Author: D K Bubbar
Publisher: Rupa
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 396
ISBN/UPC (if available): N/A
Description
This path-breaking book addresses several issues for the very first time and reveals many findings about Indian architecture in details never researched or published before. This project is the culmination of the author’s entire lifetime’s work. The Strength of the paradigm he proposed lies in the fact that it makes the reader sit up and take notice of the glaring defects in the thinking, planning and implementation to how we build and utilize space for living, working, and sharing our environment with our co-habitats. He then provides solutions for an organic and symbiotic way of development that can be scaled up right from a single dwelling to as large as a whole township.
The author is non-dogmatic and non-religious in his approach and proposes radical yet simple solutions with scientific explanations and rationale behind his methods. He is quick to point out that this is a book written in the modern context and even the word spirit used in the title has not been used in any spiritual sense, but refers to the essence, the core. He has been an experimenter and a truth-seeker all his life and here he shares the result of his findings with the reader who can benefit at every level.
The target readership of this book would be anyone from a student of architecture to an accomplished architect, urban planners, educationists and policy makers, and indeed anyone who is interested in improving the quality of life. In its finality, the book, a textbook, as the author likes to call it, is not only a unique work on architecture but on the art of living itself.
Darshan Kumar Bubbar was born in 1937 in Quetta, Balochistan. Since an early age, he showed an incredible talent in his drawings, which eventually led him to join the field of architecture. Before commencing his formal education at the Academy of Architecture, Mumbai, he worked with eminent architects in Delhi for years. Which served as a rigorous training ground for him.
He started his own practice in 1965 under the name and style of The Angles Architects, and today the firm continues to furnish complete services in the field of design and execution of building, planning and interior projects. His work has ranged from designing houses, bungalows and housing complexes to educational campuses, hospitals, offices, residential and institutional buildings and even interiors with furniture design.
In the early sixties, he began to study Indian architecture. The mud houses in villages, the palaces of Rajasthan and The Mud houses in villages, the palaces of Rajasthan and the Taj Mahal cast a deep impression on him. He was in search of design principles ha the ancients followed in their work. In an attempt to reach the quintessential truth, that separated traditional architecture from modern architecture, he began his quest and studied the Manasara and scriptures. He used his findings in the contemporary context on his projects with almost complete success.
Through three decades, D K Bubbar has been an untiring student for the age-old principles of Indian architecture. His thoughts and works have been published in several periodicals and newspapers. He has taught at the Academy of Architecture, Mumbai, conducted workshops at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, Sir JJ School of architecture, Mumbai and many other colleges. He has lectured at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and National University of Singapore. Interviews with him have been telecast on several television channels.