School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi

About: School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi is a education organization based out in New Delhi, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Smart city. The organization has 278 authors who have published 347 publications receiving 1665 citations.

Optimization of Sustainable Performance: Housing Project, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

Abstract: Housing has been a basic need for living since ages. In Ethiopia, the concerns of sustainability do not seem to be incorporated as a significant determining factor in the architectural design process. The country lacks knowledge and expertise of design and construction of sustainable housing projects and is not much in practice. There are multiple and contradictory set of issues that are affecting sustainable planning and design of housing projects which makes sustainability a minor concern for the upcoming housing projects in Ethiopia. Neither much attention has been paid and nor any initiative has been taken to adopt any alternative performance optimization techniques in design and construction to make sustainable buildings. Thereby, this paper examines gaps in the existing design and construction schemes to achieve the envisaged goals of sustainable environment, thereby contributing to overall socioeconomic development. To overcome the crisis that construction industry faces nowadays, two aspects that need attention are firstly finding measures to optimize sustainability performance in design and construction of housings and secondly devising methods to achieve sustainability and optimization by assimilation of various parameters from the beginning like architecture design, construction techniques and material selection to achieve better results. The current research paper examines a housing project in context to sustainable design approach to optimize performance in housings by assimilation of selected parameters within the frame work of sustainability, underlining the concept and benefits of sustainable buildings. The research aims to devise solutions that will contribute to the user well-being and protection of our environment.

Environmental Psychology of a Pilgrim in search for Authentic Experience at Religious Destination: A Case example of City Govardhan

Abstract: Environmental Psychology deals with behaviour of a person in relation to the physical environment. Physical environment influences behaviour of person at different levels of interaction with surroundings. This article deals with the environmental psychology of pilgrimage whose purpose to visit religious destination is to strengthen the religious belief and to relate the said stories in scriptures with actual mentioned religious site. Various historic religious towns of Braj Mandal1, India are visited by large number of pilgrims on regular basis throughout the year. To house the increasing infrastructural requirements of pilgrims, urbanization is happening at very fast pace. With result it has changed the spatial structure & historic physical form as mentioned in the scriptures. The change in physical form, is also affecting the cultural context along with historic built environment of the place which further impacts the authenticity of place. This increase in urbanization brings new demand for a deeper understanding of authenticity of place.The objective of research is to explore environmental psychology of a pilgrimage and authentic historic built environment of religious cities. Govardhan city was taken as a case example for the analysis of historic built environment as it is one of the prime destinations of Braj Mandal. Pilgrims primarily visits Govardhan to perform parikrama2 of this religious city. While performing parikrama of total 21kms, pilgrims are moving from one focal point to another, in a way it is a dynamic interaction with the surroundings which can be called kinaesthetic experience. Over the period of time, lot of developmental activities had happened along the parikrama marg. The article is concluded with suggestive guidelines for the improvement of kinaesthetic experience of pilgrims while doing the parikrama of Govardhan. The main research tool to carry out the analysis is through the software called depth map.

Value Education in Planning for an Effective Professional Outreach

Abstract: If we wish to think of the world without the idea of town planning, it would be like living in a society and not knowing anything about it—like what is social cohesiveness, economic uplift, and dynamics of built environment, ecological systems and sustainable habitats. Town planners may study and guide socio-economic growth, spatial and temporal distribution of natural and built resources, interactions of humans with environment to protect, conserves the habitats at present and for the future. But to comprehend planning, which is an interdisciplinary subject and deals with social, economic and physical sciences, one needs appropriate training and education. In early stages of education, one would have exposure to history, arts and architecture, sociology and geography. As one moves to higher semesters, in contemporary planning education one opens up to totally different perspectives with a focus on socio-economic issues, physical development of built spaces, energy efficiency in micro to macro environments, and sustainability with due interface with human habitats. Planning education is multi-dimensional subject. It evolves planning consciousness and leads towards understanding the intricacies from human and natural world experiences. Value education in planning recognizes ongoing developments. It is essential to integrate planning pedagogy with students experiencing, perceiving, projecting, programming and conceptualizing the present and future needs of the society to organize developments with due consideration to ecology and environment. Pedagogical forays played a crucial role in shaping planning discourse and practice in the second half of the twentieth century. It is to emphasize that pedagogical exchange is a form of value creation rather than knowledge transmission. Value of planning education can be addressed as two different categories in planning education system: one may be professional knowledge transmission (utilization) and another personality development. Application of knowledge in the industry is directly dependent on the knowledge gained through professional educational pedagogy. Value education in planning is essential and crucial to develop a synergy for organizing and managing development trends. Planning pedagogy relating to problem-based learning may yield a proper balance between profession and academia.

Mapping Aspects for Assessing Aptitude for Architecture Education with Psychological Testing

Abstract: Architecture is considered an important domain in the making of the built environment and architecture education is as an important branch of professional education. There are more aspirants for the course than the number of seats available. Hence, the screening process through the entrance examinations is an important admission activity. The current research focuses on the expert survey opinion to map the aspects and category of aspects as derived from the study of several psychological tests developed by past researchers to test the necessary intelligence, creativity and aptitude. The process of the survey was conducted with Amabile’s Consensual Assessment Technique satisfying all conditions necessary for the assessment. The results imply that there is a further scope of inclusion of aspects as derived with the already established knowledge of various psychological tests. Hence there is a further research required in the performance assessment of the above entrance examinations.