Anuj Shah has won twin awards in the final year of his M.Arch from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), bagging the prizes for ‘Graduating with Distinction’ from Gehry Studio 2014 and for ‘AIA LA 2x8’ exhibition 2014.

The first award is given by the University to the best student in each studio from every graduating batch, while the second was based on a selection made during an exhibtion held on campus, and is given to the best project each year. Anuj is the son of Nita and Amit Jayant Shah.

Anuj’s winning project was “W / (in) TENSION” and IRIS, which is the only one from UCLA selected to participate at the LA exhibition which will be held in February 2015.

W / (in) TENSION” is an experiment to follow the trajectory of a dynamic structure’s interaction with dynamic tenants. Constantly reading the user and seeking to find its optimal living condition by compressing and shearing it’s mass to fit within any context. Reaching closer to a perfected building site orientation; changing with in “real-time.”

IRIS: A prototype to capture motion of our focuses. Three digital cameras, one facing the world and two watching the user’s right side retina. Iris receives retina scaled data and translates it through Java as physical commands of “smart” gadgets. QR codes with predefined operations linked to systemic gadgets.

An installation of the project was part of another exhibition 'Architectural Record Conference' at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles and was the only project selected to represent UCLA at the conference.

Anuj’s projects can be viewed at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-ceGF3uGGZlizTWOHTuhkg