Building a community

Hyderabad is already home to many cultural and co-working spaces, bringing together like-minded people from different walks of life. One such space with an interesting twist is Jxtapose, a co-working space primarily for art and design professionals to attend workshops or display their art work. Interestingly, the people behind the project are only in their early 20s.

Six out of the seven co-founders are architects who graduated from the same college just last year, and have all quit their jobs to dedicate their time to this project. Talking about how it all began, Shruthi Ramesh, CEO of Jxtapose says, “We used to have a lot of group projects in college and it was not always possible to meet at a friend’s place. We needed a common space with good facilities. My thesis in college was on a co-working space and Gayathri’s was on the concept of Third Space. The seeds for Jxtapose were planted then. I pitched the idea to my college friends, and they were on board immediately.”

Team member, Gayathri Kondepudi says, “Hyderabad doesn’t have a very strong design community, and that’s what we are trying to build,” while Akshay Varma adds, “We want to enable the space for design start-ups and strugglers, and also have experienced mentors to guide us through.”

Of course, seeing it through is where the real challenge lies. “It’s been a year since the venture began and since we started off as friends, the dynamics had to change a little. Sticking to the structure and maintaining discipline was difficult initially, but we’ve all learnt and grown. It was also very difficult to find the land. We changed two places before we settled on this,” says Rachana  Yerapothina. Teja Vanamala, the only civil engineer in the group, explains that though the launch will happen next month, they have already hosted events where the founder of the Raasta Studios gave a talk and visual artist Priyanka Aeley, too, shared her insights.  

As for their apprehensions before quitting their jobs, Akshay says, “People say that the golden age for architects is after 40 because they would have had good experience by then, but we have not played by the rules. If not now, maybe we would have never done it.”