Diversity, Destiny & Design

We share an insatiable passion for creation… to be able to breathe life into ideas in the form of habitable spaces,” says BarunPatro, who along with ShijuPareed and SekarDhandapani, co-founded Amar Architecture and Designs Pvt Ltd, an award-winning comprehensive architectural design and interior consultancy.

Their journey has been of diversity and destiny. While pursuing their architectural education, they gained experience in building and design, working on a side hustle in the workshop headed by Dhandapani. This helped them become seasoned professionals while they were students. Fresh out of college, they collaborated to establish their firm, Amar, meaning immortal in Sanskrit. “Our inspiration has always been a vision that we will create a design legacy that is bigger than all of us together,” says Pareed. Today they have three studio offices in Chennai, Bhubaneswar and Kozhikode, with more than 100 employees, and over 600 completed projects across five countries.

Each of the three directors has a different personality, style and approach to design, and they are all loyal and committed to work. Every new project has one identified project lead, while the rest are advisors, which has proved to be a successful mantra in their journey. They also empower their younger teams to lead projects and recognise their efforts. “We have well-defined policies and structure in our organisation that give us uniformity among our teams and helps us grow steadily,” says Dhandapani.

Design to them is the art of storytelling via scientific knowledge, material application and spatial experiences, a power to manifest an idea into reality. This is evident in their wide array of projects across residential, hospitality, health care and commercial sectors, including Zaman Villa in Vadakara, New Yorkers restaurant in Chennai and Metro International Cardiac Center in Calicut to name a few.

Instead of competition, they believe in collaboration, and want to create opportunities for the same. They consciously want to encourage students, designers, vendors and clients to practise design with a more sustainable approach and adapt more technology.

By Kamayni