Every city has to undergo a struggle. Bengaluru of yesteryear has changed phenomenally. At the end of 1980s when I came down to settle in the city, it was fascinating. There were satellites towns like Yelahanka, Kengeri and Whitefield around. They all seem to have been subsumed within Bengaluru today. I remember there were no traffic lights, only Stop-Watch-Proceed’ signs. I used to walk from Basavanagudi to Brigade Road. Vidhana Soudha and Vikasa Soudha were two grotesque errors. By 1985, it was a pub city.
Thus spake Krishnarao Jaisim, the architect known to be the creator of several landmark edifices - offices, resorts and homes - across cities of South India and the former Chairman of the Indian Institute of Architects. He feels “Bengaluru still has an absolutely fascinating future.” However visualises the core of the city to be turning purely into a business and entertainment centre. He says young people today think differently. “They do not want to own property and are less possessive and would like to have car and homes on EMI.”
Reminiscing the Bengaluru of yore, he says Metro was being talked about in the 1970s itself and it was all underground. He dubbed Amaravati to be a “super disaster in the making.” He says the apartments in the city are awful to look at, and the Ring Road serves the need of Tamil Nadu more than the city’s. He says good fences create awful neighbourhoods and pleads for hiking tariff for water for extravagant consumption.
Jaisim, who is grandson of Lakshminarasappa, the architect of the Mysore Maharajas, was the speaker invited to address a discerning audience at the maiden session of a forum ‘Inside Your City’ last week. The forum will engage people, intellectuals, academics, architects, urban planners, artists, artistes, writers and all others concerned with its growth, mobility, urban sustainability and cultural biodiversity and everything else ‘that makes the city a great place to live’.
Platform
A collaborative initiative between Watergy and BCIL Alt Tech, the forum will serve as a platform to promote conversation among all concerned with the city’s growth and development. The forum will invite people of eminence to speak at meetings and lectures organised within the city’s core once a month while holding another in locales in north, south, west or east.
Informal
'In order to keep the tedium away, the conversation would be informal and chatty in style and will limit the audience to between 100 and 150, sparing half the duration for questions and answers.
Elaborating the aims and objectives for the forum, Chandrashekhar Hariharan, Mentor-Trustee BCIL Alt-Tech Foundation, says the forum will take up anything that has to do with the city and its intrinsic character, it heritage, its future and the present.
It will discuss concerns like the water crisis, energy deficit, the growing piles of waste and education, health, tourism and technology that impact the life of the citizens. “It will be a journey of exploration and discovery of solutions to make it liveable and sustainable. It will bring together people to connect with each other with empathy and resourcefulness.”
For more information, readers can contact Hariharan, Ph: 98450-74958, 080-4018-4018.