ARCHITETS RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS PUBIC REALM Nikit Deshlahra, Fifth year A

In her book The Human Condition Hannah Arendt (1958), discusses the meaning of the public realm as an open and shared space. The quality of public realm in our cities is essential if we are to make our cities livable and working environments suitable. Generators of public space are the conscious effort to bring and gather people to discuss, share and transfer ideas and thoughts in a common, unified space the public realm. Tradition, culture and ethnic lifestyles have been a major influencing factor in generating such spaces. (Sasidharan & Prosperi, 2012, p. 3) Of the architectural purposes relevant to this quadrant, the most flagrantly neglected by modern architecture are the creation of satisfactory urban fabric and shaping the public realm . In cities, our contribution to the public realm is essential to cities where people want to work, socialize, recreate and live in. Public space between buildings influences both the built form and the civic quality of the city, be they streets, squares or parks. A balance between the public and private realm is central to the practice's design approach. Buildings and their surrounding spaces should interrelate and define one another, with external spaces functioning as rooms without roofs. It is the building's scale and relationship with the street or square that helps to encourage public activity and create a people-friendly environment. According to Richard Rogers, Buildings are not idiosyncratic private institutions: they give public performances both to the user and the passerby. Thus the architect's responsibility must go beyond the client's program and into the broader public realm. Though the client's program offers the architect a point of departure, it must be questioned, as the architectural solution lies in the complex and often contradictory interpretation of the needs of the individual, the institution, the place and history. (Campbell & Elias, p. 19) The Pompidou Centre in Paris, designed by Richard Rogers in collaboration with Renzo Piano and completed in 1977, illustrates how a building can bring life to a rundown area of a city. The design deliberately dedicated over half of the site to a public piazza. The public realm, in this case, extends from the square up the facade of the building in the form of 'a street in the air', a great diagonal escalator crossing the facade to connect all the floors. The Pompidou Centre, including its piazza has become the most visited building in Europe with spontaneous street

theatre and other events in the piazzas complimenting the activities within the building. (theorypublic domain) The shaping of the public realm and the modulation of the transitions between public and private are important in encouraging and defining apt forms of social interaction. For instance, the networks of both paved and green open spaces can be elaborated to suit a wide variety of uses and interwoven with each other in such a way as provides opportunities for casual meeting and spontaneous interaction, as well as places for more formalised forms of community engagement. In the past we depended on each other more, and met daily in places such as the street market and at the village well, so community was inevitable. Today we only have the supermarket and Starbucks, but the longing for and recognition of the benefits of community grows, demanding creative design interventions that might help stimulate its formation. (Buchanan, 2012)

The Delhi Urban Art Commission was set up by an Act of Parliament in 1973 to "advise the Government of India in the matter of preserving, developing and maintaining the aesthetic quality of urban and environmental design within Delhi and to provide advice and guidance to any local body in respect of any project of building operations or engineering operations or any development proposal which affects or is like to affect the skyline or the aesthetic quality of the surroundings or any public amenity provided therein. The first 3 ARCHITECTS (PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT) REGULATIONS, 1989 , India asks to :

Ensure that his professional activities do not conflict with his general responsibility to contribute to the quality of the environment and future welfare of society.

Apply his skill to the creative, responsible and economic development of his country,

Provide professional services of a high standard, to the best of his ability.

COA, India in its instruction to architects for the multi-staged services to be provided by them for an architectural project clearly states that they need to Prepare report on site evaluation, state of existing buildings, if any ; and analysis and impact of existing and/ or proposed development on its immediate environs as a part of concept design. For Urban Design/ Urban Renewal schemes it states that first stage of work also includes: Site evaluation, analysis of architectural character, social issues and heritage. Feasibility study. Preliminary proposal for development/ re-development and their impact on immediate environs. Vibrant urban cities are the most climate-friendly human proposition to house the growing population. If we neglect the public realm we impair a key reason why people live together in urban areas. New and re-development schemes that heal and reinforce the public realm is good business and good for the city and the environment. Professionals must be challenged to compete for creative and unprecedented results. We as architects need to focus on the relationship between the built environment and peoples quality of life.