Mar 9 2022 - Mar 9 2022

CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award

In 2019, to commemorate Mohit Gujral's 60th year, Mohit returned to his Alma Mater by committing to a five years of programming in conjunction with CEPT University, run under the dynamic Directorship of Dr. Bimal Patel. CEPT emerged from the School of Architecture, founded by B.V. Doshi, one of modern Indian architecture's most celebrated practitioners. CEPT is one of the leading architectural institutions in India.

Each year there are three main events led by the Gujral Foundation - 6 annual excellence awards, a Sculpture Park which features works by leading contemporary artists and architects, alongside which there will be workshops/talks and finally exciting new courses on the summer and winter school curriculums.
The CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award is a cash award of rupees one lakh each, awarded to six students annually for studio excellence.
 

2023

On 19th February 2023, we were delighted to announce the three awardees of the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for the Monsoon 2022 Semester. Since the institution of these awards in 2019, they have inspired and encouraged students to strive for creativity and excellence.
The CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award is a celebration of creativity at its best. And nowhere does that resonate better than with the distinguished jury panel who selected our awardees. We were honoured to welcome back Bobby Desai (architect and chair of the jury panel); Steven Smith (architect); Archana Shah (textile designer and entrepreneur); Dinesh Sharma (product designer); Walter de Souza (artist) and Suranjana Satwalekar (exhibit designer and NID faculty member) as our jury for this year.
Raj Dharmeshbhai Kansara was awarded the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for his project titled 'Building as Play', which explored the potential to restore and reinvent the World Heritage listed Watsons Hotel in Kala Ghoda Mumbai. The building was constructed between 1867 and 1869 and is probably the first prefabricated, multilevel, cast iron framed building in the world.
In this design the system building approach of the original building was reinvented with the development of a ‘kit’ of flexible and adaptable building elements that allowed the building to be reconfigured in many ways for diverse purposes. A future of continuous building and change was envisaged. The use of big screen media and ephemeral installations created architecture with an indeterminate identity celebrating transience change over time.
The award was given to Shivam Shrivastava for his project titled ‘Revelation: A choreography of Light’.
The Travellers Home envisioned in this project was in the form of a journey down a cliff face into a dramatic ravine in the landscape. The carefully articulated architectural space through which this lyrical journey unfolded created alternating spaces for climbing, movement and repose. Openings are carefully arranged to frame views outwards and between spaces and to control the quality of light experienced along the journey at different times. This sophisticated spatial proposition was a celebration of the fusion of interior architecture and landscape to create a curated sequence of contrasting experiences along the journey.
Teesta Singh was offered the award for her project titled ‘Sculpted’, which explored ways to restore and reinvent the Vishwamitri River that flows through the city of Baroda, Gujarat. Like many urban rivers in India it is currently a highly polluted and undesirable environment that nonetheless still supports a highly diverse ecology of animals and plants including river crocodiles.
The design explored ways to develop environments that integrated city living and natural landscapes while also addressing the engineering challenges of sanitation and water management. The result was a complex mix of wildlife reserves, gardens, wetland and elevated walkways allowing for human and nature interactions of many kinds. The project suggested a landscape led approach to create a transformed urban and natural waterfront.

On 3rd November 2023, we unveiled the awardees of the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for the Spring 2023 semester. The winners were carefully chosen by an illustrious jury panel, which was chaired by Steven Smith (Architect), alongside Pankaj Gupta (Architect), Suranjana Satwalekar (Exhibit Designer) & Walter D'Souza (Artist & Printmaker).

Neeraj Krishna won the award for his project ‘Frames of Fiction’, which explored a range of future scenarios, probable environmental and societal factors, all while redefining the idea of a dwelling. The meaning of "home" differs from person to person, and hence presented him with the challenge of grasping what shelter truly means to an individual and how that evolves over time.

He explored this concept through imagining a dystopian post-earthquake space with a few survivors, who scavenged from this arid landscape, and found objects in the debris, that gave a personality to this new home. He theorised that the dwellings evolve and adapt with human needs and desires; constantly transforming as more survivors discovered this place. He explored what shelter truly meant to these scavengers in a desolate landscape where debris and junk represented their sole ray of hope.

Nisharg Patel was awarded the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for his project ‘Pinion,’ which entailed designing a pavilion on a farm located on the banks of the Vatrak River in Gujarat. The design brief for the pavilion arose from the needs of the farm—a place to pause, a place to rest, a place to gather. The initial few weeks were spent on-site at the farm, this facilitated an understanding of life on a farm and the dynamic ever-changing landscape.

The proximity of the farm to the river edge anchored the location of the intervention, along with various assets of the topographical setting, such as the existing trees and scenic views, to name a few. The intervention was located at a point that allowed the structure to express itself—a minimal footprint crafted with locally available materials.

The design of the pavilion aspired to blend with the setting, borrowing its extended landscapes—a humble yet awe-inspiring structure that imparted a seamless experience. The structure expressed rootedness while evoking a sense of nostalgia.

Nuzha won the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for her project ‘Wedge.’ The project commenced with an exploration and manipulation of forms within a volume, culminating in the structural development aimed at achieving a functionally inviting seating element. Guided by the operations of Taper and Expand, decision-making at every step was deliberate and informed.

As the structural facets underwent refinement, they concurrently delved into exploring various seating options. The integration of jute weaving emerged as a pivotal aspect, offering not only structural reinforcement but also maintaining a visual lightness that enhanced the overall aesthetic appeal of the project.

On 9th February 2024, we were thrilled to announce the awardees of the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for the Monsoon 2023 semester. We welcomed back the same jury panel as the Spring semester, who succeeded in their monumental task of selecting the top three projects for studio excellence for this semester.

Pulathota Divija won the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for her project ‘Reading Between the Lines’. Exploring the intersection of design and interaction at CEPT's Lilavati Lalbhai Library. The project brought together architecture and animation, with natural light and kinetic movement. Diving into the immersive experience, ‘Graphik' typeface danced through the Barrier-Grid animation, effortlessly blending form and function.

The esteemed jury commented that the effect of the bespoke signage was both visually striking and a highly effective dynamic identity for the library, which was clearly communicated through a working prototype model.

Panchal Parth Mukeshbhai won the award for her project ‘Narratives of Infrastructure.’ In the heart of Surat, the Kadarsha Ni Nal Metro Station, which bore witness to a tapestry of temporal events – floods, riots, plague

, and fire. In response to a myriad of challenges, the architectural vision for the proposal transcended conventional limits, transforming problems into opportunities. At its core, the project redefined the existing no man's land, incorporating old and new infrastructure into a shared zone that bridges societal voids. The proposal reinforced the identity of Kadarsha Ni Nal by uniting diverse communities, promoting social empowerment, and addressing pressing issues like floods, traffic, placelessness, and communal isolation.

Our illustrious jury members commented that the infrastructure for a new metro station, for water storage to mitigate floor risk, for community and social space, and to provide new local connections between previously separate communities were brought together in this imaginative and complex project.

Janhavi Aggarwal was given the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for her project ‘Kapisah.’ Reminiscing about the innovative journey of Kapisah, where sustainability met style. The bio-based material, crafted from SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast), emerged from kombucha brewery byproducts, once destined for compost pits.

Our panel commented that the project was developed from research into the properties and the potential of a form of ‘vegan’ leather which was grown in bacterial culture. Once dried and cured, this remarkable material had many intriguing properties including its softness, durability as well as the potential for cutting and rebinding with itself and with other materials. The project made use of this new material in combination with the more conventional cotton crochet yarn in the design of an elegant and attractive handbag which was presented as a prototype product. The imaginative design and prototyping clearly demonstrated the great potential of this material across diverse industries.

2022

On 24th February 2022, we were proud to unveil the first three awardees of the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for this year.
Once again this year, our panel consisted of Bobby Desai (architect and chair of the jury panel); Steven Smith (architect); Archana Shah (textile designer and entrepreneur); Dinesh Sharma (product designer) and Walter de Souza (artist). Joining the panel for the first time was Suranjana Satwalekar (exhibit designer and NID faculty member).
For a second time, Almitra R. has been awarded the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Awards. This year, for her project titled 'Society of Trimtabs'. Through her project Almitra predicted a shared and empowered future.
The society of trimtabs is made of individuals of heightened awareness as the primary social, economic, and administrative unit with a rationale assisted by artificial intelligence (a mirrored consciousness achieved by heights of surveillance and monitoring). If more decision-making power was given to an individual within limits of common consensus. The individual is not limited by societal conditions but rather enabled by the same.
Krishna Patel 
was given the award for her project titled ‘Diffusing edges: Social and economic restructuring’. Her project explored the possibilities of life around urban architecture.
In an emerging and developing economy like India, majority of urban workers come from informal sectors. This broad and heterogeneous workforce which includes construction site workers, venders on streets, women workers who work from home, etc. makes up for 80% of our economy, yet they’re not considered while designing our cities and are often pushed to the peripheries that make it even more difficult for them to survive and serve the need. Hence a narrative-based decentralized and distributed infrastructural approach has been employed which makes the cities more inclusive in terms of their accessibility for the informal sector workers and its viability for them to survive without having to constantly move.
This project was one such example of how an urban village like Makarba gaam could be included in city planning without entirely changing and redeveloping the site from scratch but instead recontextualizing them with smaller interventions.
Sakshi Naphade 
won the award for her project titled ‘Productive commons - DIY urbanism’. Her project re-imagined city planning ideologies.
The proposal gave a design framework to public spaces to create productive uses linked by a pedestrian network. A typical Gandhinagar sector under residential zone has about 35% land under public domain designated for small and large infrastructural developments for the residents of the sector. Majority of these public lands till date remain unused, unproductive, and barren.
Naphade’s project suggested that developing these lands would create a continuous framework of productive landscapes for communities in the centre of the sector, while also shaping active and accessible zones.
On 12th September 2022, we were delighted to announce the awardees of the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for the Spring 2022 semester. We welcomed back Steven Smith (Architect) to chair our esteemed jury panel for this edition of the awards, alongside Suranjana Satwalekar (Exhibit Designer), Walter D'Souza (Artist & Printmaker) and Sameep Padora (Architect).
Ananda Krishnan won the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for his project  Aarudhih, which aimed to repurpose a 250 year-old warehouse built by the Dutch on the banks of Vembanad Lake, Fort Kochi, into a contemporary museum space. Through this project Ananda planned to revive the structure while conserving the architectural and cultural importance of the decadent warehouse. The goal of the project was to give the building a new and extended life.
Architectural Salvage: Reviving a floating shelter is the project that awarded Dhruv Patel the prize. The project focused on designing a living museum for the Louis Catherine which is a 70m long ferrocement barge that is a lesser-known work of Le Corbusier. The project looked at two different scenarios: the barge under construction in a drydock and the barge as a completed urban artefact. The idea was grounded within the dual theoretical frameworks of Modernism and water based architecture.
The last award for this semester was given to Naomi Mehta for her project Towards a Critical Project and a Project of Critique. The intervention tried to re-examine the relationships discovered across multiple scales to create an experience of luxury that is centred around creating quality spaces for multiple user groups and programs. By redefining and contextualizing multiple relationships, the project aimed to transform the building in parts and as a whole.
The winners through their award winning projects, collectively showed us that change, for the better, is just within reach.

2021

On 15th March 2021, we were delighted to announce the awardees of the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Awards for the current semester. The awardees were selected by our illustrious jury panel consisting of Bobby Desai (architect and chair of the jury panel); Steven Smith (architect); Archana Shah (textile designer and entrepreneur) and Dinesh Sharma (product designer).
The CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award was awarded to Almitra R for her project Pondy Bazaar which was developed around the narrative of adaptive inhabitation of any uncanny toy that occupies the belly of a flyover as an entanglement of the stories of multiple people. A place that began as one for social gathering for the immediate residential areas now stands as a nexus of activity only shaped by the act of consumption and transaction was the setting of the project’s narrative.
Bhavya Trivedi won the award for her project Hers, His, Theirs which proposed an ungendered reimagination of the studio site, Katwaria Sarai, Delhi, which stemmed from research, observations and analysis of gendered patterns within the private and the public realms undertaken at various sites such as Auroville, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Shimla over the course of the studio. In the context of India, the right to the city tends to lie with men, reflected strongly in social norms and spatial conditions. The project aimed to extend the right to the city  through notions of access, safety and leisure to women and thereby to the diversity of users of the public realm.
Sva: A vision of self-sustenance is the project that awarded Dharan Korduvar the prize. His project explored the dramatic shift caused due to a large number of people moving from rural to urban areas, which can in turn lead to a great number of environmental and social problems that the world will have to face in the coming decades. By integrating productive landscapes in the everyday life of the people he aimed to design an ideal sector which is totally self-sufficient. His design premises included: Food, Water,  Energy,  Waste,  Bio-Diversity.
Driti Patel’s project An Interactive Work Station that fetched her the award, explored the idea of designing a metro station that connected people to people instead of connecting people to places. The project grappled with the idea to stitch the interaction gap that city life has created. With the uprising of boundary walls people have disconnected themselves from social interaction. The project proposed that public infrastructure such as a metro station can be a link to revive this lost communication.
The last student to receive the award for the current academic semester was Dwij Hirpara for his project Municipal Ward Office And Public Services. The project evolved from several research and design exercises conducted through the initial half of the semester. The idea of the project was to insert a pacemaker in the ageing heart of the town of Anand in Gujarat. The site selected was an abandoned factory premise which once boasted of a building larger than any other in the vicinity. This project was a manifestation of various ideas of Time, Public and Architecture.

2020

 

Sharan GS was awarded The CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for his studio project ‘Rethinking Lost Space’.  His project was conceived by articulating the important aspects of a Narrative - Plot, Conflict, Characters, Atmosphere, Climax etc through various tools like the narrative arc and the storyboard.

Through his project Sharan looked at Lost Spaces - spaces which are leftover and unstructured, anti-spaces making no positive contribution to the surroundings. He focused the project on one such lost space located at the centre of Rajkot, Gujarat with two huge overhead water tanks supported by five stories of a regular concrete column beam grid situated in the Jubeli Garden and surrounded by a historically rich and dynamic urban fabric. The intent was to redefine the lost space of the tanks such that it can contribute to the urban setting and become a part of it.

The Jury Panel was impressed with the poetic narrative, threaded through an existing, yet evocative ensemble of urban infrastructure. They felt that Sharan’s intervention created a field of potentiality, of opportunity and the unexpected.

Arsh Kania's was awarded The CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for his studio project ‘Visitor’s Centre, Jaisalmer’. Through the project, he deciphered the unique architectural vocabulary and grammar of Spanish Architect, Enric Miralles, as well as derived the architectural syntax of a proposed Visitor Centre in Jaisalmer. 

His proposal captured the spirit and dynamism of Miralles’ architecture in plan and section, which he skillfully manipulated to generate a building that responded uniquely to the various constraints and opportunities of the site. It had a complexity and scale, which acted as a delicate counterpoint to the brooding mass and bulk of the adjacent fort.

The esteemed Jury particularly commended the skill with which the section of the proposed building developed and responded to program and context.

Hetanshu Pandya was awarded The CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award for his studio project ‘In-between Architecture’. 

The project focused on how the present step-well and its architecture has grown to be irrelevant in today’s time and further builds on the dire need of the city to have a public place which is in its true sense, public. Hetanshu proposed a pavilion structure without any program or function which acts like a platform for the city and its everyday life to unfold upon.

The Jury Panel cited that, ‘In-between Architecture’ was a highly relevant and potent project, which was illustrated with elegance and sensitivity.

 

2019

The jury panel for 2019-2020’s award consisted of eminent industry leaders: Bobby Desai (architect and chair of the jury panel); Walter de Souza (artist); Archana Shah (textile designer and entrepreneur) and Dinesh Sharma (product designer). The first 3 awardees Aashumi Shah, Mayuri Talaviya and Ritika Mittal were announced in the beginning of August 2019. Arsh Kania, Hetanshu Pandya and Sharan GS were awarded the CEPT Gujral Foundation Excellence Award in January 2020.

Our Student awardee of ‘The CEPT- Gujral Foundation Excellence Awards’ : Aashumi Shah's project : ‘‘Wellness, Wellbeing and Mindfulness, Lonavala’ has been detailed to reflect one of the greatest living architects, Richard Rogers’ architectural language and attitude towards a range of aspects.

The jury enjoyed her project for its bold and direct implementation of a pre- existing architectural syntax and principals, creating a surrealistic and extreme design response.

Taking inspiration from the mandala wire toy, Ritika Mittal designed a low heighted reclining chair for her project that undergoes transformation to generate a two dimensional stackable, portable, lightweight element which can also be used as a wall hanging system.

The jury appreciated the economy of means and simplicity of Ritika’s chair design and noted that the design provides a solution with elegant minimalism, eschewing extraneous technical and visual bravado.

Mayuri’s project : ‘Play + Narration- Museum of Mandu’ explores challenges related to adaptive reuse, architectural intervention and materiality, in bringing, back into use, Gada Shah’s shop, a building ruin in Mandu.

In this project, Mayuri designs the ruin as a space for an open theatre and a museum that would cater to both tourists and the locals.

 
Date
  • Mar 9 2022 - Mar 9 2022

Location
  • CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India