When architect Abin Chaudhuri designed a Kartik puja pandal on the football field behind his village home in Bansberia, 84km from Calcutta, back in 2012, he never dreamt that his Bamboo Pavilion would turn a global spotlight on his architectural firm. Using 1,800 bamboos from 2ft to 15ft in length and painted in rainbow hues, Chaudhuri created a stunning composition of light and colour, planting the bamboos in a rising circular movement leading up to the central idol. In a deft low-cost move, he pasted retro-reflective vinyl stickers on top of each bamboo so that they glowed and turned into a magical lighting installation at night.

This temporary temple won Chaudhuri the prestigious International Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design last year. And a model of it even travelled the world as part of the
Museum of Modern Art’s touring exhibition, Uneven Growth, in 2015.

But then, Chaudhuri, 41, who’s still the boy from Bansberia at heart, has been unstoppable these past few years, making one stunning architectural statement after another, and racking up awards across the globe. “We’re always trying to explore new avenues of architecture,” says Chaudhuri, who will collect his Chicago Athenaeum award in Geneva in November. “It’s very special as only a few Indians have won it,” he admits.

His 11-year-old, multi-disciplinary Abin Design Studio has won over 40 awards for everything from institutional buildings and homes to interiors and public spaces. He has also built collaborations with international majors like Herzog & de Meuron as executive architect for the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art. And he has regularly featured on Architectural Digest India’s AD50 list of top architects.

Leading architect Christopher Charles Benninger, who co-founded the School of Planning in Ahmedabad back in 1972, says: “He’s one of the top three talented architects in India. He’s very innovative, thoughtful and creative.”

So, Chaudhuri’s interiors for Techno Electro & Engineers Co. with its sculptural installations on the ceiling has been listed among the top nine workspace interiors at the World Interiors News Awards 2016. And his minimalist Courtyard House in Bangalore with its sculptural cantilevered staircase and seamless flow between the indoors and outdoors, and also the stunning Pool House near Calcutta have won critical acclaim.

Or take a look at Nazrul Tirtha museum in Calcutta’s New Town, which was a finalist at the World Architecture Festival 2015 awards. It’s like a piece of poetry in concrete. A black pigmented concrete block with a calligraphic cut-out facade casts a striking silhouette while six lighter-coloured cuboid blocks twist out around it. The calligraphy’s a line from the famed Bengali poet Kazi Nazrul Islam’s poem, Vidrohi, and the inter-connected, exposed concrete blocks fan inwards onto a central open-air theatre. Chaudhuri completed it in 10 months in 2014.

A short distance away, he has put his stamp on the urbanscape yet again with the striking Newtown School. Chaudhuri was asked to create a distinct identity for the school’s generic twin blocks last year. And he did just that by encasing them in a graphic stencil screen of letters and symbols. It’s made from 476 panels in white fibre-reinforced polypropylene that he got a car body fabricator in Jaipur to make.

“Everyone’s talking about the ABCD school. It has become the identity of the neighbourhood,” says Chaudhuri. Now, he’s building a state-of-the-art sports facility and a higher secondary extension to the school.

Indeed, Chaudhuri, who first made his mark with his multi-coloured glass building for the International Management Institute (IMI)-Kolkata, is forging ahead. He has over a dozen new projects ranging from Bandhan Bank’s training centre in Santiniketan and Presidency University’s new campus in Rajarhat to villas, commercial buildings and institutions.

His studio in Ballygunge — he has a 22-member design team — has completed 1.2 million sqft of projects so far, and he’s got another one million square feet under construction. “But I don’t view my ability in square feet. I’m interested in how my architecture can influence people and lead them to a better sensibility,” he says.

Architecture, for him, is a constant exploration — of ideas, materials and technology. He’s equally at home doing public installations like the Pride of Bengal mural in Quest mall as he is making buildings or doing interiors like in the 6 Ballygunge Place restaurant. He’s particularly keen though on doing public spaces, where “you can interact with users”.

Benninger says: “All his projects have a distinct creative flair to them. At the same time, they’re very functional and responsible buildings.”

“Abin’s shown his creativeness even in small projects like his wave installation with bamboos at a traffic intersection in New Town,” adds Debashis Sen, chairman, Hidco.

“I strongly believe that architecture is a discovery as you enter and experience a space, layer by layer. So with every project, our aim is to discover something,” says Chaudhuri. It’s also about how users will use the space and a contextual response to the site, place and climate. In his favourite IMI-Bhubaneswar, for instance, he traced the sun’s path and designed building forms to create shaded areas.

Chaudhuri admires architects like Charles Correa and Tadao Ando and his buildings are clearly modern like the upcoming 26-storey Odisha Khadi Bhavan in Bhubaneswar or the South City Business Park in Calcutta. But it’s not all glass and concrete. And, he often brings in traditional elements or crafts in his works.

Take his high-end retail building for the Karam Chand Thapar Group coming up in Calcutta. He’s combining exposed concrete with brick and terracotta to do a contemporary take on Bengal’s artistic tradition here. So, the building’s lower half is in fair-finished concrete with a vaulted arcade at the base. And the bold retail facade on top features serrated brickwork interspersed with carved terracotta panels. “This project is very close to my heart,” he says. And in Bandhan Bank’s two lakh-square-foot training centre in Santiniketan, he’s creating modern buildings but with rammed earth using the local red soil.

Indeed, Chaudhuri’s always pushing the envelope, be it by using new technology or using local materials in new ways. In 2006, he sandwiched coloured polymer sheets between glass panes to create the mutli-hued IMI Kolkata facade, a first in India. “Many people said you can’t do this. But we achieved it and more,” he says.

Or in Nazrul Tirtha, he created an exposed concrete building, Corbusier style, and got Lafarge to create a black pigmented liquid concrete for the first time in the world. “Ideating a building is easy but making it happen is the real challenge,” he says.

Chaudhuri only got into architecture by accident. He grew up in Bansberia and his father was a mathematician “but he never pressurised me to do maths”. Since he was good in drawing, he took up architecture on his father’s friend’s advice. “I had never heard of architecture till then,” he says. Once he joined Jadavpur University, he found his calling. But his struggle began after graduating in 1998.

After two poorly paid stints at architectural firms, he joined Lafarge only to find that his job was to get home builders to use its cement. He got a break when Lafarge invited designs for a home building centre. Soon, he began creating office interiors and retail branding at Lafarge.

Eighteen months later, he joined an interior design firm as partner. He made a lot of money doing corporate offices till 2003. Then, dis-satisfied, he went to study industrial design at the Domus Academy in Milan.

He came back to found Abin Design Studio in 2005. But it was tough till a chance meeting with Sunil Bhandari, executive director, RP-Sanjiv Goenka  group, led to his big break in 2006. Bhandari asked him to present a design for IMI Kol-kata and Goenka liked it instantly. “My first building project in college was a 1,000sqft house. My first project after passing out was a 4,000sqft dance academy, and then I jumped straight to this three lakh-square-foot institute,” he says. But that was the building block for even greater projects.

Now, he has a spate of new projects. There’s his modernist Edify School in Goa. Then, he’s designing an office building and office interiors for the Hiland group and also office interiors for the Belani group and Rupa. He also has a low-cost housing project with the Sureka group, and a gated villa project, Bonochhaya, in Santiniketan with the Hiland group. Plus, he’s building villas in Calcutta, Purulia and Coimbatore.

Chaudhuri says he’s more excited about designing “smaller projects and explorative spaces” today. “I want to see my vision completed quickly and perfectly,” he says. He’s also hoping to find takers for his dream project of a model public primary school.

“I studied in a pathshala in Bansberia. And I’ve done so many schools that I know exactly what’s needed. I want to show that you can create international-level facilities at a low cost and that a government school can attract back students from the private sector,” he says.

And adds: “Architecture must engage people. It must reflect what society wants at present and respect the heritage. At the same time, it should give a direction to the future.” Chau-dhuri’s clearly hoping his buildings will do just that.