Tuesday, August 3, 2010

OBITUARY



Ar. Varun Bajaj
(1990-2080)

After a fulfilling, healthy life of 90 long years, Architect Varun Bajaj died in his sleep earlier today, at his residence in Perfectopolis, the city which he designed. Best known for his contribution to urban design and his near-utopian city projects, Bajaj also has a number of residential and educational buildings to his credit.

Born an brought up in a business family in Delhi/Ghaziabad, Bajaj did his schooling from Modern School, Barakhamba Road and went on to study architecture at the prestigious School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. He graduated in 2013 and went on to obtain a masters degree in Urban Design from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. 

His early work consisted of a number of small and large residential projects, many of which were in Europe. He got his due with the design of the Delhi University campus in 2025, after which he continued with many educational/institutional projects, all of which showed respect to their context and surrounding environment, while being very unique in their own way.

In 2040, after many years of research and study, Bajaj came up with his most ingenious idea - "Perfectopolis", the perfect city. This "idea" was translated into reality in the next 12 years, creating the first successful prototype for a near-utopian settlement. It served as a base model for many towns and villages in developing countries, specially in India.

Bajaj retired from mainstream architectural work in 2055, while doing a couple of interesting projects here and there, once in a while. Apart from architecture, Bajaj was a keen traveler, and maintained a popular blog, writing about his adventures and experiences on a regular basis. In fact, it was updated just 2 days before he passed away. Varun Bajaj is survived by his wife and 2 children.
He may not have been a celebrity, in the right sense of the word, but he shall be missed by the architecture fraternity around the world.


[An assignment for 'Theory of Design']

5 comments:

  1. I like the journey you talk about but it still sounds like it's coming from you. I feel the whole point of an obituary is to illustrate a character to someone who didn't know him/her too well. Try to use adjectives that are more impersonal and edit out your project descriptions in lesser words, like "educational/institutional projects, gathering acclaim for his contextual resolution and environmental undertaking" instead of cramming so much to explain the nature of your design.
    But I love the spin on Perfectopolis!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think you are right. The language does need to be more formal. I shall edit it before the final submission. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cool, but I agree with Uzair. Comes across as a little too self serving.

    TYPO: Born an /and/ brought up

    ReplyDelete
  4. true. make it more impersonal. should sound more like a cv, something solid people can recognize varun bajaj, the man, by. edit out all the personal bits and cut the professional descriptions short. agree with bhavika, sounds self serving.

    rest is fine.

    P.S. ur very bloody ambitious. :D

    ReplyDelete