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Frank Owen Gehry, a Canadian-born American architect and designer once said, “Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness”. How can we long for timelessness in architecture if the place itself keeps changing? Lets explore more about architecture and history in this 3 part series called, “An insert into the history”.
This series is brought to you by, The Drawing Board, with whom I had partnered last year. The Drawing Board is an international architecture platform based in India. TDB has been actively running Architecture competition for under graduate students since 2016. It is conceptualised by Mindspace Architects and Rohan Builders.
This year, the program is to redesign the existing Badami archaeological museum, in Karnataka. Submission deadline is 9th Oct 2023. More details on thedrawingboard.in
In this second episode, “An insert into the history” (which is also the theme of the competition), I have a Prof. Durganand Balsavar. I interviewed him back in episode 249 in the last year’s TDB theme of designing a “Memorial for Charles Correa”. We spoke about intangible architecture.
A quick introduction about Prof. Balsavar. He has been faculty for India Studios of Bartlett, Helsinki School of Architecture and involved in diverse cultural contexts - the Chandigarh Lab, IUAV Venice, Auckland, Indonesia, Nepal. He founded Artes-ROOTS Collaborative, which has been involved in an environment-appropriate architecture as a community participatory process.
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BV. Doshi, once said, “A house is a grain, like a small sapling in the bio-diverse wild forest”. I wonder what a public space like a temple, a monument, museum, a park, an industrial zone, a 80 floor office tower or a man made landscape is? Lets explore more about architecture and history in this 3 part series called, “An insert into the history”.
This series is brought to you by, The Drawing Board, with whom I had partnered last year. The Drawing Board is an international architecture platform based in India where students can test their understanding and skills in shaping the way communities live and thrive while preserving local heritage. TDB has been actively running Architecture competition for under graduate students since 2016. It is conceptualised by Mindspace Architects and Rohan Builders.
This year, the theme is to redesign the existing Badami archaeological museum, in Karnataka. Submission deadline is 9th Oct 2023. More details in the show notes and thedrawingboard.in
We begin this series with Ar. Prashant Pole. Prashant has a long and illustrious career that has spanned over three decades. His journey started with Naksha Architects in Bengaluru. He established his own firm, Genesis Architects in 1994 and has worked on single residences, apartments, offices, hotels and institutional buildings. Over these years, he has also been a visiting faculty at MCE Hassan, BIT Bangalore, SIT Tumkur, and USD Mysore. Aside from teaching, he has also been evaluating architecture design as a juror at various architecture schools in and around Bengaluru. We’ll be discussing what goes into making a museum.
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Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous line - “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
In today’s episode, we’ll be talking about improvisation in dance with Avantika Bahl. Avantika is a dance practitioner and educator based in Mumbai. As an artist, she works towards creating inclusive performances that can be accessed by a larger community. Over the past few years, her choreographic choices have brought diverse voices and experiences to the mainstream. She studied at the London Contemporary Dance School and completed the Curriculum-in-Motion program offered by Jacobs Pillow. Avantika has a Masters degree in English Literature and completed her Level 3 certification in Indian Sign language.
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Satyajit Ray once said, “There is always room for improvisation”. I think this needs a lot more investigation.
Referring to Ray’s comment on the room of improvisation, today we have the honour to have Dr Trina Banerjee with us on Audiogyan. We’ll talk about improvisation in the context of Theatre, Plays, Playwriting, and performing arts at large.
Trina is an Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Her research interests include Gender, Performance, Political Theatre, Theories of the Body, Postcolonial Theatre and South Asian History. She has also been a theatre and film actress, as well as a journalist and fiction writer.
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I quote John McLaughlin “I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.”
Pushkar Lele and Kuldeep Barve joins us on Audiogyan and we will be talking about “Improvisation in music”. It’s going to be a bi-lingual conversation in English and Marathi.
Pushkar is a renowned Hindustani classical vocalist and Founder-Director of ‘Gandhara School of Music’. More about his Gurus, rich repertoire and enriching journey of learning music in the show notes.
Kuldeep is a classical guitarist. His practice is influenced by jazz and Indian classical music. He is a co-founder and a core member of the Pune Guitar Society.
Welcome Pushkar & Kuldeep! It’s an honor to have you on Audiogyan. Thanks for giving your time.
As I started of with John McLaughlin’s quote, I wanted to document some of your thoughts on “Improvisation” - when it comes to Hindustani Classical and Western Classical music with a lot of Jazz which I believe has a lot of improvisation.
Just as a small plug, you can also listen to “Jazz in India” where I interviewed Denzil Smith in episode 133.
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“Waste not, want not.” can be explained as “if you are not wasteful with the resources you have now, then at a later date you will have those resources to use as you want and need. By not wasting, you will not be needy later.”
And today to discuss all about waste ecosystem and the sector at large, we have Rahul Nainani with us on Audiogyan. Rahul has a passion for sustainable policies that create value. With one eye on the bottom line and the other on tangible social impact, Rahul, along with his co-founder Gurashish Singh Sahni founded ReCircle in 2016, as an innovative, multifaceted solution to India’s burgeoning waste management woes. ReCircle has instituted flagship initiatives such as, ClimaOne, Plastic EPR Service, Plastic-Neutral programs and ground-level community collection drives. We’ll talking about this and more.
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Peter Brook the legendary English theatre and film director once said, ********“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”
Lets talk about the need for such a space with Atul Kumar.
Atul Kumar is The Company Theatre’s founder member. An acclaimed actor and director with more than 30 years of performance experience, Atul has dabbled with different languages and forms of theatre & has showcased his work all over India & abroad. His basic performance training was in the traditional Indian dance and martial art forms of Kathakali and Kalerippayettu in Kerala for over three years as well as a stint with the master of visual theatre - Philippe Genty in France. More about him in the show notes. Today we’ll deep dive into The Company Theatre Workspace, Kamshet as a case study.
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Welcome back to Part 2. We were in conversation with Jan Schmidt Garre, film maker, producer and founder of PARS MEDIA. They make high-quality documentaries and feature films with a focus on classical music, dance, and the fine arts.
In the previous episode, we spoke about “Making a documentary” and in this, we speak about his latest Documentary on Late Ar. B.V.Doshi called the “The Promise – Architect BV Doshi”.
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“In feature films, the director is God; in documentary films, God is the director.” Alfred Hitchcock.
Welcome to this 2 part series with Jan Schmidt Garre. First part is about “Making a documentary” and second part is his latest Documentary on Late Ar. B.V.Doshi called the “The Promise – Architect BV Doshi”.
Jan Schmidt-Garre founded PARS MEDIA in 1988. It’s a production company for high-quality documentaries and feature films with a focus on classical music, dance, and the fine arts. His films have been broadcasted in over thirty countries.
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We’ll continue this topic in part 2 since I wish to talk about film, The Promise, B.V. Doshi
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Maa kaa aashirwaad, OK TATA Bye Bye, Hum Do Hamare Do, Mera Bharat Mahan - Sounds familiar? I am talking about the slogans written behind the truck. But we are not going to discuss those, rather the heavy vehicles on which these are written. Yes. Trucks.
In 1911, truck designer Charles Martin built a gasoline-powered tractor to pull modified horse-drawn commercial wagons. His most significant innovation, however, was the fifth-wheel coupler. A round plate with a central hole, it attached to the top of tractor frames to connect and support trailers. Trucks are broadly divided into light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty classifications depending on their weight. And in today’s episode, we will try and introduce ourselves to how are trucks designed.
I am pleased to have Sathiya Seelan Gangaasalam with us on Audiogyan. He is currently Vice President of Design at Ashok Leyland. An industrial designer who has spent over 2 decades designing cars, trucks, busses, and three-wheelers. Sathiya is a Design thinker, mentor, and writer and also a passionate watercolor artist.
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