Akshay Kahul and Associates is an Indian architecture practice that is engaged and successful working in the diverse disciplines of architecture including landscaping, master planning, sustainable planning, and urban planning.
The practice is founded by Akshay Kaul who has received Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York, Syracuse, USA.
His practice is specialized in the disciplines of ecological master planning, and urban regeneration. Here below, we will see the 15 interdisciplinary projects by the practice in brief that are found in different parts of India.
1. Athwajan Stone Quarry Park
Location- Srinagar, Jammu, and Kashmir, India
Type- Master plan
A quarry park was a place of despair, hopelessness, and a high rate of unemployment and radicalization amongst the youth for the last 30 years. The site gets flooded sometimes due to the lowered ground level as of the quarrying activity. Akshay Kaul & Associates have successfully strived to create a landscape that potentially can deal and cope up with the disastrous flooding in regenerating and redirecting the mountain slopes in a way they can get a restored landscape. Detention ponds were applied and guided to tackle from the highway and the nearby parking lot. Moreover, the quarrying site has gained benchmark communal activities, and native delicious trees to promote urban wilderness, site regeneration, and creation of yoga, meditation, healing, and contemplation spacious spaces.
2. Government Primary School
Location- Gulab Bagh, Jammu, and Kashmir, India
Type- Institution
The Akshay Kaul & Associates has developed a record time finished two-story and an exposed brick rendered government primary school project with a five-room educational facility. The school has an outdoor morning students assembly terrace on the first floor and five classes with a 15-20 students capacity. Qazi Qamar was the project resident architect and structural inputs coordinator who helped the building be completed in a very short period of time.
3. Jhulelal Tirathdham: Sindhi Cultural Centre
Location- Kutch, India
Type- Institution
Jhulelal Tirthdham is a religious complex and the so-called ‘Vatican for Sindhis’ located 100km across the border from Pakistan’s Sindh province in between two ancient Hindu religious sites: the Shiva Temple of Koteshwar and Narayan Sarovar. The first phase of one of the 100-acre plot beautiful temple complex shrining the community’s presiding deity Jhulelal. The main idea of Akshay Kaul & Associates is to project a space to unite and celebrate social occasions of the Sindhi community with an ultimate aim to restore the brink of losing Sindhis identity by providing a more belonging and means of honor shrine.
4. Garden of Great Arc
Location- Dehradun, India
Type- Master Plan
Akshay Kaul & Associates have proposed and planned a penetrating axial urban park that could celebrate the famous tale of The Great Arc within the natural matrix of the Survey of India Site in Dehradun. By taking the metaphoric aspects of surveyors from the southern tip of the Indian Peninsula to the Northern Himalayas and the story of the Great Arc, the practice has created a North-South linear setup for the design of the park along with triangulated pathways, and sculptures depicting the story of the great arc.
5. Tata Energy Research Institute
Location- Delhi, India
Type- Master plan
Tata energy research institute project is Akshay Kaul & Associates’ master plan proposal for the closed competition design for TERI in Delhi. The main aim of the proposal was to enhance and promote the environmental character of this larger land.
6. Shilim Eco Resort
Location- Pune, Maharashtra, India
Type- Landscape
Akshay Kaul & Associates collaborated with architects and landscape architects from the US to create a sustainable development manual specifying the understanding of diverse landscape types on the Shilim eco resort’s 2500acre land. The project plans to enhance the Shilim’s natural aspects through measures for water conservation through gully plugs, dams, ponds, and enhancing the quality of the wildlife corridor.
7. The Serai – SUJAN
Location- Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India
Type- Architecture
Akshay Kaul & Associates have been involved in the Serai- SUJAN project from its inception in selecting the site from a larger 50-acre parcel for master planning, landscape, and architecture design. Serai translated to the temporary cities of the caravans of the nobles and the project spreads over 25 acres of land containing a luxury tented safari resort with a spa, organic farm, and poultry. The desert horizon and vista is a privileged view occupant entertain from the elevated swimming pool. The landscape consists of grasses, acacias, and thorny vegetation reflecting the biodiversity of the landscape’s wilderness.
8. Sadhika Farm House
Location- New Delhi, India
Type- Architecture
The Sadhika farmhouse one-acre residence project by Akshay Kaul & Associates is divided into three parts, agrarian, cattle farm, and the actual residence. The project aims to redesign the existing landscape that has some issues regarding water accumulation, grey water discharge, and characterless landscape. The Akshay Kaul & Associates has intensively worked with a limitation of keeping the existing structures and elements of the former landscape. It is clearly seen that the practice has used the landscape in the design concept to celebrate and integrate rainwater harvesting in a way every drop could fall in the garden of the farmhouse.
9. Ravi Nanda Farm
Location- New Delhi, India
Type- Landscape
Ravi Nanda farm by Akshay Kaul & Associates is a place for people who live as a joint family. The designed house and landscape has followed the principles in Vastu Shastra, a traditional Indian system of architecture, in addition to the integration of environmental concerns with the native system of design. A diverse pallet of plants was introduced to the farm and the garden to help restore the water and ecological cycle, insect life, and the landscape eye pleasant features. The application of agrarian features on the landscape has been kept for herb uses in line with the in folks of traditional medicine.
10. Honeycomb Society
Location- Peddamangalaram, Hyderabad, India
Type- Housing
The honeycomb society housing project by Akshay Kaul & Associates is a large mass two-story residence project that consists of 26 apartments and two distinct service buildings. Having a central circular focal point or grand ‘courtyard’, the arrangement of houses follow radial-looking flanks of the site. The area has adopted water features to initiate and re-render the feelings of natural habitation and habitable landscape.
11. Oxirich Sanskriti Housing
Location- Bhiwadi, Rajasthan, India
Type- Housing
Oxirich Sanskriti housing is a mass housing project that consists of two high rise buildings and an inner one side narrow and one side wide landscape and urban courtyard. The housing consists of amenities including a gymnasium, swimming pool, children play area, club house, sports facility, intercom, 24×7 security, jogging track, power backup, landscaped gardens, indoor games, exclusive rooftop club, lawn tennis and squash, CCTV camera, open to air amphitheater, Jacuzzi, health club with steam and sauna, low maintenance solar lighting system for ornamental landscaped areas, executive club and banquet facilities, 24×7 clean and purified water supply, ornamental water bodies complementing fountain areas, and dedicated sports area to house coaching centers for cricket. Photos
12. Wellness Center
Location- Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Type- Architecture
The wellness center project in Telangana, India by Akshay Kaul & Associates has nine different circular zonings and thick populated vegetation. The center consists of driveways, bio-swale for storm-water management, bamboo grove landscape, and a drop off the golf cart.
13. Hemant Bharatram Farm
Location- New Delhi, India
Type- Infrastructure
Hemant Bharat Ram Farm by Akshay Kaul & Associates is a farm planned in a complex fusion of circular zonings. The farm has one prominent farmhouse, water features, and a vast landscape. The site has a central Soyer space circulated with a curve moving black and wooden pergolas. The large farmhouse is characterized by planar orientation, linear arrangement, and overpassing overhead planes, and a wooden pergola that shades circulation stair and calms down the place’s warmth.
14. Connecting Delhi Water System
Location- New Delhi, India
Type- Infrastructure
In planning for the Delhi water system connection, Akshay Kaul & Associates has intensively studied the buried and disjointed drainage patterns and systems of the Indian megapolis. The plan includes the study of New Delhi’s ecological subdivisions, fragmented Urban spaces, and the basic urban ecosystems. The proposed Delhi water system connection has considered the Irrigation water quality and crop management for enhanced use and application of Delhi’s water resources.
15. Shreyas Retreat
Location- Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Type- Infrastructure
Shreyas retreat by Akshay Kaul & Associates is a yoga resort that has a landscape designed to stand in harmony with natural systems and processes with water as the starting point for master planning and design. The 22 acres yoga resort in the outskirts of Bangalore city, besides, has 5 acres of organic farming, pavilions, and deck spaces for guests around the water pond and the stretching landscape. The resort’s kitchen uses organic supplies from the nearby organic farm in which the guests are privileged to work in the edible landscape as a part of their stay.
