KVDF (2024)

Krisha Kothari

Kurula Varkey Design Forum is a design symposium organized by CEPT, every year. This year the institution rethought the structure of the forum and proposed a form that allowed more students to participate all over the world: the exhibition, followed by a two day discussion panel. The theme being technology, led to various trajectories and interpretations adapted through design projects presented by approximately 30 students. 

The forum opened with an exhibition set up, various CEPT faculty, the invited panelists and visitors walked around interacting with the student participants and their works. This process enabled deeper discussions between the students and the panelists. Bringing in their own interpretations of technology, the conversations were more directed towards rethinking and enhancing the projects further, by exploring various aspects of technology. Projects ranging from the idea of jugaad, construction techniques, services, database etc were a part of the exhibition. Mehul Bhatt, a faculty of CEPT, very well comprehended by stating that in the space of academia, one has the liberty to imagine the unimaginable, executing is then thought of, but what ignites execution is crafting  the unimaginable.

KVDF, did provide a platform to various conversations, there was a constant attempt to push these conversations beyond the direct discourse of technology ie. Parametric, construction methods, materials and artificial intelligence. Delving into various practices by the invited panelists was an exposure towards analysing an intersection of spatiality and the technological apparatuses that constitutes it.