Archumen Pro – A Quiz on Architecture for professional architects was hosted at The Capitol in Bengaluru on the 8th of November 2013, in association with Dornbracht, Akzo Nobel, Philips and Honeywell.
This was the second year of Archumen Pro which was launched last year on the completion of ten years of Archumen, which is the student version of Archumen. Archumen was held earlier in the day at the same venue. The questions in both these events were well-researched and put together by Ethos to engage the attention of the audience. There were questions ranging from Window taxes to the old London Bridge to Chrysler Building!
There were over 50 teams representing the top architectural firms. The finalists were V. Narasimhan and Aparna, principal architects of Venkatramanan Associates, Chetan Noronha from CAN Architects and Riju Thomas from LnS Architects, Prasad from CnT Architects and Balaji from SDeG Architects, Sindhuja from Spaces Design and Sindhushree from Harmony Architects, Jills Philip from Jills and Saumya and Sandeep from CnT Architects, Vaswar Mitra and Ajeetha Ranganathan from CnT Architects.
The other teams were from Hundred Hands, Center for Vernacular Development, Rammoorthy Hombali Architects, Siddaganga Institute of Technology Tumkur, Inform Architects, Lead Consultancy, Pragrup Architects, Mayapraxis, Design FX, Dayanand Sagar College of Engineering, Kham Design, Sathya Consultants, Biome Environmental Solutions, Praveen Chandra Associates Kannur, Indesign Studio Kannur, Edge Consultants, MSRIT, Betweenlines, Studio Decode, SDeG, Atto Atelier, JGP Architects Singapore, 3PA International Singapore, L&T Chennai, Designqube Chennai, Studio Parametric, Mathew and Ghosh Architects among others. There were some architects who chose not to participate but to watch the quiz, like TATA Consulting Engineers, Saolapurkar Architects, Prime Designers etc. In all, there were over a hundred architects.
Ar. V. Narasimhan, a keen quizzer, said it was essential for practising architects to keep abreast of all that is happening across the globe.
All the teams were sporting and thoroughly enjoyed the evening of the Inquisition. The team from Venkatramanan Associates left the others behind and emerged Champions of Archumen Pro who took home a cheque of Rs.30000 and two chairs from Featherlite. The first runners-up were Sindhuja and Sindhushree who have in the past been winners at the student version, Archumen. They won Rs.25000. The prizes were given by Mrs Tara Chandavarkar of CnT Architects and Mr Hariharan of BCIL.
The event was organized by Ethos, an organisation that builds awareness of our built environment. The organisation is founded by Gita Balakrishnan, a Kolkata-based architect.
