Reviews

This week we started off with brief presentations by Ian and Lance. Ian presented the book life between buildings which is about how the space between buildings hold life, about the public , semi private, private realms and their gradual transition from public to private. its about our level of interaction with people in these spaces and how distances between people, affect their perception of individuals. This gave me a clue that when we design how can we facilitate interaction and how to provide a healthy social environment - one which provides good opportunities for interaction.

Lance, shared with us the importance of policy and how it promotes welfare in communities. He showed us a pyramid diagram with people at the base, the policy in the middle and design at peak. To me it means a policy affects people's life more closely than design and the design is shaped by a broad policy. The policy can be focused on children,education, public health, and other welfare issues. But i am not sure if the planners are in first place aware of such issues while planning because these might be developed at later stages when the community is already in function  and the role played by them gets limited there. They at the best can start with an altruistic design concept. However,as we studied in earlier classes the planners can be advocates for the community's good and help in shaping a healthy community life. 

After this we discussed who are the implementors of the design. They can be the various profit - oriented developers and non- profit oriented groups like education, research, medical services & cultural organisations. The government is another major implementor and  it many a times combines with private sector to develop projects. They provide the money for the development. So, if there is a situation where a community needs a health center in its neighborhood, we can approach a non - profit medical organisation to establish its center there.In this way, we can effectively realize the design.

With this today we covered all stages of a design process. This ends the semester and we look forward to the surprises Don promised for the last class!