Asian Contest of Architectural Rookie’s Award 2021

The City Link, Kochi – Anushri Joshi
Kochi, a city with rich cultural heritage is among the first twenty cities to be included among the Smart Cities Mission and is gearing up to imagine its future. The program was to design a space for the newer functions of e-governance and outreach centres. The design-at all the scales from site planning, formal expression, spatial hierarchy to materiality and quality of spaces- evolved from the understandings drawn from the idea of democracy, the vernacular typology and the unique Chinese fishing nets acting as a metaphor. The structure is evocative of these ideas and acts as a link that connects spaces of the domestic to the democratic institutional through reinterpretation, that connects individuals to the city’s functioning system and as a link that connects the traditional to the future.


Awareness Centre for social and environmental consciousness and creativity, Mawphlang – Ambika Lambah

Mawphlang, situated in the East Khasi Hills, has to withstand both floods as well as seismic disturbances, with perhaps an even greater and growing risk, as the local community is beginning to replace their traditional building systems with ones that aren’t conducive to its geography.  
Envisaged as an ‘Awareness Centre for Social and Environmental Consciousness and Creativity’, the intent of the program is to create a platform for exchange of energies between the community and curious individuals from all over the world.
The intervention is an attempt to meet the context’s needs with modern innovation combined with the use of local materials such as mud, bamboo, local grasses and wood to recalibrate and revive the vernacular architecture that the community takes pride in.