The National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE) at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) is conducting the 15th National Workshop on Earthquake Resistant Design Practices for undergraduate students of Architecture from July 22-29, 2023. The Workshop, being organized since 2008, will have 53 students, who have completed six semesters of studies in their respective architecture programs from 13 institutes from all over India, participating this year.

The general objective of the workshop is to sensitize the students on earthquake safety issues and on capacity building and the basics of earthquake resistant design at a conceptual level. Lectures and hands-on studio sessions with a design assignment under the workshop will help students in internalizing earthquake resistant practices as an integral part of their design decision making. The selected participants were each sent a NICEE publication titled “Earthquake-Resistant Confined Masonry Construction” authored by Svetlana Brzev and Keya Mitra. The participants were advised to go through the book prior to the commencement of the workshop.

Esteemed faculty members, Prof. Keya Mitra, IIEST, Shibpur, Howrah; Prof. Vasudha Gokhale, Prof. Sujata Mehta & Prof. Meera Shirolkar of Dr. B.N. College of Architecture for Women, Pune; Prof. Atanu Dutta, Jorhat Engineering College, Jorhat; Prof Ruchira Das, Women's Polytechnic Chandernagore, West Bengal;  Prof. Bhavana Vimawala & Prof. Nehal Desai, Sarvajanik University, Surat; are the resource persons of the workshop.

Additionally, Ar. Vikram Hundekar, Practicing Architect from Pune will elaborate the use of Confined Masonry in IIT Gandhinagar Hostel Design. He will be spending a full day with the workshop participants in addition to giving a lecture on the subject. Dr. Shailesh Agarwal, Executive Director, BMTPC, New Delhi will be giving an insight on “Vulnerability Atlas of India” to the workshop participants. Dr. Hari Kumar, Geo Hazards, New Delhi will be delivering a lecture covering the topics about causes of earthquakes, basic terminology, earthquake ground motion, et al.

The inaugural function was chaired by Prof. Priyanka Ghosh, Head, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Kanpur. He welcomed the participants to the campus of IIT Kanpur and expressed his happiness on NICEE taking up such flagship activities. He stated that this was the right time to ignite the minds of participants on the issues related to Earthquake Engineering and expressed his confidence on the participants becoming better architects.

Prof. Durgesh Rai warmly welcomed workshop participants, providing an overview of NICEE's activities. He said that the workshop, initiated in 2008, stems from the Advisory Committee meeting's decision to engage architects and stakeholders in Earthquake Engineering, and that NICEE remains committed to collaborating with all involved parties to promote earthquake resilience and engineering advancements.

Prof. Keya Mitra gave an overview of the workshop to the participants. During the nine-day workshop, the students will be given an architectural design assignment where they will be required to design a complex containing a mix of various different types of apartments and offices in addition to amenities and utilities. Students will be exposed to RESIST software to test the adequacy of their designs from seismic performance perspective and this session will help them arrive at reasonable sizes of structural members.

Prof. Vasudha Gokhale welcomed the participants and advised them to be prepared for a tough and enjoyable workshop during the next nine days.

The design problem stated for this year’s edition is to ‘Design a Co-working Office Complex on a site in Guwahati, Assam’. Guwahati is the biggest city of Assam and is also the largest metropolis in North-Eastern India. The site is a proposed site for Trade Centre by National Building Construction Corporation -NBCC.

The studio sessions will be a mix of desk work and informal lectures where individual cases will be used to illustrate earthquake engineering concepts to the entire class.

The design prepared by the participants will be evaluated on July 29, 2023 by a team of jury comprising Ar. Balbir Varma, Practicing Architect, New Delhi; Ar. Vikram Hundekar, Practicing Architect, Pune; Ar. Meenu Varshney, Jaipur; Prof. Mayank Varshney, Jaipur; and Prof. Vaibhav Singhal, IIT Patna.

This workshop is supported by CSIESPL New Delhi and all donors and supporters of National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE). Cdr Suresh Ailawadi, Retd., extended a vote of thanks at the end of the inaugural session.