Excavations Add 6000 Years To Istanbul

Historians had believed modern-day Istanbul was first settled around 700 BC.
However, a grave that has been recently discovered at the site of a rail project instantaneously added 6000 years to Istanbul’s history.
“We found the grave, pots and other artifacts. There were signs of houses made of tree-branches and next to the settlement was a swamp [...]

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Neutra’s VDL Threatened With Closure

Seventy-five years ago, in Los Angeles, with a no-interest loan from Dutch philanthropist Dr CH Van Der Leeuw, Viennese-American architect Richard Neutra, rightly called ’second only to Frank Lloyd Wright’, built a radical “glass house” with rooftop and balcony gardens on Silverlake Boulevard.

This is the place where Neutra had designed hundreds of projects over [...]

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Painted towns of Shekhawati: Colors in sand

How big can you imagine an open air gallery to be? Well, here you are… 13, 785 sq. km [5130 sq. miles] of painted walls, havelis, palaces and forts in the vast expanse of the desert of Rajasthan in India. Town after town, street after street, home after home has been painted with frescoes depicting [...]

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Green and Intelligent: the roads do converge

United Kingdom- Gensler’s design for Herman Miller’s international headquarters, also called Village Green, has been short listed for Corenet’s 2008 Sustainability award and is the first building in the UK to receive both BREEAM (excellent rating) and LEED (gold) accreditation. The 20,000-square foot facility is located in Chippenham, England.

Several notable details that make Village [...]

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Nanocity: Looking at the future

Nanocity- the idea of a sustainable city ‘with world class infrastructure and to create an ecosystem for innovation leading to economy, ecology and social cohesion’ is taking place near another architecture paradise- Chandigarh, which was commissioned by first prime minister of independent India to reflect new nation’s modern and progressive outlook. Nehru famously proclaimed Chandigarh [...]

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Eco-Towns: An option or a necessity

July 2007- Britian had announced that it will initiate ‘zero carbon’ architecture and town planning by building 5 ‘Ecotowns’ to meet their demand for 2 million new homes by 2016.

‘The towns, each with a minimum of 5,000 to 10,000 houses, will be built to meet zero carbon standards and will each showcase a specific project [...]

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Worst Building is on the Wall of Shame

This week while China was in the limelight with its ‘blue box beating with a green heart’- the Water Cube ‘National Aquatics Centre in Beijing’, Korea’s one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel got a severe blow in the architecture world. It was declared the ‘worst building ever’. Esquire says ‘Picture doesn’t lie.
‘the one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel is hideous, [...]

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Bridges are not fences

Bridges are spaces. Bridges are places, where people meet other people, enjoy their surroundings, and experience being part of a community. Though a mode of transit, bridges can be magnets for public activity and fun. Bridges not only connect land to land, but also have an impact on adjacent parks, industries and residential communities, and [...]

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A city without old buildings is like a man without memory

Among the admirable and enjoyable sights to be found along the sidewalks of big cities, the ingenious adaptations of old buildings for new uses is the most enduring one. A glance on the patina of the old walls of these buildings evokes nostalgia. For a moment, the stone whispers the stories of the days long [...]

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