Faculty: Amar Sawhney & Jessica Barnes
Description: Peace Centers
Example of Professor Sawhney’s Peace Center student projects joining the Miccosukee community in Florida with designs focused on studies of Jaipur, Chandigarh, Harappa and Brasilia.
Peace Centers playlist on YouTube
About this project
This project was assigned to my design 4 students at School of Architecture at Miami Dade College nation’s largest community college.
Professor’s back ground: Professor Amar Sawhney is graduate of Cornell university and has taught at Miami Dade college for more than 46 years. In addition, he taught at Cornell university and Boston Architecture College. Most of Professor Sawhney’s work has been focused on conditions of the cities globally. He has taught architecture design and sustainable courses in Western Europe & Eastern Europe. He is also involved in teaching courses in India on urban development and sustainability.
Project description:
The main idea behind this project was that students should be aware of their surroundings in terms of environment, culture, religions and conditions of cities. Built environment influences our cities in terms of environment, employment, justice and quality of life. Students were asked to research cities, which were designed from scratch. It turned out that Brasilia and Chandigarh were the main cities. Significant of Chandigarh was well recognized by student’s research, because of Le-Corbusier modern concept he purposed in 1957. He was inspired by Harappa an ancient town in the Indian continent. So, we selected our site where Corbusier designed capitol complex in Chandigarh, India.
Peace Center is a project where all religions can coexist and show case their principals and concepts. Students were asked to research the tenants of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. Students were asked to design spiritual gardens and public spaces so people from different faiths can interact and coexist.
Students work was reviewed by a panel of jurist and they selected the best projects among the 25 projects were submitted.