Architects often put great efforts into creating intricately detailed and beautifully crafted offices for themselves – an epitome of creativity and values of their practice. Creating and designing one’s own office and firm usually is given great importance by an architect, since it symbolizes their practice and their design ideology. India has quite a few beautifully designed offices of architecture firms. Read on to look at some of them briefly, some quite reminiscent of the architecture firm’s design ethos.
1. HCP, Ahmedabad
The architecture firm’s office, in the Paritosh building, is an exposed concrete building that sits on the banks of the River Sabarmati in Ahmedabad. The design studios are located on the top two floors, with sweeping views of the city below.
2. Vastu Shilpa, Sangath
As the office describes it in their own words “Sangath Campus integrates. Memories of places visited collide. They merge in the landscape, evoke, and connect forgotten episodes…. is an ongoing school where one learns, unlearns and relearns”. A beautiful merging of landscape, nature, and the built, it is an office worth paying a visit to.
3. Biome
The office allows for a design where space is visually connected across various levels – important to the design practice that Biome follows- where everyone contributes to each other’s designs through critique and sharing of ideas. The workplace also overlooks the foliage for a wonderful diversion from work when needed.
4. Kakani Associates
This architecture firm is a simplistic but intricately crafted building and workspace created from brick, in the center of the city, along a leafy boulevard. It has creatively made louvered windows and screen protected openings for ventilation, overlooking the green foliage of the trees around.
5. BetweenSpaces
The architecture firm’s studio is located in a residential area in the South of Bangalore. It sits atop the residence of one of the architects’ houses. It is spread over two levels – the studio space is visually connected by the double-height space over the waiting area.
6. Indigo-architects
“The design strategy employed in the studio is a reflection of our desire to function in an environment where we could be ourselves. In effect, this is the antithesis of the corporate functional and aesthetic ‘monoculture’ that we find it difficult to relate to…A quite inward-looking work environment was created to selectively cut out the happenings outside” as described by the firm themselves.
7. Laurie Baker
The architecture firm’s studio sits amongst trees, on top of a hilltop with the entrance steps going up its rocky and steep side. Built with natural materials, it seems to have ‘grown out of the earth’ and sits across Laurie Baker’s house.
8. CCBA
The CCBA office in Pune, called India House is a structure that has been conceptually derived from a traditional urban prototype called a ‘Wada’ in Pune – which forms the urban fabric of the old city, where they enclose central courtyards, from where one moves into activity zones for various social, cultural and occupational activities. These central courtyards also facilitate movement, air circulation, and give privacy to structures facing chaotic urban streets.
9. Stapati
The Stapati office in Calicut is a simplistically designed structure of brick, concrete, and steel. “Stapati’s architecture emerges from a sensitive understanding of the context; one where the evolution of design is firmly rooted in the region’s traditional narratives, while interpreting the elements in a modern context.”
10. Auroville Earth Institute
Built for the Auroville Foundation with only a minimum cost amount, the institute’s main building is built with stabilized earth CSEB and rammed earth, with vaults of various shapes and spans using the free spanning technique.
11. Dharmalaya
“The Dharmalaya Institute is an innovative educational and charitable institution” in Himachal Pradesh. Started by Didi Contractor, the Institute offers an integrated program of experiential learning, economic empowerment, traditional wisdom, and volunteer service, with the structure amid nature, truly connecting to its surroundings.
12. Pratyush Shankar
The firm’s studio in Baroda is a pavilion-like structure that responds to the horizons through the raised courtyard. It has a light sloping roof and basalt stone masonry retaining walls – to create a space for reflective thinking and collaborative work.
13. Matharoo Associates
The architecture firm’s office has been built on a plot of land a little outside Ahmedabad, and the concrete structure itself forms the enclosure. The office is contained within two parallel walls with large openings—‘’both of which are covered by galvanized steel-sheet louvers, which can be calibrated to control the daylight. The rest is occupied by greenery, and, at the front, the pool,” with nature surrounding the office.
14. Hunnarshala
The Hunnarshala campus in Gujarat is an amalgamation and a contribution from several master artisans and architects. The campus is described as “symphony captures the spontaneity and diversity of an Indian bazaar; the campus explores earth, wood and stone and several interpretations of climate and solar passive architecture”.
15. Flying Elephant Studio
The architecture firm’s office is located in Bangalore, in a green layout in the locality of Banaswadi. It sits in a beautifully repurposed structure with arched entryways and pitched roofs, giving the studio a well-lit and airy feel.
