Artist Talk with Vinu Daniel: Sustainable and Cost-Effective Architecture
In collaboration with Bölme School

In this event organized in collaboration with the Bölme School, Vinu Daniel, a renowned Indian architect, will talk about sustainable architecture and practice of his Wallmakers studio in this field.

Amidst the current global climate crisis, it becomes all the more important to question the direction in which we humans, as a race, are headed. In the place of questions like "What should we build?" queries like "Should we build?" should become more relevant. And in facing the inevitable situation where we must build, the need to use materials that have already become an environmental hazard in the place of fresh material has become the need of the hour.

At Wallmakers the team believes in understanding and using materials easily available from a site or in building with waste, which led them to research and develop techniques such as the Debris Wall and the Shuttered Debris Wall.

At Wallmakers, the aim is to build sustainable spaces that are responsive to specific site contexts and conditions, while maintaining a balance between innovative, utilitarian designs and creating contextual dream-like spaces.

Short biography:

Vinu Daniel completed his B. Arch in 2005 from The College of Engineering, Trivandrum, following which he worked with Auroville Earth Institute for the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Post-Tsunami construction.

On returning from Pondicherry in 2007 he started Wallmakers which was christened thus by others, as the first project was just a compound wall. Many eye-openers in the course of his practice prompted him to devote his energies towards the cause of sustainable and cost-effective architecture.

With a practice, spanning over more than a decade, Wallmakers has won many international accolades including being selected by ArchDaily as the only Indian practice in the list of 20 Young Practices of 2020, being nominated for the Brick Award 2022 and winning The Royal Academy Dorfman Award 2022 conducted by the Royal Academy of Arts, London to name a few. Vinu Daniel is also the youngest Indian Architect invited to be a speaker at the TED Talks (TED 2023: POSSIBILITY, Vancouver).

About Bölme:

Bölme, an interdisciplinary school for cultural practitioners, is a non-profit initiative founded in 2023 by Kazakhstani professionals from the fields of architecture, visual arts and management. As an educational platform, Bölme was created to blur the boundaries between artistic disciplines. The school brings together architectural, artistic, design, applied and theoretical approaches with the aim of equipping young practitioners with conceptual and critical thinking skills, both in addressing social challenges and in the visual arts.

The Bölme School 2026 programme is being implemented thanks to the support of the international ALIPH Foundation and co-funding from the European Union, SÄR Foundation and Danagul Tolepbay.

The event will be held in English with simultaneous interpretation into Kazakh and Russian.  Participation is free upon registration.