With a population of over 22 million, Mumbai is both the financial and trade capital of India, and more importantly for some, it’s known globally as the home of Bollywood. The first short film was screened in 1899, and thus, Bollywood was born and the film industry has come a long way since its inception. A booming industry, in terms of revenue generated as well as employment, the film production centre is a government-owned studio facility ‘Film City’ in the northern suburbs of Mumbai--a complex with a numerous recording rooms, theatres, lakes, gardens and grounds that serve as locations for film shoots. With over a thousand films made each year that reach an audience of close to 3.5 billion people, Bollywood stands today as the worlds most prolific film industry.

With this in mind, Archasm recently concluded an architectural competition with the aim of designing a 'Film City Tower' in Mumbai, catering to the essential needs of the numerous facets that industry is made up off. Ending on February 15, the competition received 283 project entries from across the globe, and Jagoda Nowakowska, Magdalena Skop and Monika Woźniak, students at the Architecture Faculty at the Poznań University of Technology, received the first prize for the 'Film City Tower | Mumbai: Bollywood Re-Imagined' competition.

The competition asked not just for functionality from a structure, but a landmark for the city that would also stand as an example of efficient usage of alternative energy sources and other ecological technologies. The winning designed comprised of a skyscraper with ascending floors that mirrored the subsequent stages of film production. The building housed a film school, a cinematography museum, and what really caught the jury’s eye was the incorporation of ‘ogee bows,’ an aspect of traditional Indian architecture, as well as the team's interesting use of water as a waterfall on the buildings exterior, which is not just for aesthetic purposes but functional as well--the water drives turbines that provide the buildings electricity supply and cool it down on hot summer days.

“The building as a spectacle was a very interesting idea--shrouded in a translucent curtain of water subtly revealing the colourful layers of the program beyond. A not-so-subtle but well executed reference to traditional architectural motifs re-imagined in a contemporary form,” commented architect Cyrus Patel. In the opinion of Amit Gupta, the building made a bold statement that is difficult to ignore. “The amalgamation of traditionalism with contemporary form produces an interesting result, that completely transforms itself with the passing the day. The dynamism of volume and sensory experiences defined its winning prospects,” he said.