ABID Interiors Exhibition, Biswa Bangla Mela Prangan, Kolkata. February 2024. While every exhibitor built a booth, KarmYog Vatika built a garden. A bamboo pavilion with a roof made of a thousand hand-cut rings. A Paludarium at its heart. Eight days from bare ground to the highlight of the expo. Conceived by Mahacharya Sourabh J Sarkar.
ABID Interiors is Kolkata's premier interiors exhibition. The theme for 2024 was sustainability. KarmYog Vatika was invited to create something that would embody it. Mahacharya Sourabh J Sarkar's answer was not a stall, not a display, but a 600 square foot open-air bamboo pavilion — opposite Pavilion B, in the outdoor space where no one had built before. A roof made of a thousand bamboo rings. A glass Paludarium at its centre. Live birds singing from bamboo cages. Cascading nasturtium vines. And everywhere, the smell of marigolds and fresh-cut bamboo.
ABID Interiors Exhibition 2024. Biswa Bangla Mela Prangan, Kolkata. February 2–5, 2024.
Night one. The skeleton.
Night five. The visitors.
The frame against the convention centre.
The interior, complete.
The pavilion was built from materials that no other exhibitor at ABID had ever used. No plywood. No aluminum. No acrylic. Every surface was bamboo, every accent was a living plant, and the centerpiece was a glass ecosystem.
The signature. Hundreds of bamboo culms, hand-cut into cross-section rings and laid on wire mesh to form a translucent organic roof canopy. From below, it filters the light like a forest canopy. From outside, it announces: this is not a booth.
A glass tank at the pavilion's heart — part aquarium, part terrarium, part art. Live aquatic plants inside, nasturtium vines cascading over the edges, fairy lights woven through. The world's smallest biophilic ecosystem, built to prove a point.
Marigolds by the wheelbarrow. Nasturtiums cascading from every shelf. Chrysanthemums, ferns, alocasia, crotons, and succulents filling every corner. And in a bamboo cage, a flock of finches — not to keep, but to release. Every visitor got a chance to set a bird free. Living proof that biophilic design is not about holding nature. It is about letting it go.
They arrived on January 30th. They worked through the night. By February 1st, the pavilion was lit. Every bamboo ring was cut by hand. Every column was clad by a craftsman sitting on the ground with his child beside him. Every flower was placed by a worker who had never seen an interiors exhibition before — and built the best thing in it.
Father and son. Bamboo column assembly.
The team. Five karigars cutting bamboo rings.
Preparing the flowers.
The valance goes up. Brass lamps waiting.
The pavilion did not need marketing. Visitors made the content themselves.
Whether it is an exhibition, a campus, a resort, or a home — Mahacharya Sourabh J Sarkar and the artisans of KarmYog Vatika can build something no one has seen before. Write to us.
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