It is pretty evident that Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has a fascination towards Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and China. He cares a damn for our indigenous companies, however talented they are.
Taking advantage of his penchant for foreign architects, one company after the other is coming to him with so-called designs of government buildings in the proposed Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh.
Sometime back, Japanese company Maki and Associates came with a few designs of the proposed Assembly and High Court buildings, besides official complexes and Naidu instantly approved them. He, however, backtracked following criticism from all quarters that the so-called Japanese designs have no local flavour and they looked like atomic reactors.
Now, on Monday, a Malaysian company RDS Harris came out with some more designs of official buildings, particularly Assembly. Naidu liked these designs also, but did not give it instant approval fearing criticism again.
He said he would examine them and get back to the company. The CM’s Office released those designs to media, stating that they were excellent. Here, the Assembly building looks like Opera House of Australia.
On seeing them, a local architect commented that the designs were nothing but photo-shop images of existing buildings and these so-called foreign firms are only fooling Naidu.
“They are just trying to cash in on Naidu’s fascination for foreign designs with their photo-shop images,” he observed.
