Awards, show-casing

for celebrating violations of statutory Plans

Aga Khan Award for Architecture — by admin — last modified 2004-12-19 01:17

Indian projects in three consecutive cycles of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (1995, 1998, 2001) "innovate" outside boundaries of planning law and/or professional practice. Claims of intent to promote innovations to improve systems they transcend ring hollow in all these classic cases of emperor’s new clothes. More significant questions arise out of the complicity of silence about the nudity. | + Update, AKAA-2004: ...The party to humble all parties was hosted by no less than the Aga Khan at Humayun's Tomb, a celebration that history has no choice but to flag for rare humiliation... |

Indian Building Congress Awards, June 2004 — by admin — last modified 2004-11-06 08:10

A news item on (only) one newkerala.com announced in first week of June 2004) that President of India is to honour architects of three complexes that Indian Builders Congress selected out of all the buildings constructed in the country last year for its annual awards for excellence, instituted to encourage new talent and innovativeness among architects. Two of the three (Delhi Government Secretariat and Garden of Five Senses) involve illegalities in terms of planning law and the third raises at least questions about professional ethics.

India-Tech Foundation Award, October 2004 — by admin — last modified 2004-11-08 00:35

While the mess that Delhi Government has made of the matter of “non-conforming” industries in Delhi (since its IA of 1999 in the Supreme Court to moot “alternative” of “regularising” the problem rather than ensuring its solution according to the statutory Master Plan) was being sorted out at the highest levels with apprehension about large scale unrest on account of industries now facing closure with solitary option of shifting to Delhi Government’s excessive concentration industrial “park” on the city outskirts – itself not conforming to the Master Plan – one India-Tech Foundation honoured Delhi Government with an award for proper relocation of industries

St Etienne Biennale, France, November 2004 — by admin — last modified 2004-11-08 01:33

Garden of Five Senses (Master Plan violation in Delhi ridge) that was honoured with Indian Building Congress award in June 2004 and was jostling with Mittal Gardens in dandiya-masti extravaganza in October 2004 was also “paid a visit by officials from the city of Saint Etienne earlier this year during their travel around the world to select projects for …the biennale… to provide a window to “unusual innovations and cultural identities that bring the colour of diversity and originality back to the world being greyed out by globalisation strategies”. The Garden … “one of the largest commissions of public art in India” … featured in the Saint Etienne Biennale in France … held from November 6

COHRE 2004 Housing Rights Defender Award — by admin — last modified 2005-11-27 12:14

On 24.11.2004, while the Geneva-based Aga Khan Foundation was calling up for its Award Ceremony in Delhi people, including/especially those who have been critical of its Awards honouring projects involving violations of planning law (such as the slum project in Indore in gross violation of housing rights), as per an official media realease Rajiv John George of Indore would have been in Geneva receiving COHRE 2004 Housing Rights Defender Award. The citation makes no reference to the protest against the DfID supported slum project and the Aga Khan Award for it, in course of which began Rajiv's simple initiatives in the context of Indore Master Plan, referred to in the citation in odd terms now of GIS. A dossier in honour of the honour bestowed on Rajiv.