Bijoy Jain

EDITION IV / BAMBOO STUDY XIII / MAZE DESIGN BASEL

The fourth edition of the MAZE/Art Awards F.P.Journe was presented on June 14, 2026, during MAZE7Design Basel.

The jury, Jochen Eisenbrand, Chief Curator of the Vitra Design Museum, and Alexis Georgacopoulos, Director of ECAL / Lausanne University of Art and Design, awarded the prize to Bamboo Study XIII by Bijoy Jain, presented by Salon 94.

There is a particular kind of presence that runs through Bijoy Jain’s work, one that resists spectacle in favour of attention. His practice moves between architecture, design, and material culture, but never settles into a fixed category. Instead, it unfolds through processes, gestures, and the slow construction of meaning through making.

Bijoy Jain (born in Mumbai, 1965) is the founder of Studio Mumbai, an interdisciplinary collective bringing together architects, engineers, artisans, and craftspeople. After studying architecture in the United States and working in Los Angeles and London, he returned to India in the mid-1990s to establish a practice rooted in collaboration, material intelligence, and the physical realities of construction.

Over time, Studio Mumbai has become less a conventional office than a working environment structured around making itself. Drawing, testing, and building coexist within the same space, shaped by a deep attention to process, place, and elemental conditions such as light, air, and water. The work is often defined not by form alone, but by the way it is produced, through collective knowledge and hands-on engagement with materials.

This sensibility extends directly into Bamboo Study XIII. The piece does not present bamboo as a symbolic material, but as a structural system in its own right, flexible, responsive, and shaped by tension. The construction relies on tightly bound elements held together through hand-applied cordage, revealing a logic where stability emerges not from rigidity, but from calibrated imbalance.

The result sits between object and study. It suggests a way of working in which material behaviour is not controlled in a strict sense, but negotiated, allowing movement, resistance, and slight unpredictability to remain visible in the final form.

The awarded work will be proposed as a donation to the Vitra Design Museum, joining a collection dedicated to the evolution of design as both cultural practice and technical experimentation.

Supported by F.P.Journe, the MAZE/Art Awards continue to position contemporary design within a broader conversation between craft, architecture, and institutional heritage.

‍