Urban Design Collective (UDC)

CHENNAI 2046! It is easy to call out the city’s vulnerabilities but Chennai is indeed steeped with strengths too. From its origins as a fishing hamlet to the megapolis that it is today, there is much to rediscover from its evolution and take forward into its future. Chennai has a rich heritage of water resources management. It has a diversified economy that is growing and adaptive to a global market. All this, while sustaining a multicultural space for its residents. Chennai’s challenge is really about balancing its issues and opportunities; learning from the gaps of past efforts and embracing a vision that systematically integrates an inclusive approach to the city’s growth strategy. Through our experience of living and working in Chennai, we were cognisant of the urgency to create a realistic and future proof resilience framework with short and long-term plans of action in alignment with the SDGs. Sometimes finding the right answer involves asking the right question. So we did.. Can we anchor the development of Chennai to the health & well-being of our citizens?  What if we could integrate solutions to spatial, environmental, and economic challenges using HEALTH as a pivot? To pursue a participatory approach to the vision plan, it is imperative to anchor it to a theme that touches all scales of development from the individual to the region. Our approach for Chennai 2046 therefore pivots on HEALTH as a unifier and catalyst for a sustainable, inclusive and resilient vision. The approach further sought to work through 3 verticals for ensuring an urbanism model centred on health -  1. Healthy Environmental Stewardship, 2. Social well-being & healthy lifestyle, and 3. Economic resilience Each of these would be further detailed out to yield action plans to ensure a successful trajectory for implementation and impact. Postscript: Mid-2021, in response to an RFP from CMDA, we worked collaboratively with MVRDV, Deltares and Panteia to outline a vision for the third master plan for Chennai. Despite scoring highest on the technical assessment, we lost out on the financial assessment. This slide deck is assembled from UDC’s contribution to the visioning approach submitted as part of the technical proposal for the RFP. #healthyurbanism #livablecities #citiesforpeople

SITE DIARIES - Navalur lake eco restoration project Eco restoration projects are tricky; the very nomenclature drops a huge responsibility on those involved. A tiny mis-step is bound to have repercussions on environmental and social safeguards. This project is no exception. And it's not perfect either but its definitely a step forward given its backstory. In 2022, we worked on the urban design, landscape and architectural components of this project. The biodiversity study which revealed the presence of a rich flora and fauna bolstered our imagination of the lake as an ecological habitat. The master plan envisioned the lake as a larger ecosystem with zones as habitats for flora and fauna; and the planting plan was envisioned as a microcosm of Tamil Nadu's native species. Our landscape concept was straightforward... REWILDING. No debate on this. Another aspect that weighed on us is the lake's role in the traditional water management system of the region. While the cascading channels have all been breached with unregulated development, we were keen to respect its watershed and therefore retained as many inflow points as possible from its surrounding context as a small but hopefully significant contribution to the urban water resilience of the neighbourhood. Cut to 2024, we are back to supervise the project's execution. Despite the challenges of dealing with the technical, financial and institutional capacity gaps, site visits are therapeutic... there is a sense of redemption to see nature take over so quickly if we just let it do so. The water is entirely rainfed (as it used to be long ago) and devoid of sewage and pollutants (as it used not to be not so long ago). Fish are thriving. Birds & butterflies are returning. A snake was sighted last week too. But what really hits the spot is how so many of the species from our planting plan have sprouted on their own... so much so that we are now revising quantities of plants to be procured for planting. Not surprisingly, this is a humbling experience and reiterates our role as facilitators.. in this case, facilitators for nature to take over. Cannot wait for this tiny piece of heaven to be open to the public and shared responsibly. #healingthroughlandscape #designingwithnature #creatinglivablecities #urbandesign #urbandesigncollective

Throwback to this effort of ours to mainstream tactical urbanism as a catalyst for permanent change in the public realms of our cities! Tactical urbanism if leveraged well has immense potential as a participatory planning tool for effective decision making... it basically lays out the writing on the wall for the end users, designers as well as decision makers on what works and what doesn't. In that manner, it also pushes towards a net positive cost-benefit analysis for permanent interventions built on the tactical interventions. And for this, the feedback loop is most essential to learn from the efforts. While we do advocate the use of tactical urbanism in the manner described here, we do maintain that it is NOT and can never be a substitute for permanent public space interventions/ improvements. True outcomes and impacts will be achieved only when the tactical urbanism installations get converted to permanent interventions based on the feedback loop. . . #participatoryplanning #citiesforpeople #creatinglivablecities #urbandesign #publicspacedesign #tacticalurbanism

Presenting the winners of the 2024 edition of TACTICAL URBANISM NOW!  Huge congratulations to all the winners! I am delighted to have been part of the jury for this competition where I got to evaluate 82 proposals received from so many cities/ contexts around the world. I have been on several competition juries - national and international - prior to this, but this one tops the list for the range of creative responses and representation techniques. Most of all, I thoroughly enjoyed how the proposals pushed the boundaries of tactical urbanism as a transformative tool/ approach by demonstrating its application beyond public space renewal and delving into realms of transport systems, heritage conservation, waste management, disaster management and participatory governance. It was definitely NOT an easy task to pick the winning entries. Once, again, many many congratulations to the winners! . . #tacticalurbanism #publicspaces #urbandesign #placemaking #urbanrenewal #terraviva #internationalcompetition

It was been an enriching experience working on this collaborative project to decode heritage as a driver for climate action since August 2023. Our key deliverables for this project are a best practices compendium, a toolkit for Indian cities to prepare Heritage Climate Action plans and an e-learning module to accompany this toolkit. The workshop held last week in Ahmedabad was purposed with testing and strengthening the toolkit which is currently in a draft stage. We welcome the opportunity to work with other cities as well to further strengthen its application value and serve as a ready reckoner for cities preparing climate action plans, master plans, development plans, heritage management plans or any other relevant instruments of planning. Please do get in touch if you would be interested!

Tactical urbanism, if leveraged smartly, has immense potential for transforming public spaces effectively and collaboratively. I think of it as grassroots placemaking on steroids. And I'm excited to be serving on the jury panel for this international competition focused on transforming public spaces. Can't wait to see what this brings up!

Registrations open!

UDC's Vidhya Mohankumar was invited to speak at the 7th International Architecture Congress, which took place in Pamplona, Spain from 15th to 17th November 2023. The Congress, organised by the Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad, has been held every two years since 2010, in order to promote the debate on architecture and the city, overcoming the barriers that limit this discipline to the architectural field. It brings together national and international personalities from different disciplines to address social concerns, the need to review economic models, and the environmental challenges of our time in relation to architecture and urbanism. The six previous editions of the Congress have been structured in two cycles. The first of them, between 2010 and 2016, focused on architecture. The second cycle, with editions in 2018 and 2021, about the city. This year’s Congress opened a new cycle of discussions under the theme “Urban Controversies”, under the guidance of Joan Clos, the support of OnCities2030 and with the Foundation’s commitment to international leadership in a multidisciplinary, provocative and up-to-date analysis, open to multiple perspectives, of the social, economic, regulatory, and governance challenges that cities and territories face. Vidhya spoke through her 18 years of experience as an urban development practitioner about the myth of planning Indian cities, the post-truth urbanism that we are neck deep in and closed with a framework for creating livable cities despite the odds. . . # urbancontroversies #congress #pamplona #spain #creatinglivablecities 

(English below 👇 ) Vidhya Mohankumar, arquitecta y diseñadora urbana, también nos acompañará en el VII Congreso Internacional de Arquitectura: #controversiasurbanas, en #Pamplona. Fundadora de Urban Design Collective, Mohankumar tiene una trayectoria de 18 años de experiencia laboral, que se centra en la creación de ciudades orientadas a las personas y centradas en el tránsito como parte de una agenda de desarrollo sostenible. Su enfoque se basa en la investigación fundamentada e interseccional como forma de entender el urbanismo cotidiano de las ciudades. Del 15 al 17 de noviembre, ¡nos vemos en BALUARTE |Palacio de Congresos y Auditorio (#Pamplona)! Organizado por Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad. --- Vidhya Mohankumar, architect and urban designer, will also join us at the 7th International Architecture Congress: #urbancontroversies, in #Pamplona. Founder of Urban Design Collective, Mohankumar has a track record of 18 years of work experience, which focuses on creating people-oriented, transit-centered cities as part of a sustainable development agenda. Her approach is based on grounded, intersectional research as a way of understanding the everyday urbanism of cities. From November 15 to 17, see you at BALUARTE |Palacio de Congresos y Auditorio (#Pamplona)! Organized by Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad. Ministerio de Transportes, Movilidad y Agenda Urbana, Gobierno de Navarra, Fundación Arquia, Consejo Superior de Colegios de Arquitectos de España, Observatorio 2030 del CSCAE, Otis Elevator Co., Knauf Ibérica, Viabizzuno progettiamo la luce, Norvento Enerxía, COSENTINO, Saltoki, Saltoki Home, Daisalux - Iluminación de Emergencia, TECTUM, Andreu World, Levantina Group, ArchDaily, Urban Journalism Institute

(English below 👇 ) Vidhya Mohankumar, arquitecta y diseñadora urbana, también nos acompañará en el VII Congreso Internacional de Arquitectura: #controversiasurbanas, en #Pamplona. Fundadora de Urban Design Collective, Mohankumar tiene una trayectoria de 18 años de experiencia laboral, que se centra en la creación de ciudades orientadas a las personas y centradas en el tránsito como parte de una agenda de desarrollo sostenible. Su enfoque se basa en la investigación fundamentada e interseccional como forma de entender el urbanismo cotidiano de las ciudades. Del 15 al 17 de noviembre, ¡nos vemos en BALUARTE |Palacio de Congresos y Auditorio (#Pamplona)! --- Vidhya Mohankumar, architect and urban designer, will also join us at the 7th International Architecture Congress: #urbancontroversies, in #Pamplona. Founder of Urban Design Collective, Mohankumar has a track record of 18 years of work experience, which focuses on creating people-oriented, transit-centered cities as part of a sustainable development agenda. Her approach is based on grounded, intersectional research as a way of understanding the everyday urbanism of cities. From November 15 to 17, see you at BALUARTE |Palacio de Congresos y Auditorio (#Pamplona)! Ministerio de Transportes, Movilidad y Agenda Urbana, Gobierno de Navarra, Fundación Arquia, Consejo Superior de Colegios de Arquitectos de España, Observatorio 2030 del CSCAE, Otis Elevator Co., Knauf Ibérica, Viabizzuno progettiamo la luce, Norvento Enerxía, Cosentino Group - Grupo Cosentino, Saltoki, Saltoki Home, Daisalux - Iluminación de Emergencia, TECTUM, Andreu World, Levantina USA Inc, ArchDaily, Urban Journalism Institute