Prince's Foundation plots Indian Poundbury
The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment has opened its first Indian office, in Mumbai, with the aim of building a new eco-town based on Poundbury and bringing values of “sustainable urbanism” to projects on the sub-continent.
The charity, headed by the Prince of Wales, is working in a joint venture with Milestone Ecofirst Advisory Services, which will provide pro-bono office space in India and 50% of an architect’s time against a fee-sharing agreement.
It hopes to turn a 10ha site, either on the outskirts of Calcutta or Bangalore, into a mirror of its “model” village in Dorset.
Foundation chief executive Hank Dittmar said: “India is a fast growing economy and there is real potential to develop the concept of sustainable urbanism within the Indian planning system.
“Local people feel disenfranchised from the planning system – and this is true whether it be in Europe, America or India – and I hope that the work of the Prince’s Foundation will be able to help combat that feeling of disillusionment.”
Work at the office will also include educational and research activities in collaboration with the International Network for Traditional Building Architecture & Urbanism.
The charity has a history of working on international projects in countries including China, Afghanistan and the US.
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Readers' comments (10)
What's next? Building a "model" Poundsbury at Disneyland as well? Perhaps with an employee dressed up as Prince Charles frolicking about to boot? Sustainable urbanism and disenfranchisement are a greatl thing to address, but is it really going to look as naff as Poundsbury as well? (Not to mention out of place if it's in India)...
I am looking forward to "Rajbury". Will it be Noddy New Dehli or just Nasty and Naff?
Could we send Charles there to be the Only Emperor in the Village, in lieu of his constitutional position here?
Let him go to India and leave us alone!
India is just the most stunning country and this new proposal will be hugely popular and well received there.
And as an arguably unsustainable country a well favoured and sustainable development will only help.
I can appreciate certain aspects of what this charity wants to accomplish but how sustainable is suburban sprawl in such a densly populated country with a car as your mode of transportation?
What is the point of sustainablity if your lifestyle is anything but the definition of a consumer, aren't we just building monuments for our demise? True sustainabilty is very different from the organic eating, hybrid driving brochure we've been sold... your life will not be the same at all.
wow.......is this Prince's idea of promoting localism is it?......may be all the Achi. school can now move to India.!!
Teaching India about sustainable urbanism seems like rather a 'taking coal to Newcastle' strategy, if you consider the average Indian uses 1/10 of the resources of the average American!
I'm looking forward to the fire station - do you think they'll be able to make one that looks even worse? And as for Poundbury Disney land - isn't that called Celebration?
All joking aside, is this going to be the Foundations Chandigarh? Enforcing western designed settlements on India isn't going to reflect their vernacular - and if the spaces aren't created appropriately they won't be habitable due to the different climate. . .
Rupeebury? don't think so, Your Highness ...
In past BDOnline comment(1 - link below) on HRH Prince Charles' Foundation for the Built Environment's propensity for 'missing the target' I was somewhat accommodating, assuming their good, if slightly misguided, intentions. But that was for efforts in their own back yard. Taking these off-target intentions to India is ridiculous and arrogant to boot. The British never understood the soul of India the first time round, made a right mess that still isn't fixed. That's the official version. The real version is: they did understand well enough to overstay their welcome and exploit it to the hilt. Don't misread: there is no disrespect for the Patron here. But:
I practically choked on the absurdity of exporting "sustainable urbanism" from teensy-little first-world UK to giant third/developing world India.
Sustainability is a technical, not an architectural design issue. Repeat – technical issue. Greater London's Wellington-boot-print(2) alone is larger than the Island. This is not offset one whit by the beauty of it's buildings or the human scale and ambience. Without massive and continuous external resources input, at considerable environmental cost to the rest of the world (that's 'imperialism', isn't it?), England would be an uninhabitable muddy slush pit by now. How much "sustainability" is there in the UK account? None. Overdrawn and delinquent. Mumbai is 'a bridge too far', Your Highness. When 'We' can live sustainably within our own territory, then 'We' can think about lending a hand elsewhere.
I've luxed out in the fabulous Victorian Taj Mahal in Mumbai with extra telephones next to the marble floor loo. I've slept without bedding on a charpoi in a Rajasthan desert 'hotel' where 'windows' are just holes in the wall, the rooms six foot wide as that's the span of a slab of desert slate stone. With half a dozen forays into India behind me, covering quite a few thousand miles mostly in peasant class rail carriages, I have some experience to validate commenting on conditions there. It's not what you may imagine from a comfy European perspective. No relation in population density, climate, economics, culture, philosphy, in fact nothing I can think of except it's home to humans. But it's nowhere near as unsustainable as you may imagine. After all, they've been living that way for ten thousand years. It's the modern Western imports that's killing it.
No doubt, there is great need in urban India, but for implementation, not ideas. And not 'firengi'(3) cultural ideas, at that. There's no lack of exceptional regionally and culturally appropriate Indian expertise for housing in India. With decades of research and vast experience of many completed projects, Charles Correa's body of work around India and SE Asia has covered more ground and done it more appropriately than the Foundation could ever hope to. This includes the full spectrum from individual houses, housing for all levels of society and even urban planning from the rural village scale to the monster that is Mumbai.
Don't take my word for it - read the international media on Charles Correa's work – Agha Khan Award and all, even a RIBA Gold Medal presented by none other than HRH Prince Charles himself! Anyone interested in pragmatic and appropriate architecture with human sensibilities and regional contextualism should make serious study of his works. It will inform their own work immeasurably.
Award winning ideas and design? 9 Mathew Road, Mumbai(4) has it. The only lack here is implementation on an appropriately massive scale. Now that's something the Prince can help with. But it's not as glamorous as 'design'.
“For centuries now, every society has produced the housing it needs, naturally, indigenously ... these are not habitats that outsiders had to come in and 'design' … they are processes organic to each society like flowers that bloom … if flowers don't appear … it's a sign that something is wrong with the system. Our job as planners … is to understand what is malfunctioning and then set it right. Instead we start to design the houses ourselves. It is indeed an absurd situation … People starve not because they don't know how to cook – but because they are denied the necessary ingredients.” Charles Correa (5)
By all means, go to India, you'll love it. But don't ignore Indian realities to reinvent an Indian wheel with English Country spokes. Leave Poundbury in the English Countryside. This time, go humbly, asking "We'd like to help. Show us how, please."
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1. 1 Link to previous related comment: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/uk/prince-book-renews-attack-on-profession/5005346.article?MsgId=2002413#MsgId_2002413
2. I write at length in the hope that some rational influence will bring a practical result. Too much to hope for? Not really, after all, look at my comment on http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/no-one-wants-ken%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cphallocratic%E2%80%9D-towers-says-johnson/3100761.article of November 2007, then at http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/boris-johnson-in-u-turn-on-london-skyscrapers/3105318.article of 2 months later – did I U-turn the Mayor of London's policy on tall buildings? I think so and why not? Perhaps you could ask him - let me know.
3. 'firengi' – an international colloquialism meaning 'foreigner'.
4. http://www.charlescorrea.net - head office in ? you guessed it – Mumbai!
5. Charles Correa “Housing and Urbanisation” 1999 T&H ISBN 0-500-28210-2 pp108 “Bill of Rights” – will somebody please donate a copy to the Foundation?
David, You have made some very valid points. I am an Indian Architect working in London and i feel that India needs to find its own solutions and it's well on the way.
There is no lack of creative ideas. I guess money , time and good implementation is needed.Understanding a bit about the big environmental cost of 'quality of urban life' in London, I really dont think sustainability related ideas from UK are much use to India directly. However India can learn from mistakes committed by the West and remember that the best solution is ones own indigenous solution.