Infrastructure has not kept pace with this development in the way we would want it. A two hour commute from Gurgaon to NOIDA or Goregaon to Churchgate are the classic examples. However there seems to be a sense of urgency that is now creeping up….maybe a decade too late, to get things in order. Case in point, the new airport terminals in Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi all opening in the span of 12 months.

Gautam Bhatia, a very well know architect and writer talks about this event in his recent article in the Times of India and touches upon a very “touchy” topic. Why does India invite foreign architects, planners, and designers to conceptualize things for them. Where is the homegrown talent and the pride in the same.

His reasoning for the most part follows a very predictable arguement that has been tossed around for a few years. However from whatever I have gathered, there is a dearth of the technical expertise to somehow figure out the logistical and programming challenges that come with mega projects. And with the need to get them built as of yesterday; there is a very small margin of error for experimentation and a trial  error exercise.

It is only a matter of time, if not already in place; that Indian firms will have the expertise that they have picked up working side by side with these foreign firms to have the confidence to deal with megastructures and projects. Till then there is no shortcut out. Or at least one without risks.

Continue reading Gautam Bhatia’s article

Pride of India ?

By Gautam Bhatia / Times of India

When questioned about the cultural and technological stagnation that came with socialism, a bureaucrat in Nehru’s time once remarked that all the best work had already been done in the West, and we merely had to pick ideas for our own use. At a time when Indian inventiveness and productivity were state-controlled and highly suspect, borrowing made a lot of sense.

Sadly, even in today’s era of open economic borders, we still remain unconvinced that the Indian mind is capable of producing anything of real value. The new Terminal 3 at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport is cited as the eighth-largest in the world, and comes loaded with other enthralling statistics: a floor area of over six million square feet, the equivalent of 20 malls, 92 automatic walkways, 78 aerobridges and 168 check-in counters. In every respect, the building showcases all the high-tech skills of construction and automation, and all the customer satisfying conveniences that say that the building belongs to the new century.

Certainly, the successful completion of a large and complex structure like an airport is to be commended. But is the satisfaction of statistical demands the only way to go?

What makes London’s Heathrow airport a traveller’s nightmare is the unfortunate mile after mile of mind-numbing anonymity that goes with the experience of moving 40 million people annually. Jakarta airport may not be in the same league, but its thoughtful, extremely Indonesian layout provides precisely the opposite experience. You move past courtyards of plantations that induce a quiet intimacy and a background of such calm that the trials of long distance travel are subdued and annulled.

But Jakarta and London are specific to the identities of the two very different places. Unfortunately the grand design of infrastructure in India is still based on the bureaucrat’s belief that the best work has already happened in the West. Terminal 3, though built in Delhi, was designed by American architects, and managed by MGF, a Dubai-based construction consortium. It uses tempered glass, a steel frame, and aluminum cladding all shipped from abroad. However, as a concession to India, Indian labour was employed in its erection. World class it is, because it’s conceived and built by the world.

The various venues for the upcoming Commonwealth Games reveal a similar story. Peddle Thorp, an Australian architecture firm, has designed the indoor stadium for badminton and squash; the new, aquatic centre is the brainchild of a foreign company that specialises in water sports facilities; the refurbishment of Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, which now looks like a space ship, was carried out by the German engineering firm of Schlaich Bergermann and Partners. The food concessions at the Games Village are being handled by another Australian company. In almost all facilities, the foreign hand can be felt from conception to realisation, catering to management. Enthralled by the scale of the endeavours, the shine and sparkle of steel and glass, as Indians we have stood by proudly to watch from the sidelines.

Foreign technology and inventiveness on Indian soil is certainly not new, especially in a country that has had a long history of direct imitation and mimicry. In the 1970s, it was a matter of Punjabi pride that the world’s most successful innovations could be copied in Ludhiana. Grimy workshops filled with labour were kept busy producing German machine parts, American denim, and other sundry items picked up in European markets. Indian businessmen travelled abroad to European industrial fairs and American specialty stores merely to buy items that could be duplicated in India at a fifth of the cost. Today, things remain much the same, only the scale of the borrowing has changed; as an open society we need no longer secretly copy and produce, but invite the original inventors to participate in a global bid.

By comparison, the 1982 Asian Games were a wholly indigenous effort. Local architects and construction firms built modestly, with brick and plaster, whitewashing the buildings before the foreigners arrived. The athletes were garlanded at an airport where the fused tube lights were quickly changed and the staff instructed to smile and take fewer tea breaks. Everyone stayed at a games village constructed by the PWD and travelled around in a bus service quite similar to the ordinary commuter’s. By all counts, the city and its services put up an entirely Indian and reasonably successful show.

While many of the new projects for the Commonwealth Games airports, stadiums and metro stations provide sparkle to the ramshackle grime of the Indian city, they remain foreign implants, silent spaceships sent by self-absorbed cultures. Faced with situations and conditions that are uniquely Indian, none among the new buildings seek Indian resolutions. Designed neither for the unforgiving landscape nor the general misuse of public facilities expected in India, their long-term usefulness is suspect.

Hard-pressed though we are to find symbols of the new India, the new terminal, with its import of foreign designs, foreign materials and construction technology, does little to promote India and Indian ideas. If the prime minister is proud of the airport as the gateway to a new global India, as he said at its inauguration, he is only crediting the many international companies now working in the country, thanking them for making India appear more efficient, more competent, more capable…more, well, like everyone else.

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Corbusier was not the only architectural giant to leave his stamp on India. Louis Kahn, his contemporary also worked in India around the same time and would design and influence future generations of architects in India.

While Corbusier got the opportunity to design the masterplan and the important architectural pieces of Chandigarh, Kahn, did not get to do it in India. He did design the capital complex of Bangladesh, which then was a new country taking birth.

Paul John writes a very interesting article “With Kahn magic Gandhinagar would have  rivalled Chandigarh” that speaks about the missed opportunity for India and Kahn to design Gandhinagar, the new capital of the new state of Guarat.

If Chandigarh is Le Corbusier’s city, Bhubaneswar bears the German Otto Koenigsberger’s signature, Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar could have had American yogi Louis Kahn’s imprint — a strong rival to Corbusier’s Chandigarh — had the Indian and Gujarat governments allowed Kahn to design the capitol buildings.

Kahn wanted Gandhinagar to be vibrant, symbolising the integration of village and industry, unlike the dull status it suffers today. The stage was all set in August 1964, when Kahn agreed to the honorarium fees to be paid in rupees after being persuaded by architect BV Doshi and industrialist Kasturbhai Lalbhai. Kahn had principally accepted the proposal to design the master plan for Gandhinagar. But he got a rude shock when the chief engineer for roads and buildings KM Kantawala wrote to Kahn that he would not be allowed to design the secretariat, the legislative assembly, the governor’s palace, high court and other related buildings.

There was tremendous political pressure to make Gandhinagar a stoic symbol of Gandhi’s principles of ‘India’s enterprise’. This would have been defeated if the city was designed by a foreign hand.

Kahn declined the offer instantly by writing back an emotionally charged letter stating, “City planning and building planning are one unified art. A city of good buildings reflecting design principles that are understood and followed in subsequent construction grows in beauty and importance.”

For Gandhinagar, Kahn had ambitious plans, something he had not tried elsewhere in the world. Kahn desired that Gandhinagar symbolise integration of land, civic services and buildings as one architecture. Finally in January 1965, the Cornell-educated HK Mewada who worked as a trainee under Le Corbusier on the Chandigarh project and a staunch Gandhian clinched the job.

The mill owners in Ahmedabad led by Kasturbhai Lalbhai and supported by architects like BV Doshi, Anant Raje, Achyut Kanvinde, Charles Correa and AR Prabhawalker wanted Kahn to build Gandhinagar to rival Chandigarh. This episode in history is vividly mentioned in Ravi Kalia’s book ‘Gandhinagar-building national identity in post colonial India.’

All that went for a toss as Asian countries caught on to this craze. The Petronas became the tallest building for a few years, only to be eclipsed by Taipei 101 in Taiwan. And then came the big kahuna of tall buildings, the Burj Khalifa.

And this is just the race for the top position. Change it to the top ten and there are dozens of buildings all across Asia, North America, and Russia that try to reach for the skies.

In all this, India is prominently absent.

Monika Halan writes a very well-laid out article titled: Reaching for the Sky: How Tall is my country.

She concludes

… it does not look as if India or Indians are unduly worried about failing on another parameter of global ranking. The lack of interest or even public debate on getting India on the tall building map could mean several things. One, we are not at the stage of economic growth where having the tallest building becomes something to think about. Two, there is no massive speculative real estate bubble in the country and cheap money is certainly not an issue. Three, the argumentative Indian does not need the prop of an icon of American culture to define India’s identity or its place in the world. Or it could just be that we are so sure that a fire in the tallest building will end in disaster with the fire engines (that can reach all of 10 storeys) stuck in a traffic jam caused by a broken-down cycle on the main road. Nope, we don’t even want to go that way.

Tall buildings serve their purpose in urban areas. Contrary to popular thinking they can be more sustainable in all aspects than their height challenged counterparts. And if India takes that road and goes tall, all power to the builders. But if its just to get bragging rights, then its a waste of time, money and opportunity.

Countries have come out with their best architectural foot forward and some of the national pavilions are stunning examples of the contemporary architectural vocabulary of those countries. However all attempts to get a better look at the Indian Pavilion at the Expo has been a disappointing task.

The above picture is one of the few official ones that have been released by the Chinese Expo Authority. And the Director of the Indian Pavilion Rajesh Kumar, can be seen here talking about the design.

Ganesh Ramachandran at UrbanSlate critiques the pavilion:

The pavilion designs for India …for the oncoming Shanghai Expo is a multi million dollar incongruity at the expense of  the countries’ tax payers. The theme of expo is “Better city, Better life”, a very timely theme indeed  when more than half the world’s population live in cities. To which……… the Indian design team answers the call with a design that resembles a  burial mound for Buddhist relics from 3rd century BC – the Sanchi Stupa. [link]

However the Indian media is either ignorant of this event and the pavilion, or in the case where they do talk about it, they completely miss the point.

In this self-congratulatory story The Hindu writes

Sandwiched between the two most expensive pavilions is India’s, which, perhaps, is the structure that most represents the Expo’s now almost-forgotten theme — “better city, better life,” a call for sustainable urban development.

Last week, Indian designers and Chinese engineers were working to put finishing touches to the $9-million pavilion, which will be unveiled next month.

The design is inspired by the Sanchi Stupa. It’s defining feature is a 35 metre-wide dome which will be the world’s biggest bamboo structure.

The design, conceived by D.R. Naidu of Design C, seeks to make a green statement, “expounding harmonious living as a way of life.”

“What we want to convey through this pavilion is [not only] a message for sustainable development, but also India’s own sense of harmony, through the ages,” said Arindam Ryan Roy Chowdhury, a project manager for Design C at the Expo site. [link]

Joe Drury at China Briefing has an interesting account of the pavilion design.

India is home to over 2,000 ethnic groups, speaking over 1,600 languages and dialects and worshipping every major religion. At the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, India’s 4,000 square meter pavilion stands as a monument to its ability to forge a sense of harmony and national unity from this disparate society despite the contradictions and sometimes violent differences that naturally arise in such an environment.

With the theme “Cities of Harmony,” the pavilion by extension also projects an international message of global unity, especially relevant to India as the country experiences the natural growing pains of greater influence in Asia and abroad. [link]

Many would today question the very idea of a World Expo. It started in the late 19th Century as a way of bringing the world as a microcosm to a distant place. However in today’s day and age of instant imagery and media, a lot of the original purpose of the mega events is somehow lost. Countries spend millions of dollars to one-up each other and these pavilions may land up being giant billboards of a country.

In this scenario, where do you think India’s pavilion stands? If you have had a chance to visit the Pavilion, please express your thoughts.

Jayashree Bhosale at Economic Times writes about this need for an “Indianised” design and by extension the Indian designers.

In the whole post-secondary education boom, pure design schools have not been at the forefront. And that is a niche waiting to be filled. The article below discusses the pros and cons of that.

India is now a potential design pool

There’s a whole new talent dimension that India has yet to cash in on: design. The demand for professionals in this field is going up by the day, as international brands call in on one of the world’s key manufacturing and consumption centres. But with just a handful design schools in the country, it’s an opportunity waiting to be tapped.

“There are only five to six good design schools in the country. Had the supply of experienced designers been enough, some of the top manufacturing companies of India would not need to hire design heads from abroad,” says Forbes Marshall director, Naushad Forbes, who is also a visiting faculty at Stanford. The Indian industry can meet just an estimated 10% of the demand for design professionals, as design schools take in only about 500 students annually.

“A lot of design companies from abroad are looking to collaborate with Indian design companies. There is lot of cross-cultural design taking place. In areas of clean technologies and eco-friendly design, Indian designers can contribute a lot as we are used to the concept of recycling and reusing,” says Falguni Gokhale, director, Design Directions, the company that designed the water purifier, Tata Swach.

The product design teams of multinational companies usually consist of people of various nationalities, and there is a place on these teams for Indians. “As India is a huge market, it is necessary for an MNC to have Indian designers to understand the needs of the Indian consumers,” says Florence Rohart, footwear designer with Adidas, Germany.

Institutes like DSK Supinfocom in Pune are looking to tap this opportunity, and recently held a week-long master class with a four-member team of footwear designers from brands like Puma, Camper and Newfeel participating. “We are looking for possible internships and placements for our students with big brands in different products,” says vice chairman Shirish Kulkarni.

India Inc is filling in some of the supply gap, but we still have a long way to go. Indian automotive companies like Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra and Bajaj Auto have good design talent and studios that match the best in the world. The demand for professionals in emerging markets is particularly encouraging as design as a career in western countries has become saturated and fiercely competitive, says Sudhir Sharma, CEO, Indi Designs and erstwhile founder director of Elephant Design.

Further, he says, most developed countries have developed expensive design practices, which are not viable in today’s economy.”

Though there is a large number of vacancies, designers eventually start their own business. “Only 20% designers stick to a job,” Mr Satish Gokhale.

The competition to get admission to the National Institute of Design is tough while fees at the private design schools are high. The annual fee at private schools is Rs 4 lakh- Rs 5 lakh per student and some of these are five year courses, after Class XII.

Since the 90’s we have had proclamations from politicians wanting to make Mumbai the next  Shanghai, Singapore or Dubai; depending on the flavor of the month.

What most people dont realize is that Nariman Point is over 40 years old in the present form. And its buildings are crumbling or in poor shape. And the rents are double that of Midtown Manhattan.

Infrastructure wise, its not as bad as other parts of Mumbai. However it would serve some owners well to demolish and build more efficient buildings, in terms of space, design and sustainability. Then the sky-high rents are justified.

Inevitably it may happen. As more and more businesses move away, owners might do just that. I’d rather they be proctive about it, than doing it as a reaction to market forces alone.

UBS, JP Morgan lead Nariman Point exodus

By Pooja Thakur, for Bloomberg

MUMBAI: UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are leading an exodus of finance companies from Mumbai’s Nariman Point financial district as they balk at paying double midtown-Manhattan rents for crumbling four-decade-old buildings.

UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, moved to a new complex on the site of a drive-in cinema about nine miles north. JPMorgan, the second-biggest US lender, shifted to an adjacent suburb, while private-equity firm KKR & Co. went about three miles north of Nariman Point. Axis Bank and broker Motilal Oswal Financial Services are moving in the next year.

They are departing a district reclaimed from the Arabian Sea in 1940 that is marred by traffic jams and poor sanitation, and constrained by a 46 year old law that limits building height. The city’s shortcomings and fragmentation may hinder Mumbai, with the fourth-most expensive office space in the world, from establishing a financial center to rival Shanghai and Dubai.

"Transforming Mumbai into a world class financial center is very distant," said Sunil Saberwal, chief executive officer of Bombay First, an organization modeled on London First to work towards the regeneration of Mumbai. "We are at least 15 to 20 years away from something like that. Even then, Mumbai will not be as beautiful as Dubai, but it will be functional."

If Mumbai doesn’t get its act together by 2030 by improving transportation, housing and water systems, and reducing costs, the city may lose out to places such as Dubai as Western companies seek a base in the time zone, Saberwal said.

Continue reading at BloombergUTV

India’s urban awakening: Building inclusive cities, sustaining economic growth

India has a young and rapidly growing population—a potential demographic dividend. But India needs thriving cities if that dividend is to pay out. New MGI research estimates that cities could generate 70 percent of net new jobs created to 2030, produce around 70 percent of Indian GDP, and drive a near fourfold increase in per capita incomes across the nation.

Handled well, India can reap significant benefits from urbanization. MGI offers a range of recommendations, the vast majority of which India could implement within five to ten years. If India were to follow the recommendations, it could add 1 to 1.5 percent to annual GDP growth, bringing the economy near to the double-digit growth to which the government aspires.

Surging growth and employment in cities will be a powerful magnet. MGI projections show India’s urban population soaring from 340 million in 2008 to 590 million in 2030. And this urban expansion will happen at a speed quite unlike anything India has seen before. It took India nearly 40 years (between 1971 and 2008) for the urban population to rise by nearly 230 million. It will take only half the time to add the next 250 million.

India has the potential to unlock many new growth markets in its cities, many of them not traditionally associated with India including infrastructure, transportation, health care, education, and recreation. MGI projects that, to meet urban demand, the economy will have to build between 700 million and 900 million square meters of residential and commercial space a year. In transportation, India needs to build 350 to 400 kilometers of metros and subways every year, more than 20 times the capacity building of this type that India has achieved in the past decade. In addition, between 19,000 and 25,000 kilometers of road lanes would need to be built every year (including lanes for bus-based rapid transit systems), nearly equal to the road lanes constructed over the past decade.

Cities can also deliver a higher quality of life. Urban scale benefits means the cost of delivering basic services is 30 to 40 percent cheaper in concentrated population centers than in sparsely populated areas. But to reap such benefits, India needs to meet an unprecedented policy challenge. If it fails to do so, this could seriously jeopardize its growth and risk high unemployment.

Although urban India has attracted investment on the back of strong growth, its cities are still failing to deliver even a basic standard of living for their residents after years of chronic underinvestment. Unless it steps up investment in its cities, India could well lose the productivity dividend of urban living. Today, in per capita terms, India’s annual capital spending of $17 is only 14 percent of China’s $116 and less than 6 percent of New York’s $292.

MGI estimates that India needs to invest $1.2 trillion just in capital expenditure in its cities over the next 20 years, equivalent to $134 per capita per year, almost eight times the level of spending today. If India taps into five sources of funding used in cities around the world—monetized land assets, higher property taxes, user charges that reflect costs, debt and public-private partnerships, and formula-based government funding—its largest cities could generate as much as 80 percent of the funding they require from internal sources.

Making the Cities of India More Sustainable

Article by Warren Karlenzig at Green Flow

With Mumbai, one of the largest cities of the world, treating only 30-40 percent of its sewage, experiencing five-hour traffic delays and hosting massively expanding unplanned slums, urban sustainability needs to be viewed through a different lens than elsewhere.

India will add an additional 26 cities of one million or more by 2030 to its 42 one million+ cities today. The 2008 population in cities of 340 million in 2008 will soar to 590 million by 2030. The need for much improved urban housing and health services, let alone better planning, governance and carbon management, threatens the nation’s and thus the world’s economic stability: India’s population by 2030 is forecast to overtake China’s. 

A report released this month by the McKinsey Global Institute, " India’s Urban Awakening," provides a rich and thorough analysis of the challenges faced by Indian cities, while also providing a clear agenda for future improvements. Changes will need to occur at the local, state and national level, and will require the active participation of the international business community through public-private partnerships.

First the bad news.

As a contrast to China, which has staged much of its recent urban growth in nationally planned phases targeted at geographies, economies and infrastructure, Indian cities are experiencing rapid unplanned growth. Major financial investment, to the tune of $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, will be needed to address how Indian cities are falling short of meeting even a basic standard of living in:

Water supply: will need to increase 3.5 times current supply to meet basic demand by 2030

Sewage: treatment will need to increase two times current levels to meet demand by 2030

Solid waste: will need to increase six times today’s treatment levels by 2030 because of consumption expected by an emerging middle class.

Public transit access and service: 20 times the capacity of metros and subways will need to be added over what has been provided in the past ten years

Affordable housing: will need to increase 10 times by 2030 to meet expected needs.

Slum populations that now comprise 24% of India’s urban population will need to be addressed with formal affordable housing programs and housing structures.

Oddly, no forecasts were made in "India’s Urban Awakening" regarding the amount or mix of energy that will be needed to meet the needs of India’s cities. With massive growth in electricity use for buildings (at least 40% of India currently is not connected to the power grid), large increases in personal auto ownership, and volatile global energy supplies and pricing, India is faced with urban growth-associated issues that if unaddressed threaten the very core of its existence as a nation.

According to the McKinsey report, however, India has sufficient time and the means (with international financial, business and humanitarian partners) by which to address many of these pressing or devastating issues. The McKinsey Institute report also presented a framework for a plan by which India can meet the financial need to increase spending on cities from its current rate of 0.5% to 2% of GDP.

On a per-capita basis, India now spends 14% of what China spends on its cities and only 4% of what the United Kingdom spends on its cities.

The key elements of the report plan outlined five strategies for meeting its urban financial obligations, most of which India currently ranks "poor" in:

1. Monetize land assets.

2. Maximize property taxes and usage charges.

3. Establish a formula-based grants systems from state and central government.

4. Use appropriate debt and private-sector participation (i.e., public-private partnerships).

5. Create enabling systems and city development funds to facilitate use of revenue sources.

The report also outlined four significant "dimensions" besides funding, on which Indian cities need to concentrate improvements in order to successfully transform urban economies and sustainability opportunities:

1. Shape: Where people live. Unlike China, India has made no real attempt to plan where growth of cities will occur, or to determine where new cities will be most needed, and as a result unplanned urban sprawl is increasingly common.

2. Governance: How cities in particular are governed. Develop executive leadership at city level in mid-sized to large cities. India is currently the only G20 nation lacking such leadership. Cities in India are currently governed by their host states from a considerable distance in many cases. The report does cite the success of Kolkata’s (Calcutta) mayor-commission model as a potential national model for executive power combined with administrative-technical support.

3. Sectoral policies: These include economic development, sustainability management, and housing management. India does not plan enough for affordable housing, providing 200,000 units a year versus needed minimum of 2 million units. The number of people living in slums in 2008 was some 82 million, a number that could double by 2030. Recommendations are to establish funding, draw upon external expert advice and hire dedicated managers to focus on these areas.

4. Urban Planning: Change from ad hoc and sporadic planning. Develop longer-term plans (40-50 year) with nested 20-year master plans designating land uses, transportation services, infrastructure and building typologies that are actionable on the ground with transparent public processes. Use modeling and "fly-overs" to educate stakeholders of planning options (Singapore, London and New York are cited for best practices). India’s current urban planning processes exist as documents only, and are not executed or followed in reality.

The report in its introduction observes: "The speed of urbanization poses an unprecedented managerial and policy challenge–yet India has barely engaged in a discussion about how to handle this seismic shift in the makeup of the nation."

From my experience, I would dispute the assertion that the country is barely engaged in such discussions. My firm Common Current and our partners have been involved in a lively series of exchanges with high-level officials from national ministries and planning bodies in India regarding the future of its cities, with sustainability focused approaches in renewable energy, water and transportation infrastructure being key points of discussion.

How India’s national urban planning plays out on localized levels in actual cities, though, remains to be seen. Whatever may transpire, "India’s Urban Awakening" is an invaluable resource for determining just how the path forward can be understood and, hopefully, navigated.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

Now what happens when you want to build a new temple in a style that has gone defunct centuries ago? Well you try to find the top researcher in that style and see if something can be designed.

The smart folks at Shree Kalyana Venkateshwara Hoysala Art Foundation did just that when they decided that they wanted to build a new temple in the Hoysala Dynasty style.

A British architect has been commissioned to design a Hindu temple in India in a style not used for more than 700 years.

Adam Hardy, from Cardiff’s Welsh School of Architecture, believes he is the only person in the world with the knowledge to design in the style of the 12th century Hoysala dynasty.

Unlike other regional architectural traditions which are still practised by Hindu architects in India, this particular complex and ornate style from the south died out seven centuries ago. [ link to article ]

Temple architecture follows a very rigorous set of principles of design both at the overall formal scale and down to the ornamentation that accompanies them. Thus they leave a lesser scope for design creativity of the “outside the box” kind. Hardy’s selection probably has to do with the fact that

“An architectural tradition can be learnt,” he said. “It can be passed down by masters, but if none are around it can be learnt and internalised from its products the surviving temples, in this case. “

The results should be interesting to see.

Real estate is one marker on the state of the economy. And in the case of Mumbai it looks like the already inflated market is going even higher.

On the back of a revival in demand, real estate developers are again building super luxury apartments, say experts.

Consultancy firms Jones Lang Lasalle Meghraj (JLLM) and Knight Frank India said there are about 7,000 such apartments to be delivered within a year in Mumbai alone, where the cost is not below Rs4.7 crore for a single unit.

“After the recession got over, real estate developers are back building high-end super luxury projects because there is good demand for such projects. At the same time, margins are also higher in these projects,” JLLM country head and chairman Anuj Puri told PTI. [ link to article ]

Are real estate prices in Mumbai really sustainable in the long run ?