Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

`City development needs joint efforts'

Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE: Organisations such as the Confederation of Indian Industry and those of architects should discuss what is needed for development of the city, and present their suggestions to the planners on what needs to be implemented, K. Thangaraj, chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry, Coimbatore Zone, said here on Friday.

Inaugurating the Chapter Day celebrations of the Indian Institute of Architects, Tamil Nadu Chapter, he said: "While civil engineers gave space for living, architects gave meaning to that space."

The chairman of the Tamil Nadu Chapter, R. Ramaraju, said that the boom in real estate and buildings was swallowing the finer aspects of culture and tradition. Architecture was a reflection of society.

The concern among architects now was the vanishing identity of cities and towns because buildings did not take into account factors such as climate or lifestyle of a place. The buildings in all cities and towns looked alike. The exclusivity of a place in the way it looked was lost with uniform structures.

S.P. Palaniswamy, Urban and Transport Planner and former professor of Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, said that this was a golden era for architects for development planning. With the economic growth, the development in cities was also high. This growth should be sustained without adverse impact on cities, he said.

Pointing out that the country had never had strategic planning of cities, he said that even for the projects planned under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, architects could design the structures planned for the urban poor. They should be proud of the place they lived in, he said. A website of the Coimbatore centre of the Indian Institute of Architects was launched at the function. Various awards were given away to students and architects. The Honourable Member Award for 2006 was given to T.S. Ramani Shankar, Coimbatore.

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