This year, The Busride Design Studio will be creating the Abwab pavilion representing India with the support of Pidilite. Abwab is an annually remodelled exhibition dedicated to commissioning work from across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia with a purpose to promote design talent and stimulate information exchange, uniquely experienced at Dubai Design Week.
Ayaz Basrai is co-founder of The Busride Design Studio, an architecture and interior design firm in India working on projects ranging from hospitality and entertainment, to immersive media and film.
Qissa Ghar brings a unique union of different religions, cultures, or philosophies to the forefront, creating a collaborative retelling of a selection of age-old creation myths from various cultures across the nation. Seven contemporary artists are invited to interpret these fantastic stories, to be translated into an immersive experience through a labyrinth of a Mughal inspired tessellations composed of Khadi - handspun natural fibre cloth originating from India mainly made from cotton - fabric lamps, created by contemporary textile designers.
Within this immersive neural net of stories are scattered "epiphany" lamps that use old-world materials and processes like stained glass and wood carving to create moments of connection between the vast networks of stories that populate the pavilion. Tropes of India are used freely throughout.
Ayaz commented “The underlying theme of this year is "Ways of Learning", a theme that resonates very closely with the work that we do. Throughout history, stories have been the way we hold information. Retelling takes on a slight nuance, and that belongs solely to the storyteller. The Qissa Ghar is literally a microcosm of India, and we wanted our pavilion to focus on the abstractions of age-old creation myths that abound in the Tribal regions of the country.”