Art, Architecture and Design Professionals On TFOD

3D printed construction became a tangible and realised option in the year gone by, i.e. 2018, with the first ever 3D printed home being occupied in August 2018 in Nantes, France. This family of 5 moving from their crowded apartment to a detached home of 1700 sq feet of their own marked, not just their personal milestone, but a historical one for the construction technology world! From then (and even before) to the year-end, many experiments have been conducted and alternatives explored in 3D printed construction, leaving the world with several options in wall building.

While maximising efforts to recycle waste, or garbage, as a global effort is a fairly recent phenomenon arising from the environmental crisis, putting waste to use as decorative material has well been practiced since ages. Grannies have taught us to make dolls, wall pieces and other items of home décor using scraps of household waste. Many wonderful ventures have been taken up globally in recent times to create relevant public spaces using waste as decorating or building material, as showcased in the previous article on the Spanish venture, Basurama. Many Indian public spaces and gardens too have been adorned by art made from waste, beginning with the brilliant yet furtive effort by sculptor Nek Chand at his sprawling Rock Garden in Chandigarh which, when discovered, led to him being conferred the Padma Shri! Today, we see another epic effort made in the same vein at Bhubaneshwar where a magnificent outdoor museum of awe-inspiring art created by a galaxy of international artists has been opened to the public this month.

Well, you can’t stop the earth from spinning, they say. And, it looks like you can’t stop Sanjay Puri Architects from winning, either! As another session of a celebration of global excellence in design, the World Architecture Festival 2018, wrapped up at Amsterdam this November end, we saw yet another feather added to this Indian firm’s cap. And, how! This habitual winner’s entry is yet another design masterstroke; simple, evocative, yet scoring powerfully at several parameters to present a solution which we can never tire of discussing and adulating. This already much talked about project, ‘The Street’, an 800 room students’ hostel complex for a university campus located in Mathura, designed by Ar. Sanjay Puri and his team won the World Architecture Festival Award 2018 in the category of ‘Large Scale Housing – Completed Buildings’.

TFOD awoke this Republic Day 2019 to some extra doses of celebratory sunshine. Two of the fraternities we exist for have received the highest form of national civilian recognition, the Padma Award. As architect/ urban designer/ urban planner Dr.Bimal Patel and painter/ printmaker/ photographic documenter, artist Prof. Jyoti Bhatt are conferred with the Padma Shri this year, TFOD joins the nation in celebrating the significant contributions made by their works. We present here but a cursory glimpse at two careers that have covered unusual depths and explored horizons beyond the ordinary boundaries of their respective fields.

The World Architecture Festival, which concluded this year on 30^th November at Amsterdam, is always an opportunity to witness and enjoy the essential best of the architectural practice from around the world. This year, too, saw some extraordinary picks among the shortlisted projects as well as the winners. Innovation, being the most elemental promise of new designs, marked out some of the winners with exciting brilliance matched by plain simplicity. Here, we dip in to savour these virtues in two of these remarkable entries at WAF 2018, Amsterdam.