The Indian architecture scene is booming with new and innovative ideas. These seven contemporary Indian architects are changing the face of India’s architecture as we know it. They all have their own unique style, but they’re all pushing the boundaries of what can be done in architecture and design today. From eco-friendly projects to sustainable buildings, these designers are breaking down barriers and creating a better future for our world through their work.
Studio Mumbai
After a series of tragic family events, a young Bijoy Singh headed to America and later Europe. After spending years working and studying abroad, he returned to India to start his own studio. Since 1995 Studio Mumbai has created a body of work that spans both Indian and Western cultures.
Studio Mumbai uses a collaborative process to work with local craftsmen, designers, and artisans.
Rather than run a project-based practice, where all work is aimed at a specific project, the process at the studio is far more fluid, exploring ideas, materials, and forms with no specific purpose. This allows for space to explore.
Charged Voids
Chandigarh-based studio Charged Voids is lead by architect Aman Aggarwal. The architectural studio focuses on residential, commercial and hospitality design. Starting with a small group the studio has expanded to more than fifteen with the team filling various design roles. Charged Voids has won numerous awards both locally and internationally.
Neogenesis+Studi0261
Gujurat architects Neogenesis + Studio 0261 design both buildings and interiors.
Architects Chinmay Laiwala, Jigar Asarawala and Tarika Asarawala started NEOGENESIS+STUDI0261, in April 2011 and in the 10 years since, they have designed and built a considerable number of projects.
They describe themselves as ‘a dynamic and evolving practice with a commitment to the inherent value of design to enhance the quality of life at all levels of exposure. In all of our works, we strive to create an authentic “sense of place”. The nexus of architecture, contemporary culture and current technology is the constant focus of our endeavors’.
We love the playful nod to midcentury modernism, rich materials, and stark concrete.
Architecture BRIO
Lead by Shefali Balwani and Robert Verrijt, Architecture BRIO has studios in both Mumbai and Rotterdam. Inspired by the late Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, the duo went on to launch Architecture BRIO. In the words of the architects, “the work searches for a delicate balance between architecture as the act of disappearance and creating characterful, responsive, and experiential environments”.
The practice has won a number of awards for its projects both locally and internationally.
Khosla Associates
Based in Bangalore this architectural and interiors design studio was established by Sandeep Khosla in 1995.
It’s a versatile studio covering a wide range of projects. From residential tropical to minimal institutional.
Now headed by Amaresh Anand and Sandeep Khosla, the firm designs a variety of projects from residential to hospitality and institutional. Khosla Associates’ distinct tropical residential-style has seen them win projects throughout India and helped them win over 30 local and international design and architecture awards.
Wallpaper UK listed the firm as one of India’s most innovative architectural studios.
sP+A
Sameep Padora & Associates has been winning awards every year since 1997.
The studio takes a multifaceted approach to each project, and their philosophy is outlined themselves below
“As a practice, we at sP+a believe that India’s vast breadth of socio-cultural environments requires multifarious means of engaging with the country’s varying contexts. Type, Program, Design, and Building processes are subservient to the immediacy of each project’s unique frame of reference. The studio’s approach hence is to look to context as a repository of latent resources connecting production processes and networks, appropriating techniques beyond their traditional use while allowing them to evolve and persist not just through preservation but more so through evolution. Our practice questions the nostalgia involved with the static ‘museumification’ of craft and tradition as well as the nature of what today comprises the ‘regional’ in contexts amplified by their place in global and regional networks. This attitude enables the practice to look at traditional project types, projecting their formal/relational history within the paradigms of current socio-economic forces. The studio structure actively engages with research, collaborations, and collective models of practice not as isolated individual formats but as symbiotic streams feeding into each other. We advocate this hybrid model as an alternative to the traditional architectural practice, believing that this enables us to respond to the specificity of the local by evolving methodologies of extreme subjectivity”.
Matheroo associates
Based in Ahmedabad, India, this studio has produced some of India’s most notable brutalist buildings.
Founded by Gurjit Singh Matharoo in 1992 the firm has gone on to win numerous local and international awards. The studio covers a wide range of design disciplines from architectural to automotive.
The design philosophy of the studio can clearly be seen in their architectural work and this clarity of vision is why they are included here.
“We believe in a clear emphasis of functionality and services, in exercising an extreme restraint whenever designing and using natural exposed materials where sunlight becomes the only embellishment as it varies and changes through the day and across the seasons. Our buildings are designed to be discovered; as one moves through them they unfold around one’s body to reveal their secrets and meanings over time and over spatial layers”.
Indian architects are being recognized for their contributions to the world of architecture. It has been shaped by many influences, and it reflects India’s history, culture and changing landscapes. To keep up to date on all that’s happening around Asia in the world of design, architecture and art do subscribe to our mailing list below.
