Bhavesh Bhuthadia

Bhavesh Bhuthadia is a creative producer based in Tāmaki Makaurau.

A third-generation Gujarati Indian New Zealander, Bhuthadia’s family has lived in Aotearoa since 1919, the year his grandfather immigrated. In 2009 he achieved an Honours degree in Product Design at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) — a background he applies to his creative work around placemaking, activations and pop-up events. Although he refers to his practice as “making and designing things and building them,” he draws from a wide range of interests and skills to realise community engagement projects and public art installations, often in collaboration with Asian creatives in Tāmaki and across Aotearoa.

Since 2014, Bhuthadia has worked under The Open Fort with business partner Toby Falconer, as the company’s Director of Creativity and Director of Play, respectively. Operating in the corporate, education and public sectors, particularly through Auckland Council and its subsidiaries, the duo deliver workshops, networking events, activations, and public space transformations.

STEM Alliance Aotearoa praised their creation of a courtyard artwork at Monte Cecilia Catholic School in Auckland’s Mount Roskill in 2024. The design, which features hopscotch, a pegboard and other practical patterns and grids, encourages teachers and students to take their mathematics lessons into the playground. Out of numerous design and placemaking highlights, Bhuthadia has singled out two sustainable pop-up mini golf courses, which were constructed from up-cycled materials and installed inside of the Silos on Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter in 2014.

Bhuthadia’s working style is highly collaborative and social, with an open reliance on creative communities and “collaboration with a lot of other creatives as well: artists, designers ... actors and prop makers.” The values behind his practice move across three ‘scales’: Self – Others – Place. “If you are at peace or accountable with yourself, you’re more likely to [be] open to engage with others ... [If] others are engaging in a healthy way, then you engage with place in a healthy way.”

The product design process also informs his practice by encompassing “how things are made, the thinking process behind it and the wider systems the product functions within and has an impact on.” Bhuthadia sees this as essential to countering the disruption of Covid-19 on communities, industries and businesses, through to the creation of “projects and opportunities for people to express and decompress themselves.”

Between graduating as a designer and co-founding The Open Fort, Bhuthadia established #scribbleAKL, a creative conversations community which he has produced and hosted more than 150 events for in New Zealand and Australia. More recently, he has organised creative gatherings like The SOY Joy Social, a ‘start of year’ hang-out space based around make-your-own milkshakes and soyshakes, as well as an end-of-year equivalent for freelancers and contractors in Tāmaki Makaurau.

In the performing arts, Bhuthadia is an active participant on Asian-led projects and initiatives, having contributed set design and construction for theatre productions such as Tea (Ahi Karunaharan, 2018), I Am Rachel Chu (Nathan Joe, 2019) and Boom Shankar (Bala Murali Shingade and Aman Bajaj, 2023). He also frequently supports Prayas Theatre productions and collaborates with producer Sums Selvarajan. Alongside Selvarajan, he was accepted into ArtVenture in 2015, a year-long acceleration programme for entrepreneurs working in the Auckland creative sector.

In 2018 and 2024, as part of the Asian Aotearoa Arts programmes, he teamed up with designer and animator Abhi Topiwala for two semi-permanent art installations on the windows of the Great India restaurant on Manners Street in Te Aro, Pōneke. The latest iteration both presents (as window decals) and animates (through AR technology) design motifs based on Indian raw ingredients and spices.

Bhuthadia is a trustee on the board for Objectspace, an Auckland art gallery dedicated to design, craft and architecture practice.

Oryza portrait — a micro-documentary on Bhavesh Bhuthadia

The Open Fort

#scribbleAKL

2024, 2018 — Bhoj Bhavan, in collaboration with Abhi Topiwala and Asian Aotearoa Arts, Great India Restaurant, Pōneke

2024 — Courtyard artwork, Monte Cecilia Catholic School, Mount Roskill, Tāmaki Makaurau

2020 — Delusions of Canute, in collaboration with Margaret Lewis, corner of Fort Street and Jean Batten Place, Tāmaki Makaurau

2014 — Pop-Up Mini Golf, Silo Park, Wynyard Quarter, Tāmaki Makaurau