History of Architecture (AP313) | Essay | 2013

Architecture by real estate developers in India

Essay for History of Architecture (AP131)

Ravideep SinghRoll Number: 07216901611

Sushant School of Art and Architecture

Architecture by real estate in India

Architecture and real estate go hand in hand, without good real estate, one cannot design great architecture and one can ruin good real estate with poor architectural design. But most of the times the two of them work in completely opposite ways. While architects tend to push the boundaries of design by ignoring practicality, real estate developers push for designs which are simple and more practical. A lot of architects don’t worry about real estate markets. However, it is much more profitable to deal with buildings than designing them – maybe a reason for the difficult relationship between architects and investors / clients. Unfortunately, the real estate people are rating buildings differently than architects: they weight different categories like socio-demographic development, economic situation and attractiveness, rental growth potential, etc. Are real estate people underestimating architecture or is it the other way round? (1)

Globalization in the 90’s ushered in external investments and an expansion of the real estate markets. This made it possible for the affluent to raise the bar on their consumerist aspirations and devote themselves to the pursuit of them. With this came a new architectural vocabulary, universally applied in all global cities. The government had to function as a mediator between extremely divergent and contradictory interests. Basic needs like water and sanitation, and general affordability naturally became major concerns, and architecture was relegated to the tail end of priorities. (2)

 Entire sections of cities, or even entire small cities grew up with no sense of architectural character and style. This anomaly, compounded with a complete

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History of Architecture (AP313) | Essay | 2013

lack of urban planning and vision, created a mish-mash of architectural style that is in most cases a visual nightmare. Things took a turn for the better in the early 90’s when the opening up of the markets brought transformation into India in all sectors. IT Parks, Technology campuses and the supporting housing, retail and commercial needs brought about an architectural boom that has been on a continuous steady rise over the last two decades. However a lack of a vision for the entire city has created a new jigsaw of competing styles, materials, designs, that somehow don’t fit in all together.(2)

The development of the modern-day metropolises followed a distinct path, the one driven by the real estate developers. Instead of building around how people work, how people live and how they go between those two places, the developers asked: “How much can I build, how much can I lease, and how much money comes in?” confesses a leading real estate developer. And the realities of this development are harsh: multi-storey buildings next to bungalows, commercial mixed with residential every which way, narrow by lanes off massive expressways — an urban nightmare. Understandably, among residents, the admiration frequently turns to frustration, the lack of planning into disaster.

Taking the example of gurgaon, which has seen the most of the real estate boom sketching its skyline? This initiated when developer DLF Ltd first moved to the city and started building Corporate Park, a series of low-rise, box-like structures. It was one of the first buildings in the area to use glass exteriors. The reason for switching from brick might not have been the most practical, but it set the tone for future development in the city.

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History of Architecture (AP313) | Essay | 2013

DLF CORPORATE PARK, GURGOAN 1

Source1: http://www.gurgaonproperties.net/dlf-corporate-park-gurgaon.aspx

Source2: http://www.engineeringcivil.com/indias-coolest-buildings.html

The architects soon started experimenting with angular structures, since clients wanted to be quirky and iconic in an area that was relatively barren. DLF Gateway Tower, sometimes referred to as the “ship” building, or the “eye” building, was the next structure to come up. Extensive use of glass and metallic panels on the facades confirms to the high tech expressions business seek to achieve and this set on the trend for such a superficial architecture defining the skyline of the modern day metropolises.

One of the stupid reasons for the overuse of glass in the façade was that most of the clients were international companies. They mostly came from cold countries, and want a lot of light to come in.

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DLF GATEWAY TOWER, GURGOAN 2

History of Architecture (AP313) | Essay | 2013

One of the most criticized architects in this regard is Hafeez contractor, who has been a leading hand to the real estate development in Gurgaon, Haryana. A prominent example can be the cyber city, Gurgaon, which has a meaningless arrangement of buildings. There is no attention to practicality as exemplified by this collection of buildings that look like they are made of glass. Surprisingly, the most hot and power starved area has a building clad completely in glass. Power costs and sustainability was obviously not a priority.

For residential Buildings, they must not emphasize on façade-treatment and embellishments, In fact, the verandahs look rather small, too small to be useful, which is patent in most of the housing developments in gurgaon including the dlf cyber city apartments. The focus, instead, should be on the planning and treatment of the spaces inside- do they allow enough light inside and provide adequate space, do they enable the residents to interact, do the spaces look out into some greenery, the variation of scale, the hierarchy of the public and the private spaces etc; these are the more fundamental necessities to be addressed now. A habitation should feel comfortable and sumptuous even with the eyes shut. These concerns, I feel, are to be addressed even before the expression of traditional, artistic or

stylistic values. In contract, the Kanchenjunga by Charles correa is a direct response to the present culture, the escalating urbanization, and the climatic conditions for the region. They pay homage to the vernacular architecture that once stood on the site

before the development in a number of ways. (3)

Source 3,4 : http://www.real-estate-india.com/building-10-dlf-cyber-city.html

The architecture practiced by the real estate produces ‘stacked-boxes’. What we are irked by is the

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DLF CYBER CITY HOUSING, GURGOAN 3

DLF CYBER CITY GURGOAN 4

History of Architecture (AP313) | Essay | 2013

feeling that our ‘home’ has been transformed into a sort of mass-produced assembly-line architecture- where the size and the repetitiveness reduce the individual to insignificance. It could be an anthill reproduced in concrete and stone. Potential buyers are enticed by facilities on offer, rather than the quality of space offered to them. (3)

In cities like Mumbai we can see the rise of new development as derivations of popular Western buildings supplanted from the American and European archetype of tall, glassy towers that may not be equipped to consume and manage resources efficiently in their local climates. Moreover, its common to see revival of extreme brutalism being practiced by the real estate developers in India, for instance, a towering, 27-floor pile of béton brut, glass and exposed struts that has become a much-abhorred fixture on South Mumbai’s skyline: Mukesh Ambani’s Antilia which, depending on your perspective on it, stands for either a ‘city of gold’ or the very edge of the world where, according to the ancient Romans, there be dragons. In a city commonly known as ‘Slumbai’, the tower represents everything wrong with the city’s development. It also typifies superfast, unstoppable, insulated growth that has come to represent modern Indian architecture. (4)

Source3: http://www.archdaily.com/151844/ad-classics-kanchanjunga-apartments-charles-correa/

Another issue is that all too often these new versions of urban space are merely copies of western norms, lacking the site-specificity needed to link them to their

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MUKESH AMBANI'S ANTILIA, MUMBAI 5

History of Architecture (AP313) | Essay | 2013

surroundings, such as the Burg-Al-Arab, which has been replicated in many Indian cities. Further diminishing the quest for identity of Indian architecture and producing an architecture which is far from being contextual.

BURG - AL - ARAB, DUBAI 6

Source4: http://touquettois.com/famous-buildings-in-dubai/famous-buildings-in-dubai-qthadj/

Trapped in the great Indian property boom where real estate sharks pull down heritage buildings to put up factory-produced high-rises, flattened cities are scrambling skywards in bizarre shapes, epitomizing what architect and Harvard professor Rahul Mehrotra calls the “architecture of impatient capitalists”.

As economic growth puts more capital in the hands of a population, real estate can become an obvious choice for long term investment, boosting regional demand for new buildings. A market-based response could be to maximize profit opportunities, pushing developers or investment agencies to build new space as quickly and affordably as possible to pass it into the hands of eagerly waiting buyers. The mechanics of the marketplace are relatively simple, but the sustainability of the model rests largely in how cheap and how fast the new built environment is being realized. The environmental attributes of Modern day metropolises bring unique complexities and challenges for setting new concentrations of people and

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History of Architecture (AP313) | Essay | 2013

services. If sustainability is a goal then the next evolution of cities should be producing a new genus of built environment with site-specific considerations rather than traditional models of existing cities transplanted into completely different environments with hopes for the best. (5)

There is a need for architects and real estate developers to work in harmony. It can end up with something which is memorable, practical, beautiful and cost effective. They will have a space which (5)is valuable to the customer with ample space and good attention to detail. 

Bibliography1. how architecture compliments real estate. [Online] 4 22, 2003. [Cited: 3 17, 2014.] http://planquadrat.co.in/blog/.

2. das, s.k. City, Multiplicity, and Specificity. [Online] [Cited: 3 17, 2014.] http://www.nbmcw.com/articles/green-construction/15836-development-of-modern-indian-architecture.html.

3. mitra, sramana. india's real estate boom and architecture. [Online] 1 19, 2008. [Cited: 3 17, 2014.] http://www.sramanamitra.com/2008/01/19/indias-real-estate-boom-architecture/.

4. Isha singh sawhney. Debating the Death of Design. [Online] 4 1, 2012. [Cited: 3 17, 2014.] http://www.caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/debating-death-design.

5. manohar, Prathima. Architect hafeez contracter. s.l. : architecture publihing, 2006.

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