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Urban Image Building

Building Images:
for revival of Indian cities*

Mayura Chandekar
She has been principally involved in large
scale residential projects for olympic 2012
and much discussed London Highrises and
also has a work experience in Architectural +
Urbanism Industry in the UK. She did her
M.Arch in urban design at the Bartlett, Univ.
College London.

Mayura Chandekar

Abstract
Every city has multiple features, giving uniqueness to its built and un-built
environment, which are recognized by its citizens and organized into coherent
images to form what is known as mental maps, cognitive maps or
psychogeographic maps. Modern architecture has lead to faceless sprawl of
cities, producing fabricated built environments by using the top down
designing approach of 'masterplanning'. India has seen unprecedented growth
of its cities in past two decades. They have grown to become what are called
'concrete jungles' lacking any character or sense of place, full of confusion and
chaos. The paper intends to establish 'Image building' as a tool for regeneration
and designing of new developments in cities. Image building of cities or its parts
can be looked at as a generative tool to create a complete living structure that is
legible and holds identity. The first part of the paper will discuss the
components and significance of Imageability. In the later section the paper will
concentrate on one of the most important ways of image building i.e.
contextual designing and reflecting the local historic character. This will include
citing examples of world cities where experiments have been done in either
advocating or counteracting the local character and the kind of effect they have
had in building image of the place. The final part will analyze some historic and
very recent developments in India, to identify urban patterns and features,
which could be used for building images to design future developments.
Building 'Utopia' is a dream in India and for this, making designers aware of the
potential value of harmonious environment and drawing outlines to make our
built and un-built environments positive and nurturing is what the paper aims
at.
Keywords
Image building, Identity, Cognition, Metal Maps, Imageability.
*Paper received from Healthy Cities Conference 2011.
SPANDREL, ISSUE 2, SPRING 2011