An Evening of Design That Resonates Beyond Walls
📍 Venue: Taj Taal Kutir, Kolkata
📅 Date: 23rd May 2025
🕔 Time: 5 PM onwards
Kolkata, a city known for its literary soul and cultural depth, is set to host an evening where design transcends trends and taps into timeless ideas. Design Perspective 2025 brings its next chapter to the East — and with it, two visionary architectural voices that are quietly yet powerfully reshaping the built environment across Asia.
This is more than a design talk. It’s a rare opportunity to listen, reflect, and engage with practices that draw from heritage, question norms, and craft stories in brick, stone, and spirit.
Keynote 1: Realrich Sjarief – RAW Architecture, Indonesia
Architecture That Listens to Land, Craft, and Community
Founder of RAW Architecture, Jakarta-based Realrich Sjarief is redefining what humble, high-integrity architecture looks like in today’s rapidly urbanizing world. His practice is rooted in the ethos of locality, craftsmanship, and simplicity, reflecting the belief that truly timeless architecture comes not from spectacle but from soul.
With a legacy that spans three generations of builders and craftsmen in his family, Realrich’s approach bridges tradition and transcendence. RAW Architecture’s buildings stand apart not for their flamboyance, but for their quiet mastery, their handcrafted honesty, and their deeply rooted respect for material and place.
Realrich will share his journey of reviving Indonesia’s long-standing craft practices and cultivating a design language that is personal, place-based, and poetic — where every detail is made with purpose and every structure feels lived-in before it’s even occupied.
Keynote 2: Praveen Bavadekar – Thirdspace Architecture Studio, India
Memory Meets Imagination, Form Meets Freedom
Representing the Thirdspace Architecture Studio, Praveen Bavadekar brings with him decades of deep inquiry into the Indian architectural landscape. Founded in 2002, Thirdspace operates from both Belagavi and Pune, reflecting a dual identity rooted in layered rural histories and dynamic urban conditions.
Thirdspace’s work transcends binaries — it is architectural, yet conceptual; rooted in material, yet philosophical. Their practice explores the grey areas where structure and landscape, history and possibility, and permanence and impermanence intersect. Through critical, reflective, and deeply contextual design, Thirdspace crafts spaces that are thoughtful, evocative, and sensitively attuned to both their users and their settings.
Praveen, along with principal architect Namrata Betigiri, has cultivated a practice that invites experimentation while maintaining a sharp eye on narrative and nuance. In his keynote, expect a masterful unpacking of how architecture can inhabit the “in-between” — forming bridges between past memories and future possibilities.
Why Attend?
If you care about architecture that thinks, speaks, and feels — this evening is for you. From Realrich’s meditative reflections on Indonesian craft to Praveen’s analytical yet soulful explorations of Indian urbanity, the Kolkata edition of Design Perspective offers a window into two practices that are shaping design discourse in the region.
Expect powerful presentations, meaningful exchanges, and a gathering of minds who believe that architecture should not only serve — it should stir.
Limited seats available. Don’t miss out on an evening that may just change the way you see architecture.
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