Since the beginning of time man has always intervened to protect from climate and adapt to domestic living conditions. These interventions dealt with climate and the living patterns of a particular time. The patterns defined the way people live and use spaces, the nature of architecture and its relationship to the immediate and broader context. In extreme climatic conditions people designed houses and open spaces with courtyards, verandas and pavilions as spaces to deal with the harsh sun and rain. These components shaped an important typology in dealing with the climate and proved successful to create a micro climate that lets one to dwell in extreme conditions. These conditions today we term as “micro climate” that is the climate of a very small or restricted area, especially when this differs from the climate of the surrounding area.
The talk today will focus on spaces in neighborhood and cities that are domestic and societal in nature. A space that would organically bring people together and create comfortable conditions where one interacts with the other at ease, a space for friendship and that to my mind is the essence of “Social innovation and Urban design”
As Charles Correa rightly says “We are only as big as the questions we address. And this is the central riveting fact of life of architects in the Third World. Not the size or value of the projects that we are working on, but the nature of the questions they raise – and which we must confront. A chance to grow: the abiding virtue of place in the sun.”