Architecture

More Than Meets the Eye

November 23, 2021

With a firm strength of 72 team members, evolving design solutions that are contextual and creating spaces that revolutionize the way they are experienced form the essence of Sanjay Puri Architects in Mumbai, India. Founding his firm when he was only 27, Sanjay revealed at an interview that reading Fountainhead at the age of 16 motivated him to become an architect.

Fast forward to the present, Sanjay Puri Architects is a firm that has won over 100 international awards that include eight World Architecture Festival awards, five Architizer New York Awards and others. Though he and his firm have won plenty of awards, Sanjay credits winning a 54-acre master-planning project with detailed designs of apartments, schools, shopping centers and recreational facilities at the age of 27 the milestone that allowed him to fly solo.

Focusing on master planning, hospitality, residential, offices, retail, interior design, educational and cultural projects, Sanjay and his team’s design ideas are fueled by the quest to create contextual design solutions that question precedents and evolve new spatial relationships.

“We make a conscious effort not to have a signature style. The predominant common factor in our design is that of being discernibly sculptural. In that common vein, the Aria Hotel, which was recently completed is unique and iconic to us at Sanjay Puri Architects,” said Sanjay.

The site for this hotel is gently contoured rising up 9 metres towards the south with the entry at the lowest level in the north. Situated in the wine growing region of India, the north faces a large river and a dam with hills beyond. The southern side rises up into hills in close proximity to the site. The client‘s requirements included a large banquet hall of 15,000 sq ft in addition to 60 rooms and other facilities.

The rooms at the higher level are oriented to face the river in the north or the immediate hills in the south with open circulation spaces and naturally ventilated and skylit courtyards. Each level of the hotel is integrated with the natural contours of the site, minimizing land cutting and landfill. Over fifty percent of the walls are built with natural black basalt stone. All the circulation spaces are naturally lit and ventilated rendering the building energy efficient.

Solar panels on the rooftop, over the banquet kitchen and parking areas generate fifty percent of the electrical energy required for the hotel. Rainwater harvesting tanks, with water recycling and reusing further add to the sustainable methods adopted for the design of this hotel. All the rooms, restaurant, spa and banquets open into sheltered balconies and decks that provide outdoor usable spaces whilst minimizing the heat gain into the internal volumes.

Aria Hotel is designed contextually, responding to the site contours, the views of the surroundings, the climate and the materials creating a web of experiences within its different volumes. This hotel is contextual to the site‘s location, climate and the client‘s brief, amalgamating them cohesively.

For more information please visit www.sanjaypuriarchitects.com

Ar Sanjay Puri  

Moved by the book The Fountainhead written by Ayn Rand, Sanjay Puri became an architect and is today known for creating designs that are revolutionary. Setting up his own firm at the young age of 27, Sanjay who has won over 100 international awards, also became the first Indian architect to be included in the judging panel of the World Architecture Festival in 2010.

AFTER HOURS

What’s your poison?
Red Wine or Espresso Shot
Favourite hangout spot?
Goa
The place to go for authentic local cuisine?
Streets of Mumbai

THE JETSETTER

Most memorable stay?
Sveti Stefan Aman Resort, Montenegro
Biggest splurge?
Italian Shoes
Your holiday fashion?
Leather Jacket (for vacations in cold climate)