Saturday Jun 20, 2026
Saturday Jun 20, 2026
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Pavithran Thurairatnam
The AYDA International Awards, a Nippon Paint global CSR program made a landmark return to Bangkok, Thailand, for its 18th edition from 11 to 12 June.
This edition holds a special place in the competition’s history, as Bangkok last hosted the global ceremony exactly a decade ago. The AYDA Awards 2025/2026 welcomes over 9,000 student entries from 17 countries and regions under this year’s theme, CONVERGE: Crafting Cultural Legacies, a call for the next generation of architects and interior designers to honour cultural heritage while shaping the spaces of tomorrow.
Pavithran Thurairatnam from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka was recognised with an Honorary Mention win in the Architectural Category.
Pavithran’s “In-between Presence and Absence” project confronts a question that sits at the intersection of architecture, memory, and power: when regional cinema is weaponised as propaganda and war erases the monuments that hold a community’s history, how does a people reclaim the stories that shaped them? The answer, he found, lay in the rubble itself — where communities whose memorials and cemeteries had been destroyed built mounds from the wreckage, creating new structures that paid homage to storytelling in an era of censorship, and proving that collective memory cannot be demolished as easily as the buildings that once carried it.
“Movies and monuments have always shaped the collective memory of generations. My project, In-between Presence and Absence, is about what happens when both are taken away,” said Pavithran. “What inspired me the most was how people created a presence from absence. You cannot destroy absence. That became the foundation of my design philosophy: a design that functions as an incomplete puzzle, one that requires constant participation from the people to hold its meaning together. To be recognised for work rooted in that truth is an honour I carry on behalf of every community whose stories were never meant to be told.”
AYDA Awards also crowned two Designers of the Year, with Ejhey Durias from University of Mindanao, Philippines claiming the Designer of the Year award for the Architectural category, while Jackie Jiang Haoran from Central Academy of Fine Arts, China took home the Designer of the Year award for the Interior Design category. Both winners were recognised for projects that embody this year’s theme of crafting spaces where cultural legacy and contemporary vision meet.
Both Designer of the Year winners earn a fully funded place in the Design Discovery Program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in Boston, USA; an immersive three-week learning experience valued at up to $ 10,000 and a fitting next chapter for designers ready to shape the future of their craft.
Beyond the top honours, the AYDA Awards 2025/2026 also celebrated design excellence across a range of specialised categories.
