Carnival Colours

For the last seven years, Abin Chaudhuri has been running a football academy in Banseberia, Kolkata. The area, approximately 100x100ft, is often visited by players, onlookers and cows. Once a year, during Durga puja, a temporary pavilion is also built to host the goddess. Chaudhuri, Principal of Abin Design Studio with designer Tilak Ajmera, had to find a solution that would be both budget-friendly, suitable to engage the faithful and keep the cows out.

They found the answer in bamboo. In concentric circles, they created a pavilion from coloured bamboo poles of varied lengths. The poles worn caps of reflective vinyl stickers such that the entire pavilion looked like a rainbow come full circle. With over 40,000 visitors in Kolkata who have seen the pavilion, the design will travel to the Museum of
Modern Art (MOMA), New York this November.

The vision for the design was to create a playful spectrum to enthral devotees, and build curiosity around the pavilion. “Over 1,800 poles, some as tall as 13 feet and some only two feet, were planted by club members themselves,” says Chaudhuri, “They come from various professions, some are bankers, some from IT, and couple of them are footballers. The bamboo poles were fixed in six layers and the idea was to keep it simple and explore the concept of continuous movement.” So as people walk around the 1,600 sq ft pavilion, they see light reflected from the vinyl strips, travelling with them. This allowed for a change in perspective every time a visitor walked between the ever-gliding gradient of bamboo poles.

The pavilion was first built in 2012 and while it was improved a year later, Chaudhuri accumulated awards for the design, including 2013 Kyoorius Awards in Design For Space category.

This will soon part of an exhibition titled “Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanism for Expanding Megacities” at MOMA. Photographs of the pavilion will be on display and MOMA will install a smaller model of it for the show. The exhibition that aims to highlight urban interventions in growing cities, also has collaborative workshops in cities around the world including Mumbai.

This pavilion made room for many copies of it, in and around the area, says Chadhuri. These poles today stand as sentinels guarding the football ground.