Fundamentally Reluctant

Landscape Architect | Penniless optimist | Dog lover | Microphone abuser

[sreedevimohan]

first love

Your first love destroys you in the most beautiful way. Showing you a taste of what could be and leaving you begging and wanting more, crushing you! Until that moment your world was perfect, untouched and untainted. You were oblivious to this overwhelming feeling in your heart and in your body, taking over every sense slowly and then fully. Making a fool of your rational brain. Your first love destroys you for life, not so much the person but more this new feeling you didn't know you could feel. And suddenly all those stupid love songs make sense, all those mushy movie dialogues seem like they were written for you, poetry shows new meanings. Your objective, reasoning brain goes for a toss. Your first love like every other first in your life is new; mind boggling and crazy. You find a new kind of high, an Adrenaline rush like never before, a high you don't get from any of the million drug concoctions. There you are, a bag of emotions you didn't know that existed before and emotions you don't know how to handle. 

Your first love destroys you, wholly and completely, from every last cell in your physical self to the deepest, darkest cellar in your soul. 

[sreedevimohan]

Whose City is it Anyway?

Who does a city belong to?

Who occupies a city?

These are some of the most basic questions that every urban designer or town planner thinks about while working today. But Jane Jacobs around 50 years ago posed the same questions in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The book questioned the many urban policies implemented during the time in New York City, which was also being used everywhere else in America. The book is her single-most influential book and possibly the most influential book on urban planning and cities.

The early 1950s in New York saw rapid urbanisation and growth post the Second World War, a period when capitalism was on the rise. The cities grew bigger and more congested. This put a great deal of pressure on the natural resources and infrastructural facilities of the cities.Urban decay became common place. This is when Robert Moses was working in the Public Parks Commissions. He was later called the “Master Builder” of New York. He cut across the existing city fabric by building many expressways which displaced roughly half a million people, public parks and bridges connecting Manhattan to the rest of the city. He believed the city was meant for cars. This shows light on the far reaching effect the invention of the automobile had on architecture and urban designers. It changed how people looked at buildings and cities. Moses has even said that, “The cities are for traffic”. Moses came from a time when driving a car, was just not seen as a necessity but it was seen as entertainment. By proposing expressways across the city, he also in turn controlled the development that happened alongside these expressways. He introduced the idea of collecting tolls for using newly constructed bridges, something that is till date used in countries all over the world. He was a hard core modernist in his philosophies and ideals. For the construction of some of his proposals it required the removal of some historical buildings, like the Penn Station. This led to a huge outcry among the general public.

Jane Jacobs, in her book vehemently criticises the methods and ideals of Roberts Moses who believed in a clean city with priority given to the roads. She believed in a system where the city belonged to the people who inhabited it. She discussed how the architects and planners had a ‘paternalistic’ view towards cities, how no one is directly held accountable for the decisions made. She not only criticises but also gives valuable suggestions about how from a private realm the planning of the city has to move into the public domain. She had some valid suggestions like using mixed landuse development, adaptive reuse, higher population densities with shorter blocks, ‘social capital’, ‘eyes on the streets’ and ‘sidewalk ballet’. She spoke about the street as the spine and life giver of the city. She contradicted Robert Moses’ opinion that the city belonged to the people, pedestrians rather than to the cars. Jacobs concludes the book on the stance that cities are formed from organised complexities. These complexities are not simple but are intertwined with each other. She made valid points about how the city was not just one single system working in singular, but many smaller systems all working in unison.

Jane Jacobs was instrumental in creating a design language for urban designers, a language of equality and fairness. It is by far one of the most influential books written by a non architect about urban design and planning policies. Even though Robert Moses’ ideas ideals for the city were highly critiqued, he was also instrumental in making New York City what it is today. Both these visionaries in their own ways, help built the city of New York as we see it today!

[sreedevimohan]

Ellora Caves, Aurangabad, India

[sreedevimohan]

Water

The dim light sky the moody air, the gloomy winds, It is raining all around Rain drops from the clouds and onto the trees, Down the tree trunks and off the leaves. Waking up everything as it flows by, Gently cleansing everything in its path.

[sreedevimohan]

Ground

Trampled over and taken for granted,

The ground beneath my feet,In between the living and the dead,

A precious dance of light and dark,

The ground beneath my feet

Is a story of ever changing disparity.

[sreedevimohan]

Trees

The trees of a place tell a story, the story of time, culture, people, cities and lives. Other than oxygen and shade, trees also act as markers of space and time, They are territorial in nature, leaving a physical mark on the world, hoarders of physical space,Leaving their mark on the scale of time.They are the silent keepers of history, Silent witnesses to Yogiatiripppads and their feudal systems, Kings and wars, politicians and their broken promises.Standing tall and nonjudgmental, they are memoirs of a world that we can no longer see,The trees tell us a story, a story of what has been and what could be. 

[sreedevimohan]

Sky The promise of tomorrow, the promise of a new day Our portal to the “Void” or the heavens,A limitless volume, of thoughts and dreams and aspirations. Aspirational; always looking up,Immortal, infinite and ever moody,Beyond our grasp, untouched and untainted.

[sreedevimohan]

A world within a world.

Thekkinkadu Maidanam

Thrissur, Kerala

India

[sreedevimohan]

The Indian version of the Greek oculus. #travelgram #architecture #mptourism #skiesofindia #greekarchitecture (at Mandu, Madhya Pradesh)

[sreedevimohan]

Not a regular sight in this part of the world #stuffaroundcampus #Ahmedabad (at CEPT University)

[sreedevimohan]

Monsoon at Adalaj ni vav #travelgram #architecture

[sreedevimohan]

The easy life. #throwback #catsofinstagram #feline

[sreedevimohan]

This view! #travelgram #Gangtok #landscape

[sreedevimohan]

From across the hills #travelgram #landscape #Gangtok (at Gangtok)

[sreedevimohan]

The inner soul #stuffaroundcampus #artexhibition #indiancrafts #tamilnadu (at Kanoria Centre for Arts)

[sreedevimohan]

Magic revealed #pottersvillage #ghetto #indiancrafts

[sreedevimohan]

THE JOURNEY Above the mountains the geese turn into the light again Painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that first, bright and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart. Sometimes with the bones of the black sticks left when the fire has gone out someone has written something new in the ashes of your life. You are not leaving. Even as the light fades quickly now, you are arriving.

David Whyte