By Nine projects by six Indian stalwarts shine on the World Architecture Festival2021 shortlist. Will India make it to the top 3 awards?
Considering the way the world is dwarfing and how cross-cultural influences are the norm, architecture, and design worldwide reaches its zenith at the World Architecture Festival, where myriad entries, new forays in building design, novel approaches, and umpteen inspirational nuances.
The annual global awards event that did not take place in 2020 due to the pandemic has now concluded and presented its final shortlist and we have 9 entries from India. Projects have been considered from 2020 to May 2021 and the 33 award categories have been peer-judged by a panel of 148 judges representing 68 countries.
The shortlisted entrants will go on to make their final presentations between 1st and 3rd December 2021 at Lisbon, where the finalists will be declared.
So here are the Indian entries:
Category: House & Villa (Rural/Nature) – Completed Buildings
Architectural Firm: Studio Lotus
Project Title: Villa in the woods
Location: Uttarakhand, India
Photographer: Andre J. Fanthome
Project Highlights: The design scheme factors in detailed studies of the terrain, soil analyses, surface drainage, and green cover as the villa is immersed within the locale and built with minimum cut-and-fill. The design approach adheres to an eco-conscious sensibility, employing pre-engineered technology with infills of Light Gauge Framing Systems (LGSF) clad with locally sourced materials. Mandating off-site construction, the architects leveraged a custom-designed modular system that uses lightweight mild steel sections and a six-layered drywall section, allowing the three-storey structures to be assembled at site from a kit of numbered pre-engineered parts Concrete piles and tie beams anchor the superstructure, whereas the dry construction methodology allows for a smooth and clinical construction process with nearly zero-waste generation.
Category: Health – Future Projects
Architectural Firm: Mandviwala Qutub & Associates
Project Title: School of Medicine
Location: Kolhapur
Project Highlights: The Design of the school is organised over nine levels, with gardens and circulation woven into an informal fabric of internal and external spaces. The building promotes an inter-departmental multi-disciplinary approach to staff-student interaction and organisation to establish a service facility with high quality and permeable learning environment. By adding voids to the mass, the building is endowed with plenty of semi-open spaces that are green and regulate the microclimate. Exposed concrete provides a long-lasting maintenance-free exterior surface. Laterite, a locally available stone makes construction quite sustainable.
Category: Housing – Completed Buildings
Architectural Firm: Shibanee & Kamal Architects
Project Title: Van Gogh’s Garden
Location: Bengaluru, India
Photographer: Andre Fanthome, Prachi Desai
Project Highlights: “Van Gogh’s Garden” is a name inspired by the instrumental composition by Colorado folk-jazz trio “Wind Machine”, is a small apartment building with duplex apartments with wood decks and water bodies and optional plunge pools and with glass decks, and double-height gardens. The horizontality of the form and the use of earthy materials such as brick, exposed concrete, corten steel, and wood – materials that age gracefully and blend with the natural landscape, helped integrate the building effortlessly into its surroundings.
Category: Office – Completed Buildings
Architectural Firm: Sanjay Puri Architects
Project Title: Akshay 27
Location: Chennai
Photographer: BRS Sreenag, Sreenag Pictures
Project Highlights: With multiple challenges to overcome, the building sits on a small footprint with cantilevers that step back and forth creating linear north-facing terraces on every floor. The service cores form the southern side of the building becoming a buffer to reduce heat gain in response to the hot climate prevalent in Chennai. Akshaya 27 is designed in response to the climate and the client’s brief to create energy-efficient offices that open into outdoor spaces.
Category: Civic & Community – Completed Buildings
Architectural Firm: Morphogenesis
Project Title: The Lodsi Community Project
Location: Rishikesh, India
Photographer: Noughts and Crosses LLP
Project Highlights: This project finished in the pandemic and has created a model of decentralised Industrialisation and an off-grid sustainable project, that is net-zero on energy, water, and waste. This manufacturing facility provides employment to the local community. They walk to work and were spared dislocation and “catastrophic reverse migration”. The use of vernacular materials, techniques, and village labour forms the ethos of the facility, making it “A project for the locals, built by the locals and for the employment of the locals.”
Category: Hotel and Leisure – Completed Buildings
Architectural Firm: Studio Lotus
Project Title: RAAS Chhatrasagar
Location: Rajasthan, India
Photographer: Andre J. Fanthome and Avesh Gaur
Project Highlights: The design brief called for replacing the temporary camp – the lush green belt along the 150-year-old artificial lake Chhatrasagar with a perennial property resilient to the region’s extreme temperatures. The sensitive ecological context made it imperative that the hospitality units be erected with minimal impact. The architects thus designed a system of low-impact foundations and lightweight superstructures employing a dry construction methodology and using lime as a binder for the minimal wet work. The site is revealed in layers, uniting the experience of discovery with an element of surprise, by working in harmony with the context and tying numerous touchpoints to establish meaningful connections.
Category: Office – Future Projects
Architectural Firm: Shibanee & Kamal Architects
Project Title: Total Environment Business Park
Location: Bengaluru, India
Project Highlights: The building is designed with the aim to inspire through an immersive connection with nature. This is achieved by making a heavily landscaped green roof accessible from all the floors, by sloping it down from the top floor to the ground floor, creating a green valley. To make the scale more intimate, the building mass is cut into 4 long strips running from East to West, connected via bridges and gardens, so that all the glazing would face North and South, bringing in lots of light without direct glare and heat. Further, the two central buildings are rotated in plan by a few degrees to make the spaces between them more interesting, by filling them with trees and water bodies, thus creating open offices with lots of natural light.
Category: House & Villa (Rural/Nature) – Completed Buildings
Architectural Firm: Research & Enquiry into design (RED Architects)
Project Title: A home in the clouds
Location: Khopoli, Maharashtra, India
Photographer: Fabien Charuau
Project Highlights: The site is located on the outskirts of bustling Mumbai, in the quiet of the Sahyadri hills. The sweeping views of the Western Ghats in almost any direction are the highlight of this otherwise simple parcel of land. The capturing and framing of these picturesque landscapes was the primary inspiration behind the design. The disruptive architecture manages to create spaces of varying scales from monumental to cozy while it integrates into the home, the nature that surrounds it. The structure is a simple intersection between concrete and metal. The resulting interstitial spaces translate into courtyards of various scales that may be habitable or simply form vantage points. The rubric of the various levels of the house is derived from the natural terracing of the land. The suspended metal block and the cantilevered southern tip allow for the natural terrain to flow under it uninterrupted. The circulation works in a way that as you move through the house, you feel as though the house moves with you.
Category: Hotel and Leisure – Completed Buildings
Architectural Firm: Sanjay Puri Architects
Project Title: Aria Hotel
Location: Nashik, India
Photographer: Dinesh Mehta
Project Highlights: The site for this hotel is gently contoured rising up 9M towards the south with the entry at the lowest level in the north. The southern side rises up into hills near the site. With the banquet facility planned closest to the frontal with road access and the rooms at the higher level with open circulation spaces and naturally ventilated and skylit courtyards, each level of the hotel is integrated with the natural contours of the site, minimizing land cutting and landfill. No soil was taken out of the site or brought into the site while constructing, making the construction both economical and sustainable. Aria Hotel is designed contextually, responding to the site contours, the views of the surroundings, the climate & the materials creating a web of experiences within its different volumes.
Speaking to Britta Knobel Gupta of Studio Symbiosis, who was one of the jury members, we learn that the design impact of the various entries from India was indeed tremendous. India has been a commendable contender at WAF over the years. In fact, India could be represented by many more entries; its main inhibiting factor being perhaps the entry fees to the WAF. Authorities at WAF, please do take note!
Info & images Courtesy of Caro Communications
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