Laurie Baker, his Architectural Design Principles are not only worth following but I understand that many who truly believe in sustainable design practices can  remodel these and use it locally, anywhere in the world.

Picture source: www.lauriebaker.net

I clicked this photograph at Daryaganj, Delhi. Daryaganj hosts a ‘kitaab bazaar’ (Book Market) on every Sunday , where one can feast upon books for all ages, all professions, casual reading, magazines etc new and old.

What one must experience is the character of this space with the Bazzar ON! I did not buy any books, but I did raom around a lot, clicked many photographs and some videos.

Construction Guru, is all set to announce India’s first Portal where people from construction industry in India can participate to search, network and engage themselves in virtual learning.

You can access the Portal here: www.constructionguru.in

Get updates on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Construction-Guru/118633523753

and Twitter: http://twitter.com/constructguru

How many new Architects did you connect to in last one month? If the answer is less than ten, may be its time socialize a bit. Anyway, recession has given many of us a great amount of spare time so why not connect?

The best professional networking website that I have come across in Linkedin.  LinkedIN has much more serious interface and less of fun, and particularly targeted to professional industry. Build up your profile, connect, get recommended, ask and get answers and join the tribes that you are interested in.

Social networking, isn’t only about making friends with those who are already your friends but have moved to a distance. Its more about connecting to people who share some common interest with you and you may not know each other otherwise. But how do you find them? Use people finder tools on various SN websites, check the profiles, browse through groups they are associated with and decide if you want to make a new connection.

To be continued…., till then check my profile on LinkedIN.

Technorati Tags: Architecture, Social networking

Guys, and here is the good news. After almost two years of discussions, arguements and disputes we few Architects seem to have reached a common consensus. That is providing Architects, students and institutes of India a unique portal that would compliment the existing Architecture pedagogy.

After parting away from my last employer in Dec, I was filled with all positive energy to concentrate upon this pending project. And in very short time we friends could reach a common ground that the portal has to be collaborative and not unidirectional. One friend also suggested that, Its the time that we decentralize the data instead of keeping it at one place.

As suggestive the portal will have all social networking features along with some unique features like:

Newsletters

Academic modules

Multilingual functionality

Contests

Portfolios and space for collaborative projects.

We have been discussing the above issue with many institutes, academicians and professionals since long. With large positive feedback,  few good suggestions and some frowns, it was quiet evident that we are moving in right direction.

The Architecture portal will be dedicated to India and gradually it might start attracting foreign participation. The whole idea is to organise and assimilate the Architectural information spread across the country. Students will have major role to play in building up this portal.

We are highly thankful to all institutes who have given us motivation and also committed their active participation on the portal. Many Architects have come forward and also agreed upon extending the financial help to us. I am quiet sure that “this is the portal that Architcts in India have been waiting for. Since long.”

We have already identified some institutes, Architects and the group of students who will keep the momentum on the portal. These institues have agreed that they will try and harness upon the potential of proposed portal.

Guys, if you are reading this you should be curious about the domain name and the date of launch. We are keeping this secret for the moment and very soon you may receive an email which would request you to pre register on portal.

Now, if you think you can contribute to the upcoming portal in any way, please feel free to drop me an email: advanirajesh@gmail.com

When discussing basic design with the students of first year, I often experimented a lot by changing and developing new exercises to keep the mood alive in classroom. Discussions on past experiences are very common in any basic design sessions, to keep the content simple and easy to understand its better to place the examples from daily life in discussions. Following is one of the exercises I experimented with the students.

The students are asked to draw a rose in just 10 seconds and color it ‘appropriately’.

The result: most of the students only draw red (or pink) coloured roses.

And I try to find it from students themselves on why this happened. Haven’t you ever seen yellow rose? or white rose? Red rose or pink rose has been the common experience and is widely seen as compared to any other colour. In the short duration of 10 seconds, students would do the things spontaneously rather than trying to apply any external thought.

Second exercise is a short story which I generally tell to students and ask one question at the end, here it goes:

There lived a lady with about two years old kid in a small house little away from the crowded city. In the absence of lady, her full time maid would look after the baby. One fine day her maid did not turn up and it was little difficult for lady to leave the child alone at home and go out. Alternatively,  she could have taken child along, but somehow she didn’t want to do so. She decided to go in the afternoon when child sleeps for almost two hours, and complete some necessary shopping and be back within two hours.

And in the afternoon lady quietly left the house after she covered her sleeping baby with a shawl. She rushed for the shopping, but  while returning she got stuck up in the crowd.  She  with some difficulty managed to reach her colony in almost two hours and fifteen minutes if not exactly in two hours. She rushed to her home and opened the door hurriedly.

But The visual at home left her eyes wide open and herself in shocked mode. She could not resist screaming after what she saw inside. She saw her baby had fallen from the bed and crying loudly, all over baby’s body was red colour and baby was holding something very sharp in her hand.

So guys, just quickly tell me, What do you think the reason must for which baby was crying? What was the red color and the sharp thing in her hand?

The spontaneous answers are generally:

Baby was holding a knife (or something similar, which she accidently might have pierced in her body and she was crying. So the red colour on her body might be blood and nothing else.

Anyway, answers do not matter here. What matters here is that students strongly associated red with blood, Sharp with Knife and crying with pain.

And we all associate colours, forms and emotions with something or other.

What do you feel of these exercises? have suggestions and feedback to make?

I recently completed my first ever workshop on web 2.0 applications for Architecture education. During my talk at Goa college of Architecture, I stressed on the importance of e learning and collaborative learning. Though many of the participants were aware of basic applications on internet and they were also comfortably engaged with social networking websites, my job was not very difficult.

I touched upon following topics in my workshop:

• What is participatory learning?
• Traditional learning systems vs new learning systems.
• Web.1 vs Web 2.0
• GoogleDocs
• Slideshare
• Scribd
• Blogs
• Forums
• Social Networking websites
• Wikis
• RSS
• Flickr – more than just sharing photographs

The workshop concluded with creating a community website for Goa College of Architecture, which College intends to use for e learning in near future. Many students also registered for blogs using wordpress, blogger and blog utilities.

I plan to extend this workshop exclusively for teachers in Architecture Institutes in india very soon.

Special thanks to commoncraft for wonderful ‘plain English’ videos, only my request would be to provide these videos offiline at no cost for educational purposes.

Some feedback I received for the workshop:

I THINK IT WAS ONE OF ITS KIND IN THE WEDNESDAY LECTURE SERIES AND IT
OPENED A LOT OF NEW VISTA INTO E-EDUCATION. WONDERFUL INSIGHT INTO
SHARING INFORMATION ONLINE THRU FORUMS BLOGS SOCIAL NETWORKING WIKIS
RSS ETC.

IM A REGULAR NET-SURFUR BUT IT WAS
QUITE AN AWE-INSPIRING PRESENTATION ON VARIOUS THINGS I WAS UNAWARE OF
LIKE RSS AND THE LIKES.

I THOUROUGLY ENJOYED ALLTHE WONDERFUL VIDEO CLIPPINGS ILLUSTRATING VARIOUS ASPECTS OF YOUR PRESENTATION

IM SURE WE ALL REALISE THAT ITS HIGH TIME WE GEAR UP OURSELVES TO GET WIRED TO THE WORLD AND PART OF THIS WONDERFUL WORLD.

THANKS RAJESH YOU ROCK
Visha Signapurkar, Faculty

Yesterday’s talk was very informative. i esp liked the way u told but
didn’t tell us to switch off our phones wt the $$ making idea..it would
have been really helpful if all our teachers had chosen to learn to
make blogs as well….. considering that i’m very e-illiterate.. i
learnt quite a lot… thanks
carrissa Silveria

It was interesting and well thought of. Have always been curious to
learn about blogs and make better and much more informative use of the
internet.
Tanvi Fulari

It was amazing, videos were great:
Amaro

“You should not encourage our students to scribble on walls”
Faculty

Presentation was really good.We got to know many new things about
internet which we din’t knew. And now after yesterdays presentation we
can make maximum use of internet to find any information without
wasting our time.
Sapna Kush

Its already very difficult to control, what students are doing on internet. This workshop might add to the existing nuisance.
faculty

I used to always wonder what a blog means, this word used to frequently
appear in the readers digest. After attending your workshop all my
doubts are cleared as to what is ,and what are its functions. i loved
the experience of learning to create our own web page. thanks a lot i
loved the workshop.
Noah Fernandes

It was a good experience as we learned about new sites to actually
discuss with people around the world regarding various topics trough
blogs and making communities. many things we didn’t know about sources
of the world wide web have come across us trough your session.there are
some things we can’t really talk about without display of information
and pictures and it is hardly possible to meet up on one single
computer to discuss on topics and projects. formation of communities
will help us upload content individually and also help us visit other
blogs to receive additional info. the videos you showed us were
amazing. they were inspiring and it was a pleasure watching them. we
all want to thank you Sir for sparing your time teaching us all that
you have for the past three days and sharing your thoughts and ideas..
we shall look forward to make the best use of all that we have learned.
thanking you once again..
Kester

“The person you love is 75% water”, says the book “The art of looking Sideways”. Or “Have you seen a purple Cow?” is just one another pick from this huge compilation. Author Alan Fletcher, who is a graphic designer has compiled this book with anecdotes, quotes images and description on various facets of Art. Content is beautiful and more beautiful is the way its written or better call it designed. Grab it if you are a designer, and if not its a must read for you too.

The Art of Looking sideways is sure to keep you busy through long/short road/rail/water/air journeys. I must recommend this to all Institutes where word “creativity” is uttered at least once a day. A must have for all schools, which believe in overall development of children.

A must to show off!

E-learning

The new way: Web 2.0

Workshop at NIASA, Pune

Objective Summary

With the advent of PCs and internet and its ubiquity, we spend our quality time searching, mailing, browsing and downloading. Look closely, Internet is much beyond all these activities we have been performing. Didn’t get it? Now peep into some student’s computer screen and don’t be surprised if he is found ‘wasting‘ his time on Orkut. Another student you will find has just finished commenting on someone’s Blog. Right, you guessed it. There has been phenomenal rise in the users of social networking websites (orkut, facebook etc.), blogs, forums, Wikis because these websites allow much more than browsing and just downloading the information. What’s unique with the Internet today? Today Internet allows equal participation by the user by means of discussions, comments, editing and posting of information. That’s the difference between being online and going online.

This new revolution is called web 2.0. And yes, I am fully aware that teachers are using word processors, presentation software and worksheets for delivering lectures and they also know how to fix LCD projector when it refuses to work.

Our focus here would be on making teaching a conversation rather than a lecture, sharing information and ideas rather than delivering them, making learning a user driven, social and making the discussion writable also instead of only readable.

So now we know the era of Web 1.0 has already passed and we could do very less about it. Contrary to earlier web practice, which was “read only”, Web 2.0 is participatory, discussion based, highly flexible and shareable.

The younger lot seems to be taking advantage of this very efficiently, and they have found themselves “involved and growing with it”. The younger lot also finds it comfortable to understand the interface and knows the ways in which to respond. We now only need to channelize this energy and knowledge to build up larger community of people which can share information over the Internet.

The workshop will focus at various ways in which e-learning can be implemented in education and how one can get most out of the presence of Internet in their premises. The workshop will also focus at Internet jargon and may wash away myths if any about use of Internet in education.

Workshop will in depth or in brief cover the efficient use of blogs, social networking websites, public forums, wikis and all that web 2.0 is all about, collaboration, teamwork and syndicating information on the Internet.

During these five days, our focus will be on collaborative learning, implementing participatory systems and creating a flexible, rewindable, forwardable, stoppable, creative and enjoyable education systems.

Ecotect is now Autodesk® Ecotect®. It came to me as a big shock, as I never expected this to happen. But if you had been an active member on ecotect community, you should have already smelled something cooking. First Andrew took almost 18 months to release version 5.6. Immediately after its release (after 24 hours approx.) announced this acquisition. Secondly, affiliates page was ‘under maintenance’ since the release of new version of ecotect and I feel pity about its affiliates (including myself). Anyway, Autodesk has been acquiring many good software since last many years, and with this acquisition, Autodesk has proven to be leader of green building design software. They have previously acquired Green Building Studio software.

it will be interesting to see what is Autodesk going to do with two competing software? One software may have to be sacrificed for the sake of other OR buyer will have choice to pick what he likes. If not, GBS will be sold as simulation tool, whereas Ecotect as design tool. Fingers crossed!

I have been an avid fan of Ecotect and will keep it using and suggesting to my friends as I used to do in past. Thanks Andrew J. Marsh for providing us such a wonderful tool!