Life after PVPCOA

Ar. Sanket Munshi (Batch of 2018) Instagram : Sanket Munshi munshisanket2013@gmail.com

Out of many learnings in college, the one which I took seriously was, “buildings are the least form of architecture”. After college I decided to build better lives of myself and others. To do so I went to Ar.Richard Belho in Nagaland to learn about bamboo architecture. Currently I am in a process of upgrading skills of existing traditional bamboo workers. To reach till the communities, a pan India NGO called Yusuf Meherally Centre is funding me to train these bamboo communities. We have successfully trained a community in Myorpur village of sonbhadra district, Uttar Pradesh and will be with them till they become self sufficient. Our project has caught an eye of the district administration of Sonbhadra to train a big chunk of bamboo communities all over the district. We are thus in the mission to upgrade as many bamboo communities in India as possible. For the readers, open yourself to LEARN and everything around you will become your teacher.

Ar. Shubham Kotawadekar(Batch of 2019) Instagram : _kota_shubham natharva6@gmail.com

While I was spending my vacation after thesis, I came across this opportunity to work as a designer in bamboo construction. But I was confused. Each year in college, we had done some structure in bamboo, hence I wanted to take a break away from it. But the opportunity had presented itself, so I took a shot. Everything happened so spontaneously that even before thinking about it, I was already working with them. It’s been over a year now working with bamboo and everything turned out to be exactly what I wanted. I’m working with Bamboo Tales in Pune. We are into bamboo structures, furniture and products. Working in bamboo is about understanding the material, knowing your resources and working together. It is important to work along with the craftsperson and artisans and yet you have to be innovative and deliver quality which lasts long. It is always exciting to work on field and get hands-on. Every day presents a new challenge, which has its own unique solution. The larger part of it is to educated people about the material. Most people prejudice bamboo as cheap material used for scaffolding or temporary shed. But over last 10 to15 year a lot has changed in this field. Government initiatives are helping with the awareness. Architects and Designers are willing to use and experiment with bamboo. We ourselves are working to uplift the material and communities associated with it. We are developing concepts like bamboo bazaar, where farmers will get right value and also as consumers we get authentic material. We are collaborating with designers for projects or as a consultant. We organize hands-on workshop for design students and also training programs for craftsperson. Working in bamboo has allowed me to work on concept of ‘structural aesthetics’. I’m always fascinated by buildings with strong presence of geometry, where structure is part of the aesthetics. I look forward to work more in this field and with other material too. I also have interest in designing furniture and products, which I got to worked on. Making scale model shows that you are confident with your design and it is part of design process that I follow.I can surely say that college has prepared us for every challenge. I don’t know whether I’m a better architect or not, but surely college has mademe a better person than I was. It’s always difficult to work with non-conventional material but a student of PVPCOA I was more prepared to face such hurdles. One thing that I have learned my past experience is that; if you are honest to yourself and to your work, things happen to you, instead of you making things happen.

THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE