75 Names To Know In Indian Design: The City Sculptors

An advocate for urban sustainability, she has worked with the World Economic Forum on the Reciprocal Design Index and currently works as an independent director and urban expert for the Chennai Smart City initiative.

Hafeez Contractor

Perhaps the most famous starchitect of our times, Hafeez Contractor has single-handedly sculpted the skylines of India’s mega-metropolises. A strong advocate for the “vertical growth” of cities, he has spent much of his career perfecting the modern skyscraper starting in Mumbai with the iconic buildings at Hiranandani Gardens in Powai to the soaring Imperial Towers in Tardeo. Founded in 1982, his firm is one of the largest in India with prestigious projects that range from state-sanctioned stadiums and airports to townships and business parks for real estate giants like DLF. In 2016, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan.

Noshir Talati

With a portfolio that spans over five decades, Noshir Talati is a Mumbai icon with countless interior and architecture projects ranging from education and healthcare to hospitality, residential and commercial spaces across the country and the Middle East. After training from the Rachana Sansad in Mumbai and the University of Michigan, Talati began his practice out of a simple 100-square-foot office and now boasts of over 300 employees. His streamlined designs with a focus on function over form include the immediately recognisable Ceejay House, Jindal Mansion and the Palais Royale in Mumbai.

Shashi Prabhu

Shashi Prabhu set up his firm in 1969 and quickly rose to the top with iconic projects like the Wankhede Stadium in 1972 and the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in 1982. Prabhu believes that recreation and leisure are central to urban lifestyles and some of his best works include the refurbishment of famous Mumbai institutions like the Garware Club House, the Willingdon Sports Club and the MCA Recreation Centre.

From the early 1980s, he has also focused much of his practice on Mumbai’s healthcare infrastructure by designing state-of-the-art buildings such as the Lilavati hospital in Bandra, the Thane Municipal Hospital and the extension for the H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital in Girgaon.

Prem Nath

Prem Nath has often said his rags to riches story is made for cinema—he dreamed of becoming a famous architect on construction sites where his mother worked as a daily wager in the early 1950s. He likens himself as the “Amitabh Bachchan” of architecture, but his work goes beyond creating celebrity homes on Juhu Beach and spans several iconic high-rises, IT Parks, residential townships malls and multiplexes. He is also credited for creating India’s first revolving restaurant at the Ambassador Hotel in Mumbai.

His son Bimal, who was awarded the Padma Shri in 2019, has since taken over the firm and is presently working on some of the largest projects in the country including the Parliament House and Central Vista Transformation in the capital, the Mumbai Port Complex, the Jaipur International Airport and the Vishwanath Dham in Varanasi.

Satish Gujral

Satish Gujral was only eight when he lost his hearing and was encouraged to pursue the arts by his father who enrolled him at the Mayo School of Art in Lahore. The artist, who passed away at the age of 94 in 2020, is known for portraits of some of the most famous leaders including Lala Lajpat Rai, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and VK Krishna Menon as well as his his murals at the the Punjab Agricultural University, Delhi High Court, Shastri Bhawan and the World Trade Centre in New York. The Padma Vibhushan awardee worked across several artistic mediums and even took on architecture when he designed the striking Belgian Embassy in Delhi, for which he was honoured with the Belgian Order of the Crown.

Under Martand’s leadership, the firm’s projects range from eco-friendly mud architecture and low-cost housing to large-scale projects like the Indian Embassy in Uzbekistan, corporate interiors for Goldman Sachs and high-end private residences and villas.
 

Narayan and Prem Chandavarkar

Set up in 1947, CnT Architects is one of the earliest family-run practices in Bangalore— founded by Narayan Chandavakar and his wife Tara, it is currently led by their son Prem. The firm’s history goes back to creating the earliest corporate buildings like the HMT campus in Hyderabad as well as IT parks like the first Infosys Campus in Bangalore. At present, Prem, who also has also served as the former Executive Director of the Srishti Institute of Art Design & Technology in Bangalore, is working on the Sai Life Sciences Campus in Hyderabad as well as the IIM in Tiruchirappalli.

With a background in sustainable environmental design, urban housing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in architecture, they take on a host of large-scale projects like the Infosys Campus in Nagpur that’s designed to be “net zero on energy, water and waste to landfill". Earlier this year, it was reported that the firm’s real estate arm will invest 100 crores to develop commercial spaces in Okhla.

For the Hotel at Bodh Gaya in Bihar, Kadri worked almost exclusively with bricks to create arches and vaults as a tribute to the nearly two millennia-old brick-making practices of the region.

Puri also believes his forte lies in energy-efficient practices to promote sustainability.

For instance, at a recently completed private home in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, Puri and his team have worked almost exclusively with locally sourced bricks, sandstone and lime plaster and created systems for rainwater harvesting and installed solar panels in response to the extreme desert climate and terrain.

Apart from urban planning and architecture, Ramachandran also dabbles in filmmaking. In 2008, he produced a documentary, directed by his brother Premjit, on the Pritzker Prize winner and iconic architect B.V. Doshi, whom he interned with way back in 1995. 

The duo spends much of their time researching sustainable practices with a special focus on optimising natural light, green cover and ventilation as seen in the House of Stories, a private residence with floors made in concrete, cleverly designed louvers for ventilation, slits for skylights and a provision for rainwater collection on the roof.  

Abin Chaudhuri

Abin Chaudhuri set up his practice in Kolkata in the early 2000s after earning an architecture degree from Jadavpur University and studying industrial design at the Domus Academy in Milan. His firm dabbles in diverse projects ranging from the International Management Institute in Bhubaneshwar and the Kolkata Partition Museum to the headquarters of Bandhan Bank’s headquarters in New Town, Kolkata and The Sanctuary, a luxurious residential project designed between two golf courses. 

Chaudhuri grew up in Bansberia, just outside Kolkata, and has since returned to the suburban township for some of his most inspired work like the Gallery House, a multipurpose community centre built for the locals in rust-red terracotta bricks inspired by the burnt brickwork of 200-year-old Ananta Basudeva temple nearby. Traditional Bengali architectural forms and techniques of West Bengal  mostly uses brick and timber.

Alfaz Miller

A graduate of the Sir JJ College of Architecture, Alfaz Miller honed his skills working for Mumbai veterans T. Khareghat and Dilawar Noorani. Miller got his big break in 1989 when he was commissioned to restore the ANZ Grindlay’s heritage office in Fort, Mumbai. Some of his bigger interior design projects include designing lounges at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Airport in Mumbai and the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru, hotels for Taj and Marriott across the country as well as private offices for industrialists like Ratan Tata. He presently works with his daughter Aahana and he’s married to artist Brinda Miller.

Rajeev Sethi

Rajeev Sethi is a self-styled scenographer, but his legacy goes far beyond into the realms of design thinking, art and craft activism and preservation, interior design, and art curation. An icon among icons, Sethi has been mentored by the likes of S.W. Hayter, Ray and Charles Eames, Pierre Cardin, Pupul Jayakar, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, and Habib Tanvir. A Padma Bhushan awardee, Sethi has spent much of his life advocating for craftspeople and advising the central government on welfare of cottage industries.

His biggest project to date is the curation and creation of “Jaya He” museum at the T2 terminal at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport – a whirlwind showcase of over 7,000 art objects, including antiques procured from 27 states as well over 100 commissioned contemporary art works.
 

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