, 5pm at IISc) to be screened will show the unique project of Correa, ‘The Champalimaud - Centre for the Unknown’ at Portugal where his inimitable touch at a Cancer Research Institute in the Tropical Forest stands as a landmark in the city of Lisbon.
