PANJIM: Goan-born, Los Angeles-based, urban designer and city planner, Vinayak Bharne, was bestowed the 2023 Allied Professional Appreciation Award by the Indian Society of Landscape Architects (ISOLA). This is the highest national honor ISOLA bestows on a non-member and non-landscape architect “in recognition of significant work done towards the profession of landscape architecture in India.”
The awardee for this honour is identified through a process of nomination followed by jury selection.
In the annual ISOLA Awards ceremony held in Ahmedabad on September 16, 2023, Bharne was recognized for the “consistency, quality, and relevance” of his work, and for his “multifarious contributions” to the field of landscape architecture in India.
“He has helped expand and deepen its intellectual content through his books and writings. He has helped diffuse its boundaries with the fields of urban design, city planning and heritage conservation through his design proposals and by bringing professionals from allied fields to common platforms. He has simultaneously served as an intellectual ambassador spreading knowledge about Indian landscapes – cultural, ecological, social, urban – to other parts of the world,” the nomination statement noted.
Bharne is an internationally respected figure in the field of urbanism, whose 25-year career includes several award-winning projects ranging from new towns and campus plans, to street transformations and urban regulations in the United States, Panama, and Kenya. His notable efforts in India include the planning of the country’s first implemented Public Bicycle Share Plan in Mysuru, and numerous studies for heritage towns such as Udupi, Badami, and Varanasi. He is the editor/author of 9 books. He is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California, and Director of the India-Netherlands-based knowledge-platform, My Liveable City.
“As an urbanist, I am an environmentalist of sorts. If one side of tackling the climate crisis involves conserving our forests and rivers, then the other side involves transforming the dogmas of toxic urbanization. This is the mindset with which I have approached my work. To have this body of work recognized by India’s landscape architecture fraternity is a mighty encouragement to me. I do not take this recognition lightly,” Bharne said.
This is Bharne’s second professional award in 2023. Earlier this year, he was bestowed the Academic Leadership & Impact Award for Urbanism by the USC Pacific Asia Museum in Los Angeles, USA, recognizing his efforts towards inclusion and social justice.
Born in Mapusa, and raised in Panaji, Bharne studied at Sharada Mandir and the Goa College of Architecture, before leaving for graduate studies at the University of Southern California as the John Parkinson Memorial Scholar in 1996.
