Hyderabad suddenly has a lot more art on the streets than a few years ago. The newest additions are the permanent geometrical art installations at multiple locations. One of them is called ‘hyperbolic paraboloid’ that has been crafted in cane and located at Khairatabad Crossroads, another called ‘helicoidal surface’ located near Hi-Tec City.
As citizens zip around the city, they can spot one more near Gun Park near the Assembly building.
“The one at Khairatabad was designed by us in cane. The one near Assembly was designed by the students of architecture as part of Fractals Workshop (a generative design and research workshop),” says Takbir Fatima of DesignAware.
The structure at Khairatabad was designed G.S.V. Monica, N. Megha Shravani, P. Neha and T. Ruchita, who are the students of CSIIT School of Architecture and Planning.
Fractal is a curve or a geometrical shape that is key to modelling structures where each part has the same statistical character as the whole. The goal is to use computation to design complex geometries and fabricate them with traditional crafts and local material. In a sense, the art installation blends with lessons about shapes.
“These are low-cost installations. We were given a grant that included these installations and also a series of five fractals workshops at various colleges of design and architecture in the city, a tour of a charity school at Golconda that we designed, a student exhibition at HICC during the World Design Assembly and a crowd-sourced installation at IKEA for families and friends,” informs Ms. Fatima about the project.
The installations were part of the Hyderabad Design Week between October 9 and 13, but now are permanent fixtures in the city. While the installations were funded by the Government of Telangana, the sites for installation were chosen by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).
