This year the NDTV DAA Student Awards saw an array of entries from colleges across India. With over 340 registrations that translated to a whooping, over 140 submissions brought across some very interesting projects by students.

The jury consisted of Mr. Rajeev Agarwal (Rajeev Agarwal architects, New Delhi), Mr. Abin Chaudhuri (Abin Design Studio, Kolkata), Mr. Kiran Venkatesh ( Inform Architects, Bengaluru) and Mr. Indraneel Chatterjee (Archivista Engineering Projects, Pune) This was a purely online contest, with jury members assessing the entries from their own workplaces.
The adjudication was done in two stages:

• Stage 1: About 35 entries were assigned to each jury member for reviewing. Out of these, the jury was expected to shortlist there best 2 to 5 entries, which brought 24 entries to the second stage of the contest.
• Stage 2: Post the second stage of assessment, entries that featured on at least one juror’s top 3 was put together, which brought the shortlist down to a total of 6 entries. However, one of the entries, didn’t abide by the rules and submission format of the competition, and thus did not make the cut.

These entries ranking 1 to 5, on the different jury lists, were assigned scores of 5 to 1 respectively.

Thus, the two winners (who are at par) of the NDTV DAA Student Awards 2015, were determined:

1. Srushti Shah from R. V. College of Architecture Bengaluru
2. Kevin D’souza from Lokmanya Tilak Institute of Architecture & Design Studies

Please find below a short description of what their entries were about:

• Srushti Shah from R. V. College of Architecture Bengaluru (Geocorridor – Bhuj, Kutch)

This entry is a thesis that has evolved from the desire to explore the landscape of Kutch, which has undergone drastic changes over the centuries. The architectural design explores ways of dealing with the strong and sensitive landscapes harmoniously without destroying the character of the land and keeping in mind the climatic conditions of the region.

• Kevin D’souza from Lokmanya Tilak Institute of Architecture & Design Studies (Ontology Of A Void : The making of a hyper commodity in lalbaug)

The 11 days of festivities during the Ganesh Chaturthi, at Lalbaug has been mapped in this entry, and the governance structure, flow of people and architectural as well as urban transformation has been analysed. This analysis amount to 3 large subhead of festivities- Euphoria, Consumption and Reversibility. Accordingly a design solution is arrived at wherein spaces for performances, branding, media, workshop, simulation etc. have been demarcated.