EXHIBITION
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Inviting architects, urbanists, researchers and artists to submit the entries for the upcoming exhibition
This website is a home to numerous ideas that couldn’t be realised due to several reasons.
unbuilt 2.0: architecture of future collectives delves deeper into the meaning of unbuilt, and expands beyond the buildable unbuilt. It features about 50 ideas, realistic and speculative, along with thought provoking and intriguing essays on the theme by diverse design professionals across India.
Indian architects report that a significant amount of their work remains unbuilt - whether as concepts that didn’t make the cut at competitions, as proposals which got tied up in red tape, or as projects that were abandoned by stakeholders. While we measure the worth of a building by the visual, tactile and spatial experience it offers, the fact remains that unrealized ideas are just as crucial as built structures - for design, development and discourse. This volume seeks to celebrate these ideas.
In the last twenty years of practice, our firm ABRD Architects has kept busy primarily by competitions – often by
What could have been, What can be – Amritha Ballal, SpaceMatters
What could have been, What can be – Amritha Ballal, SpaceMatters
Buildability of the design is the fulcrum on which its valuation as unbuilt design often turns. Every buildable unbuilt design sustains the contradiction between ‘pure design’ and the messiness of reality that produces it, which it must navigate and alter, and which may defeat it occasionally.
If we view unbuilt architecture as a photograph of the inner turn of the architect, what is revealed in this photograph will demonstrate whether architecture is captured by an ideology of arrogance or an ideology of humility.
The memory is almost visceral in its intensity; the overwhelming, consuming satisfaction of finishing one’s first design assignment – be it a humble cabin or a small amphitheatre nestled against a hypothetical hill – and the realization which hits us as we cap our Rotring pens, that somewhere, someday, this could exist.
The unbuilt works of architect Charles Correa
Not many works of architecture hold as much weight and significance as a memorial. These powerful monuments stand as symbolic spaces, evoking solemnity, solidarity, and reverence. Their spaces represent the gravity of war, evoke memory and commemorate sacrifice. – Kumar Architects
This contemporary house by SDM Architects on the hill is a real retreat for an urban family from Mumbai. The plot abuts the beautiful Pavna Lake which is close to Lonavala and Pune city making it one of the closest weekend destinations to Mumbai. The site slopes almost about 30 meters from the top end of the plot to the other end which makes one reach the edge of the lake.
The relationship that humans have with death is complex and ever-changing, this is inevitably reflected in the architecture of spaces related to death. To interrogate the contemporary role of these spaces, architect Sanchit Arora of Indian firm Renesa Architecture Design Interiors used his conceptual research project work, “The Shadow Spaces; Invisible Sacred Landscapes of Indian Cities” to analyze the place of crematoriums within Indian society.
This project was proposed for a competition for an iconic structure along the banks of the Sabarmati Riverfront in Ahmedabad. Given the context of a limited budget and the municipality’s small appetite for maintenance, we took the opportunity to reflect on the nature of a monument – who it serves, what it reflects, and what kind of resource it consumes.
Contemporary Retake on Temple Architecture, by Architecture Discipline – An amalgam of a traditional religious space and the spirit of innovation and experimentation
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