Architecture ideas competition WIN!

Shivani, Shreshth, Ekta and myself recently won the MCHI Architecture Design Ideas Competition, here's a photo of us getting our award from the Maharashtra Chief Minister - Ashok Chavan - during the award ceremony at the ‘Homes For All’ Convention held at the Y B Chavan auditorium in Mumbai yesterday.And below is the Jury Report for the competition:

Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industries (MCHI) organized Architectural Design Competition 2010 to create awareness on the issue of Affordable Housing for All. It invited architects from the state of Maharashtra to participate in the competition. The following were the jury members:

• Ar. Uttam C. Jam (Chairman)
• Ar. Sen Kapadia
• Prof. Shireesh Deshpande
• Ar. Pushkar Kanvinde
• Prof. Akhtar Chauhan

The jury was held on 24th and 25th April 2010 at the MCHI head office at Maker Chamber II, V. Thakersey Marg, New Marine lines, Mumbai 400 020.

After considering all 33 entries received the jury unanimously recommends the following awards and honorable mentions:

First Prize: Entry No 493794 Shreshth Nagpal, Shivani Shah, Ekta Idnany and Sahil Latheef The design reflects a fresh and innovative approach. The design draws inspiration from existing Indian urban context and its various social elements. Response to climate is interesting incorporating study of orientation, solar exposure and airflows. Architectural possibilities are immense, following the ten step process to generate urban form. Technically interesting, many options and compositions are possible and suitable for adoption in different contexts. The design is amenable to mass housing using prefab construction to develop sustainable neighbourhoods.

And here's an aerial image of our proposal:

Driving across Pune

Had been to Pune today to attend a meeting and clicked these snaps on the way back..

Although I've been visiting the city quiet often during the last 6 months I still find the ubiquitous scarf clad women on two-wheelers fascinating. It's like a uniform here, most of them blame pollution and the harsh sun for its wide spread use but its baffles me that women in other (more) polluted cities in India don't care as much for their skin/health??

Anyways, in this post I want to focus on billboards - real estate billboards in particular - the city seems to be completely cladded in them.

I have categorized them as -

1. those that are trying to sell the actual project (ie have images of the actual proposal):

Enter where tomorrow begins today!

and The future has arrived!

How cool is that? : )

and 2. those that try to sell everything else other than the apartment (ie amenities, loans but mostly lifestyle)....

As you can imagine going green is really big now. Look at this one these guys have been green since 122 years!

But these last two are my favorites!

: )