[Seminar] Livable Habitat and Sustainable Urban Agenda

Ar. Vignesh Kaushik was invited to make a presentation at the International Symposium 'Livable Habitat and Sustainable Urban Agenda' organized by the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in association with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA), Government of India on 27th and 28th of January 2016 at Kolkata.

This symposium brought together national and international experts from various interrelated fields of housing and habitat planning, from government, academia and industry. It provided a forum to discuss the New Urban Agenda as envisaged by the forthcoming Habitat III, highlighting especially the role of the Development Enablers and Operational Enablers. There were planners, economists and infrastructure planners from India speaking on Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Housing and Habitat. National level experts on Building Materials and Technology also shared their experience on environmental-friendly, energy-efficient, earthquake resistant and cost-effective technologies with a focus on locally available materials suitable for public housing.

Ar. Vignesh made a presentation on 'Computational Approach to Housing through Design for Manufacturing & Assembly (DfMA)'. The talk focused on how we can bring about affordable innovation in the housing industry by adopting technological advances in the construction sector. He stressed for the adoption of modular constitution techniques such as Pre-fabricated Pre-finished Volumetric Design (PPVC) for a speedier, superior quality and a much more sustainable output. He also discussed using performance-driven parametric techniques to drive the design based on local site & climatic context.