Ranjit Sinh Associates(RSA) is an Architectural firm that prides itself on its commitment to design. They believe in handling a few selected projects at any particular time with specific attention to detail. Ranjit Sinh Associates was established in 1982 by Ranjit Sinh and Vandana Ranjit Sinh. Both of them are also Associate Architects at Kuenleg Professional Consultants, Bhutan, while Vandana Ranjit Sinh is also a Design Faculty at Kamla Raheja Institute of Architecture, Mumbai. They provide primary services in Architectural Planning and Design. They have extensive experience in hilly and uneven terrain site designs and they consider landscape as an important factor while designing. Their projects include townships, housing, institutional projects, training facilities, hotels, and homes. They have designed several homes in regions like Alibag and Khandala.
They also provide professional consultancy services along with architectural design in master planning, urban designing, structural and civil engineering, MEP, landscaping, and interior design. They believe in well researched, sustainable and local use of resources for their design.
Some of the iconic projects by Ranjit Sinh Associates are discussed below:-
1. Northpoint Centre of Learning, Khandala
Project type:- Institution
Location:- Rustic Highland, Khandala, Maharashtra
Site:- Irregularly shaped four-acre site on the north-facing bowl of Khandala hills.
The location of the site presents the aesthetic appearance of its surroundings, with the hillside immediately felt along its rear facades and distant views from within the rooms. The campus is planned as a series of terraces carved out and retained by basalt walls. The guestrooms are designed along steeper slopes with a common orientation to the vistas in front in the configuration of staggered clusters with gentler slopes, and larger flat areas for recreational activities like a tennis court and swimming pool. The built forms are lifted leaving the flat plateau-like landforms as gathering spaces and watercourses along the terrain making the building appear bridge-like.
The objective of the design was to promote an environment to enhance learning experiences, and opportunities for interaction to continuously foster and develop the collective skills of its participants. This interactive nature shapes the architecture of the campus in its semi-covered spaces and connections in between.
The entire campus has an air of ease and informality in all its spaces. To enhance the experience, all buildings of the campus are designed to respond to dramatic views. Over 25% of the buildings are semi-open interactive spaces. The route of movement affords constantly shifting viewpoints. The campus has a conference center, forty guestrooms, an administration building, a clubhouse with various facilities, two-holiday homes, a dean’s residence, and a craft center, along with the various outdoor and semi-outdoor meeting places that complete the campus.
2. Great Eastern Academy, Lonavala
Project type:- Institution(Maritime Institute)
Location:- Lonavala, Maharashtra
Programme:-
The objective of the design for the campus of Great Eastern Institute for Maritime Studies was to provide an environment to reflect the high standard of training offered to its employees through an enhanced learning experience. The campus includes an academic complex, marine engineering workshops, student residences, a dining and recreational complex, a parade ground and sports fields, housing for students and faculty.
Structure:-
The design presents buildings with a unified aesthetic appearance to its surroundings with the planning as clusters of buildings placed in the landscape reflecting the materials and colors of the basalt hills around. The cluster of buildings is wrapped around a core function like the swimming pool, the auditorium, a parade ground making the campus interactive with the core functions, semi-covered spaces, and connections between. The campus has an ordering sense of formality in all its spaces, while it has a unified robust architecture in form of basalt piers, concrete frames, trabeated panels, and nautical railings. About 25% of the built areas comprise semi-open interactive spaces.
3. Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan
Project type:- Institution
Location:- Ngabiphu, Thimphu, Bhutan
Project Collaboration:- Ar.Rajni Chavda & Gandhara Designs, Thimphu, Bhutan
RTC, Bhutan, is the first private educational campus in Thimphu under the Royal University of Bhutan. The campus is spread on a 25-acre meadow land set aside out of the forested hillside. The site slopes down gently towards the north meeting the road, the view on the north has an iconic 51-meter-high Buddha statue overlooking Thimphu, to the south the hills rise to snow-clad Dagula hills.
The buildings were designed to catch the southern winter sun, like the shape of an academic wing with the verandahs and glazed sun from the south inviting students to gather around. A football ground has been placed to act as the central focus to create interesting spaces with a cafeteria tucked below to minimize filling at one end. The buildings follow local language and identity providing a unique character to the whole. At the main entrance of the campus, there lies a Bhutanese tower, a symbol of the campus, and a place to meditate. The campus uses the fall of topography very interestingly, ending at the lower end with an auditorium with a roof that spreads like a moth and catches the winter sun in the foyer. The campus constantly readjusts the access levels to keep all areas barrier-free, while all flat areas of the site are carefully preserved to be used as playfields. Use of local materials like Gneiss, Dolep stone, and Pinewood is done wherever possible.
4. Fountainhead Leadership Centre, Edelweiss
Project type:- Institution
Location:- Alibaug, Maharashtra
Ranjit Sinh Associates designed Fountainhead, a center for Learning at Alibaug for the Edelweiss Group. The site location is such that it creates a view to encourage learning in an informal and easeful environment.
The campus is spread over 7 acres of land on two levels, the upper level had existing coconut trees and rocky outcrops while the lower level had been an old paddy field. The site was conceptualized as a green field with crop rotations, water channels, and coconut groves; wherein the buildings were tucked into the edges leaving the landscape as the heart of the experience.
The buildings are simple with an open concrete framework and carefully dressed local basalt stone.
The campus is built around a casual route of movement linking the various parts, the conferencing center, the dining and lounge areas with the pool, and the linear residential blocks with their interactive spaces. In the winter, the campus transforms into an art space with a walk linking displays and events.
5. The Woods
Project type:- Housing
Location:- Wakad, Pune
Ranjit Sinh Associates, always focusing on the landscape as their design consideration, has employed landscape as a strategic design tool, demarcating the open areas by size and scale and defining a hierarchy of domains from public areas to private spaces.
The master planning is done to provide landscape elements as a series of encounters starting from wooded Central Park with public amenities that include clubhouse, sport and leisure activities, gardens, etc.Beyond, an oblique arrangement of duplex city houses forms the neighborhood, Flora. These out-of-door spaces form the heart of each cluster, and every individual house is bound around two sides of a quiet private theater court. The city houses numerous variations which are piled in two layers and interlocked to optimize land use. Disposed of in a staggered configuration, each lodging is open to the theater on two or three sides that combine to form oblique clusters. While each lower house gets a theater court, the upper house enjoys a series of private sundecks.
A broad Crescent of apartments secures the complex from the outside, and angles so that each apartment gets a view of the central demesne. A stepped façade forms extensions with extended terraced auditoriums. The long swing of the façade was intended to carry shops and verdure across its length making a green background for the entire complex. As the land drops, it creates a green tribune for elderly citizens and children to play. A cul de sac with a galleria opens onto a convenience shopping hall.
At the far end of the point, where the land rises, are semi-detached terraced theater homes. Every avenue is planted with flowering trees and the structures are always endured against their background.
6. Kamakhaya Spa Retreat, Himachal Pradesh
Project type:- Hospitality
Location:- Mcleodganj, Himachal Pradesh
Collaboration:- AN Architects
The Dharamsala Spa Resort design was planned as a 100-bed hostel with an expansive gym and F&B options. The project was sited on a fairly steep hillside on old terraced fields, facing west across a deep vale to dramatic evening views. The focus of the design was the language of the figure which evolved from the original expression. Himachal has a rich tradition in largely machined and sophisticated architectural forms. Interestingly, the traditional armature has splendid examples of palace armature as also elaborate details for seismic zones.
While these informed the identity and language which we developed for the hostel structure, the seismic structural design played a crucial part in the way we understood and shaped its form. An intriguing point of the design is the way the entire hostel lifts down from the hillside. Abridging transmittal of seismic energy swells and segregates the structure. The design was grounded on hill houses, narrow and elongated, which step down the hillside indirectly; each room and restroom facing the evening lookouts. The skyline forms a series of night-lit lights which give the hostel a presence in the vast geography.
Dramatically, the entire structure is approached by a 30 cadence long ground linking it to the road on the hill over. The hostel is slightly visible from the road, seen as a series of slinging roofs, maintaining the low-rise profile of the conterminous vill; but from the timber below it’s seen rising, its windows reflecting the setting sun.
The design attempts to produce a sense of lightness. The façade is a tracery of veritably light rustic members creating rails, defenses, and patterns. The innards developed after careful exploration of the original life and culture, rich in color, wood cabinetry, and gravestone craft. The unique geography recreates the original timber around. The lower situations of the hostel, the swimming pool, and gym throw out machans and balconies amongst the pine trunks.
7. House III
Project type:- House
Location:- Khandala, Maharashtra
The point perches on a steep west-facing hillside with spectacular views to the west and north. Penetrated from the upper southeast corner, the house wraps itself around a yard which drops away to a rocky theater below and opens to views of the Khandala Ghats. The hillside is retained by a narrow kitchen sect. Two sword crossbars gauge across the yard to support the ground like a living room. The third sect holds the master bedroom and drops to other apartments and the yard beneath. The house continuously reconnects with the theater and yard outdoors in both situations. Veritably compact (2000sq.ft.) and erected with laterite gravestone and structural sword, the house employs many accouterments in its palette, The scale of the house is further broken by small pipe roofs folding over each section.
8. House VII
Project type:- House
Location:- Khandala, Maharashtra
The house was designed to grow out of the hill in categories, with each position opening out onto terraced auditoriums. The house is concentrated around a ground (family room) with staircases at either end with apartments opening off the wharf situations. The house is endured as a route of movement from the lower pitches up to the top of the hill. The apartments negotiate the hillside from the lower service areas up to the top-most silhouettes beyond the upper bedroom. Each room opens out onto terraced auditoriums. The dining and guest room, stake out over the cliff. The house has intriguing features like a library with a twisted concrete retaining wall which burrows in the hill face; external stairs and walks that link across the colorful sundecks; and eyries with overhanging sundecks. The experience from within the house feels like one is floating, with little reference to the ground.
The accouterments are chosen from an original palette and are designedly sheepish-deep green roofs, exposed concrete, kotah gravestone cladding, and basalt plinths. The only distinctive detailing is handed by the uproariousness of teakwood and citation anodized door and window panels. The structure is easily expressed as it rises out of the hill and suspends the house over. The tiered hipsterism roofs break down the scale of the house into a cluster of belvederes against the sky. The roofs float over deep shadowed eaves.
The approach road winds acutely over to a garage, where a graveled ramp leads to the yard and the entrance. The house opens at every position out onto the hillside forming an intimate connection with the geography. The steep winding approach road has been planted with millions of trees to cover the hillside and ultimately screen the base of the house, giving it a floating quality like a machaan.
9. House XV
Project type:- House
Location:- Alibaug, Maharashtra
House XV sits amidst an old mango estate. The flat terrain point is girdled by ranch lands on two sides and a quiet neighborhood. The layout of the mango estate and other evergreens paved a way for a cruciform plan of the house sitting at the center of the point affecting four landscaped areas. The two-storeyed structure houses the common and participated spaces on the ground bottom while the private spaces sit on the first. Utmost of the private spaces open into participating spaces like galleries, yards, balconies, and sundecks. The living room forms a pavilion detached from the main house, with a connecting chine used as a party sundeck. The sundeck manifests as a yard by late afterlife girdled by the house on three sides, with an immense tamarind tree to the south. At the fulcrum of the house is a cantilevered staircase enclosed by glass facades on two sides, therefore, facilitating a visual connection throughout the house.
10. House II
Project type:- House
Location:- Alibagh, Maharashtra
The House is sited along a thunderstorm watercourse, amongst a copse of Khair trees. The design locates two belvederes at an angle on the land, with the living areas on one side and bedrooms on the other. Galleries housing the entrance, hallway, and dining hold the house together; with the open kitchen forming the focus of the house (the proprietor is an avaricious epicure). The timber and the profile of the hills before are constantly endured from the different corridors of the house. A concrete frame expresses the structure and is sheathed in panels of laterite. The roofs are raw galvalume wastes laid over thin concrete. Double shuttered teak wood doors, windows, and panels with louver infills complete the palette. The house settles into the geography privately. Across the watercourse is a theater kiosk with a free-form swimming pool, the vegetable theater, and estate with a walking track linking the whole.
