Sarve Bhavanti Sukhinah/ Sarve santu Niramayah
Sarve Bhadrani Pashyanti, Ma Kashchid Dukh Bhag Bhaveta

Let every one without distinction be happy. Let every one be without any ailment. Let every one look like Arya, noble and righteous. Let there be no one to have any share of sorrow or grief.

A Sanskrit shloka from a traditional Indian Inscription with a translation in English

.........."Welcome to the Blog".........

We need your inputs for this blog to build a body of knowledge that would help in strengthening the Universal Design concept in design education and design practice in the country. We would also like to share your related projects or experiences addressing different needs of the diverse population.


Saturday, May 19, 2012

National Student Design competition on Universal Design

NATIONAL STUDENT DESIGN COMPETITION 2012
ON
‘UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR EXPLORING THE WORLD HERITAGE SITES IN INDIA"
ORGANIZED BY
SPA Bhopal, ASI and DHONAH



FOURTH/ SPRING ISSUE-2012 of SPANDREL on ‘Social Sustenance’RELEASED on 18th April'12 
Issue Editor- Rachna Khare


Sustainability is the long-term maintenance of ‘well being’ that has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, which should all be coordinated and addressed together to ensure the long term viability of our community and the planet. In continuance with the previous issues of SPANDREL on ‘Environmental Sustenance’ and ‘Cultural Sustenance’ the current issue addresses ‘Social’ dimension of the Sustainability. A development can be socially sustainable only if it respects human diversity and brings equitably distributed level of ‘well being’ to everyone. The spring issue-2012 of SPANDREL focuses on ‘Social Sustenance by Social Equity’ with an aim to build a body of knowledge that responds to the needs of diverse human population with special emphasis to those otherwise marginalized and undocumented in the past. The issue has published papers which pursue people centric or societal approach in architecture, planning and design education, research, practice or policy, to address needs of the vulnerable groups.

The journal has eight sections enquiring into the theme of ‘Social Sustenance’ with national and international authors. Involving community is a means for translating social equity into practice, and thus ensures social sustenance.The first section ‘Social Equity through Users Participation’ presents articles where people are involved at different level to contribute to the decisions taken for them. The articles in this section present the concept of participation and the tools for practice. ‘Human considerations in Design’ is not new to the architecture, design and planning disciplines but the professionals are stuck with the idea of ‘standard user’. The articles in this section present a holistic design approach for ‘real life diverse users’ including children, elderly, socio-cultural differences and persons with functional impairments. To bring innovation, it is necessary to build on research, hence a section on ‘Human Centric Research’ in this journal includes articles which draw from social science research methods and help develop an insight with people as an environmental focus. In India there is a tremendous need to have a wholesome design education that addresses diversity and inclusiveness across the disciplines of Industrial Design, Architecture, Urban Design, and Rural and Urban Planning. In ‘Social equity by Design Pedagogy’, academicians share their classroom experiences and pedagogical tools that they used in teaching the people centric issues in design. Social sustenance and social equity has always been a major challenge for planners and policy makers, there are many related issues that still remain unresolved and debatable. ‘Social Equity through Policy planning’ attempts to bring out these issues with a focus on vulnerable populations. Seemingly simple, people are the most complex dimension in design, ‘Featured Case-studies’ covered in the journal show-case different national and international projects which have taken-up this challenge in practice. In a country like India, the architects and designers need to get over from the ‘life style’ issues and use the power of design to change the way of living. ‘Photo-Feature’ covers one such grass root innovation for construction labors. To review the work of international experts for Indian needs, and the journal has included a book review on ‘Inclusive Housing’ to develop contextual understanding of best international practices. Enclosed is the Table of Contents with a hope that this issue would be successful in achieving its objectives and would interest its readers.