Sanjay Puri Architects

At 18, Sanjay Puri was working with architect Hafeez Contractor while attending the Academy of Architecture, Mumbai. Puri stayed with the firm throughout college and another four years after that before starting his practice, Sanjay Puri Architects, along with wife Nina Puri in Mumbai in 1992. Today, he has a team of 72 people working on diverse projects in 35 cities in

India and overseas in Australia, Oman and Spain. The firm’s annual revenue is between `8 crore and `9 crore. 

Puri’s design philosophy is to “keep it contextual, and yet do something that is pathbreaking and unique to experience”.

Ishatvam 9, a building in Ranchi, is a landmark project that won the firm many accolades for its radical design. “Every room of every apartment opens into 24-feet-high terraces,” says Puri.

The firm was also awarded the World Architecture Festival Award for the Best Housing of the Year 2018 in Amsterdam for an 800-room hostel with an organic layout made with a small budget in Mathura.

Sustainable practices are implemented while exploring spaces in a way that has not been done before. Aria Hotel in Nashik, half made with natural black basalt stone, is energy efficient due to its naturally lit and ventilated spaces. Fifty percent of the overall energy consumption is from solar panels.

The Prestige University in Indore is among the firm’s ongoing projects. It’s a 400,000 sq ft building with steps up from zero to four levels high. The entire building auditorium is steps, which transform into an open auditorium.

Because buildings contribute to a high amount of carbon emissions, Puri believes designers need to take a more sustainable approach to achieve high quality spaces. “Reducing the carbon footprint is a key aspect that everybody should take cognisance of,” he says. “You take inferences from what had been done in the past, but you do it in your own unique way.”

By Darielle Britto