PLEA 2014 Secretariat will offer two local tours on Friday, December 19, 2014 and Saturday, December 20, 2014. These tours have been designed and conceptualized by Ahmedabad based architect Yatin Pandya especially for PLEA2014 delegates, to explain the nuances of local architecture, culture and society.

Tour One

Theme: Sustainability as a way of life: Learning from the traditional wisdom (Ahmedabad city)

About the tour: Vitality, plurality and sustainability are the characteristic aspects of Indian cities. The walled city of Ahmedabad is imbued with the traditional wisdom accrued over six centuries. It exhibits lived-in traditional quarters that are timeless in their aesthetics, socio-culturally interactive and environmentally sustainable. A walk through the labyrinth of the medieval city unfolds the drama of the day to day life lived traditionally within the contemporary context. The walk meanders through narrow market streets, urban civic nodes, neighborhood clusters, wood-crafted vernacular house forms with courtyards, temples and mosques and overlays of time from Islamic, colonial, modern and contemporary patinas and experiences as well as unveil the traditional wisdom on sustainability through the palimpsest of Ahmedabad.

Places to be visited: Traditional city core, market places, vernacular house forms, neighborhoods, urban civic nodes, mosques, Hutheesingh Jain temple, the bird-feeder etc.

Tour Two

About the tour: Ahmedabad has been the crucible of architectural exploration all through its history. Its avant garde and visionary patrons have invited the likes of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn to realize their creations on this fertile soil. Generations after have continued the legacy of explorations, experimentation and idealization in architecture. This visit aims to capture some of the diverse and path breaking approaches to sustainable architecture as adopted by the international and Indian masters, as well as the contemporary genre of architects. The visit is to understand and witness different interpretations of sustainability as applied in built architecture from recent times, starting with the green facades, cavity walls and roof gardens of Le Corbusier, thick insulated brick masses of Louis Kahn, austere ways of Gandhi’s ashram, recycled waste as building components in a slum center, passively designed campus of a sanitation institute to down draft evaporative cooling at a research laboratory.

• INR 2750 per person per tour.
• It is mandatory to register for the tour prior to the start of the conference. You are requested to pay the fees on or before Dec 15, 2014 to PLEA 2014 Secretariat.
• The fees can be paid in cash at conference venue or through a wire transfer.
• For any queries or to register yourself, please send an email to ashajoshi@cept.ac.in specifying the tour(s) you wish to register for and the number of seats.

Tour includes: Local transportation, lunch and refreshments along the way, maps and handouts. PLEA2014 Secretariat does not cover any kind of insurance.