Day Six - Zoo, Jadavpur, and CBE

We had the morning free but were told that we had to be at the Fine Arts Academy by 4:30pm for the Centre for the Built Environment (CBE) group presentation. I believe there were at least three groups -- one went off to Jadavpur University to see their program, one went off for shopping, and the third went off to the Zoo. Guess where I went? :)

The top image is the Nilgai, and just above is the Sarus Crane. Both native to south/south-east Asia. We couldn't go to the Sundarbans so we got to see the Bengal Tiger in it's "emulated" habitat...

And the star attraction is.... hippos! Please note that I'm only an advocate of hippos being in zoos for the sake of the gene pool, research and education (for those who cannot go to Africa and the hippos in their native habitat).
Mama hippo and baby hippo! The baby hippo is on the right, in what looks like a protrusion from the water edge.And of course, we're in India -- so no trip to the zoo would be complete without seeing the Indian elephant! Here's a photo shoot of Mike's shenanigans... :)

Jadavpur University, Architecture Department

The other group went to Jadavpur University's Architecture Department to see what they do there. I was told by Josh and Matt that walking into that place was like walking into an abandoned building -- all the desks were empty and had a thick film of dust on them. There were only two architecture students around and even they had very little to show. The image below I assume to be from one of their architecture studios:

International Seminar: Water and City

The seminar on Water and City was meant to be a significantly larger program. I believe there were plans to co host a conference on water at RISD and Brown but things fell through except for having a landscape/architecture studio/seminar course and this seminar in which the Centre for the Built Environment (CBE) presented some of its scholars and their research.

The presenters for CBE were:

• Dr. Barendra Purkait, Director, Publication Division, Geological Survey of India, Kolkata. He discussed "Deltaic Alluvial Plain of West Bengal - Some Environmental Issues"
  
• Dr. S.P. Sinha Ray, CBE Water Studies, with "Ground Water of Kolkata Metropolitan Area"
• Parthan R. Das -- which I didn't notate the title quickly enough, but he had a graphically rich presentation on built river edges. I personally thought that some of his ideas were very questionable from a landscape architect perspective, especially in terms of the reactions of a built edge to flooding, but I was definately impressed with the quality of his work. It was a pity that he did not have more time to discuss his slides, since he showed at least a 100 slides!
• Architect Sobhanlal Bonnerjee, CBE, with "Canals and Waterways in and around Kolkata Metropolitan District"
• Dr. Shivashish Bose, Dept. of Architecture, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, with "Urban Flooding, Case Study: Kolkata"

Then we Jonathon and Nick present, followed by a representative selection from our class to show the atlas we had been working on since the start of the semester. I should add that Lili (Elizabeth Dean Hermann) gave the first talk as way of introduction. We ended the seminar with an explanation of Design for Development.