'Rapid urbanization' is the name of the disease that has caught on the cities like fire all around. Everyone wants to build. One can see a huge splurge of buildings springing all around in all possible directions of the city. Townships, residential schemes, commercial establishments mark their timely presence on the arena of media communications. The developers leave no space unturned to advertise these projects. But most interesting part of all these is the names these developers give to these buildings. ‘Arcon City’, ‘ XYZ empire’ , Abc kingdom’. I often wonder, do these so called developers ever give a second thought while naming their projects.
What drives this beahviour is to stand out from the crowd perhaps. But I feel just by naming buildings / schemes differently cannot guarantee popularity of the project. What drives them towards success is the quality of space they deliver ultimately. For me, naming a building is like creating an image in front of the end user, it is a start pointing to create that first impression for the probable customers. But for a thought, let’s track down the way the buildings are named.
I have come across a rather ironical names for the buildings. I find some of them rather funny than ironical. For example- 'Pleasure Paradise', what the hell can be a paradise to reside in an area surrounded by filth, dirt and lacking basic amenities, I wonder how it can be pleasure to someone. Also a trend of sorts is to name the building suffixing towers / enclave/ heights/city/ empire and more. A three or four storied building is named a ‘tower’ , we find several buildings named ‘center’ placed one next to one other. I came across this name called ‘Pratapgad’ (it is a well known fort in Maharasthra) for a bungalow which was hardly two storied. Using a 'villa' for a bungalow , or an 'apartment' for a flat is also a trend of sorts now.
There has been interesting angle of religiosity while naming the buildings. Hindus name the places of their residences based on mythological characters or by the name of the gods like ‘shiv sadan’ (residence of lord shiva), Gopal Bhavan (Lord Krishna) and so on. Muslims on the other hand name the buildings based on either a urdu word like ‘Mannat’ or some ancestrally names. Christians name it by the derivatives of the names of Jesus.The use of one's surname too is popular too while naming their residences. Many bungalows are named 'Pawar villas' , ' Deshpande enclave', ' __Den' etc. This might be to give a sense of ownership to the listener.
In contemporary times, it has also become a fad to keep names without meanings. Everyone wants a ‘unique’ name for their buildings – thus giving rise to names like Arcon city etc. A trend these days is to google about some stylish and glamorous names, impress the clients with it rather than providing good infrastructural facilities.
Gold coast, green zone, breeze park, elysian, Beverly hills, windmill village, voyage, queenstown, costa rica, lake district, sai saheb, sonigara aangan, ashok aagam, are some of the names that are served on the platter of the newspaper / media communications. When one really sees the kind of architecture and context they try to building by naming the buildings in such an absurd manner, it surely is a debacle.
As interesting it is to document this inclination to name the buildings, all of these names makes me wonder whether they are ‘naming buildings or building names’
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