Wednesday, March 12, 2014

BNCA team wins THIRD PRIZE at NSDC 2014 organised by SPA Bhopal

Like last year, BNCA team of students mentored by Prof. Kavita Murugkar participated in the NSDC 2014 - a National level students design competition organised by SPA Bhopal. The theme of the year was Universal Design for Piligrimage Sites. BNCA team chose the site of Chaturshringi Temple, the oldest piligrimage site within pune city for the study and formulating the design proposal.
After the initial round of selection, BNCA team was shortlisted out of about 150 entries from colleges across the country. The team was invited to Bhopal for the final jury round from 1st to 3rd March'14. The final jury was in the form of oral presentations by the shortlisted teams and the judges were- Dr. Abir Mullick, Vice Chancellor of Navrachana University., Vadodara and Prof. A G K Menon, Chairman, INTACH (Delhi Chapter).

BNCA team bagged the third prize worth 20000 Rs. after a successful and highly appreciated presentation of their proposal which also included a walkthrough. The solutions proposed by the team were very practical, implementable and yet innovative and creative.

The names of the winning team of students are Meghana Majethiya, Annie Agarwal and Vinita Wagh.


“TOWARDS AN INCLUSIVE CITY" - A Panel discussion on UD at the CONSTRO '14

Pune is known internationally as a commercial, educational,industrial and IT hub and the seventh largest metropolitan city in India. The sudden growth has attracted huge floating population, which puts tremendous pressure on its limited resources and insufficient infrastructure, resulting into haphazard development and chaos across the city. Inadequate resources and poor planning affects everyone especially children, women, elderly and people with disabilities thus affecting overall quality of life. Universal Design approach in future planning and development of the city can help to considerably address this growing crisis and problems of social exclusion.

Taking opportunity of the visit by UD experts to Pune, BNCA's UD cell conducted a panel discussion on Universal design in a city titled, “TOWARDS AN INCLUSIVE CITY.....DREAMS & REALITY” in joint collaboration with Pune Construction Engineering Research Foundation (PCERF)  at the country's largest exhibition on Construction Industry - CONSTRO 2014, on Saturday,15th February, at the Agricultural grounds, Pune
Apart from the UD experts, local stakeholders (NGO's & Govt.) were also invited for the panel discussionThe panel discussion was co-ordinated and moderated by Prof. Kavita Murugkar.

The experts and their respective topics of presentation were as follows -

Dr Abir Mullick - Inclusive Community
Prof.Balaram  - Inclusive Transport
Dr Rachana Khare - Inclusive Education
Dr Hemanti Banerjee - Inclusive Railway stations
Dr Gaurav Raheja - Inclusive Public spaces
Prof.Gaurab Kar - Inclusive Work
Prof.Sandeep Sankat - Inclusive Urban Housing
Ar.Radhika Vaidya - Inclusive Public buildings
Ms.Anita Iyer - Public Awareness and Sensitization



Universal Design National Round Table Meeting organized by BNCA

A daylong National Roundtable meeting was organised by BNCA's UD cell on the issue of - The FUTURE OF UNIVERSAL DESIGN IN INDIA at IUCAA in the campus of University of Pune on the 15th February'14. The agenda for the daylong roundtable meeting was to outline and develop a national agenda for Universal Design in India, so all UD initiatives across the country can work towards common goals with synergy between all efforts.

The experts and researchers on Universal Design, who participated in the meeting were

Abir Mullick, 
Provost, Navrachana University, Vadodara

Balaram S., 
D J Academy of Design, Coimbatore

Rachna Khare, 
School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal 

Haimanti Banerjee, 
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

Gaurav Raheja, 
Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee

Gourab Kar, 
National Institute of Design, Paldi

Kavita Murugkar
B N College of Architecture, Pune

Through the focused discussion ISSUES, THOUGHTS, REFLECTIONS, PROBLEMS, FUTURE POSSIBILITIES related to Universal Design were addressed. Key topics were identified for action namely Information, Outreach, Research and Development, Policy, Enforcement, Practise, Application, Education and training, Technology and theory of Universal Design. Further detailing of each topic was done to identify the WHAT'S AND HOW'S related to implementation and development each one of them.
A charter will be formulated after further work on it by the team on THE ROAD MAP OF MAINSTREAMING UNIVERSAL DESIGN IN INDIA.

Find below some glimpses of the event :