Bhubaneswar, June 16: Pictures of architectural beauties such as The Carve from Norway, Split House from China, Dune House from New Zealand, Liberty Place from Australia were on display here today and they left designers spellbound.
Touring major cities of India, images of the creations were brought here by Greenply as part of the design tour of the World Architecture Festival (WAF).
Envisaged to benefit architects and students, the daylong event showcased 350 designs that were selected at the WAF held in Singapore.
The design tour in Bhubaneswar showcased exhibits of 350 shortlisted design entries from across 30 categories designed by architects from over 65 countries. It comprised significant works such as The Chapel, Vietnam, designed by a21studio, which was adjudged the World Building of the Year in the international-level festival.
Architects from all over the world send entries to the world festival. Out of the 1,500 applications, winners of the previous festival select 350 works for exhibition and 30 for awards in different categories.
The festival also features celebrity architects such as Moshe Safdi, Zaha Hadid, Sir Richard Rogers, Paul Finch among others.
"WAF is like the Oscars of architecture. The global architecture fraternity has been hosting the event for the past seven years. Last November, it was held in Singapore. We requested the organisers to allow us to bring the same designs to India so that artists here can understand the trends and standards of global architecture," said Harsh Upadhyay, business development head of Greenply.
About 250 architects from Cuttack, Sambalpur, Rourkela, Bhubaneswar and others attended the event and studied the designs. Leading names in the field such as Rajan Saklani, Manonjay Rath, Dilip Shaw, Akshya Behuria, C.R. Sahoo, Ramesh Swain and S.S. Ray spoke on the 'contemporary directions in world architecture'.
"Architecture outside India has grown beyond our imagination. Designs that are environment friendly as well as use limited space and at the same time are beautiful to look at are in demand. Here in India, architects work under financial stress. So, we cannot make it to events such as the WAF that could have given us great exposure," said Akshya Behuria.
The design tour has already been to nine other cities including Jaipur, Chandigarh and Delhi. Its next and final stop will be Calcutta.
