Home - Sameep Padora and Associates

“I Want to Create Values That Are Perceptible”

AZURE Magazine features a conversation with Sameep Padora.

Sameep Padora in conversation with Ekta Morcha, from Hindustan Times

Lal Dera: The Contemporary, at Jio World Convention Centre

Cloth architecture was among the most dramatic and colourful paraphernalia of princely life in the medieval world. Vast tented encampments accompanied the great monarchs of Asia and Europe on their long wars, vacations and pilgrimages. Portable, and often highly decorative, palaces of cloth afforded to the imperial entourages not only shelter and security but also the comfort and beauty to which they were accustomed. A magnificent example of medieval textile architecture is the historic Lal Dera, ‘red tent’ of Jodhpur (Marwar). It remains as the largest of all decorative objects to have survived from the Mughal era.

Sameep Padora appointed as Dean at the CEPT University

India's premier architecture and planning institute, the Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology (CEPT) has announced our principal Sameep Padora as its new Dean.

Diversity is our biggest strength, we are a country where food, language, clothing changes every 200 km

Sameep Padora in conversation with First Post

(de)Coding Mumbai

18 Graphical Case Studies of the City’s Building Codes

(de)coding Mumbai documents the development of Mumbai’s housing fabric through the evolution of building and development codes. From the first regulations emerging as a panacea for the plague of 1896 to building codes today that do not consider the health of the inhabitants, it seems that the city of Mumbai has come full circle. Along the way in the last 100 years, different regimes, actors and their preoccupations have shaped the regulations for housing in the city of Mumbai. These regulations in turn shape the housing and urban form of the city impacting directly the lives of its residents.

18 Graphical Case Studies of the City’s Building Codes

(de)coding Mumbai documents the development of Mumbai’s housing fabric through the evolution of building and development codes. From the first regulations emerging as a panacea for the plague of 1896 to building codes today that do not consider the health of the inhabitants, it seems that the city of Mumbai has come full circle. Along the way in the last 100 years, different regimes, actors and their preoccupations have shaped the regulations for housing in the city of Mumbai. These regulations in turn shape the housing and urban form of the city impacting directly the lives of its residents.

Read more / Schedule

Temple of Steps

In 2020 Sameep Padora & Associates completed the design of the Balaji Temple in Andhra Pradesh. A stepped temple for the residents of villages around Nandyal that marries the socio-cultural expectations with the ecological framework and dynamics of the site.

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2021

Temple of Steps: The shortlist for the Wallpaper* Design Award for Best New Public Building 2021 includes world-leading culture, community and infrastructure spaces

Sienna Apartment at Hyderabad

The site for a small apartment building located in the Jubilee Hills checkpost area of Hyderabad city offered vantage views of the city and of the adjoining park. Hyderabad is one of the early movers amongst cities in India that used form based coding to structure the construction of new buildings. The client approached us to work on the building post obtaining municipal approvals for the extent of the building envelope.

Maya Somaya Library at Kopargaon

The site chosen for this small addition of a children’s library within a school in rural Maharashtra, was a sliver between existing buildings and the school boundary, a site that almost implied a linear building footprint to adjust the program for the chosen site.

Maya Somaya Library at Kopargaon Shortlisted for ZUMTOBEL GROUP AWARD 2021

Maharashtra Nature Park

Our winning entry for the international competition to reimagine the Maharashtra Nature Park in Mumbai is exhibited at the London Design Biennale

Jetavan

The institute was programmed as a spiritual & skill development center for the native Dalit Baudh Ambedkar Buddhist community.

Play Video

Pritzker Laureate B.V.Doshi mentions sP+a

Kind words from Pritzker Laureate B.V. Doshi about our work and practice.
In an interview with Sarita Vijayan of the FAB Biennale.

TED TALK: Mumbai's Architecture is Killing Us !!

Sameep Padora talks about lessons we can learn from Bombay's historic buildings and how these lessons can help re-imagine the future of Mumbai's architecture with the aim of creating a healthier living environment for its residents.

Tactical Thursdays: Activating Urban Voids

Sameep speaks on Tactical Urbanism for the MCGM initiative, Tactical Thursdays. He discusses how through research and practice and through the work of the Bandra Collective, forgotten and derelict spaces in the city can be brought back into the imagination of its citizens .

K.J. Somaiya IT Cafeteria Pavilion

The Café Pavilion a partially open dining space, is an addition/extension to an existing indoor cafeteria at the K.J. Somaiya Institute on their Sion campus in Northern Mumbai. The pavilion was designed to accommodate the dining space as well as create a physical link between these two existing buildings with a brick amphitheatre as the central pivot.

Lattice House

The Lattice house is located in a new suburb on the outskirts of Jammu city in north-western India.

Wallpaper*: Design of the Year Award

Book: In the Name of Housing

The international edition of our research on housing in Mumbai now published by Nai010 as How to Build an Indian House. The book was also supplemented by an exhibition of the research at TU Delft.

Exhibitions: "In the Name of Housing: A Study of 11 projects in Mumbai, India”

Shiv Temple Wadeshwar

Designed in dialogue with the priest and the people from surrounding villages the temple design is a collaborative effort.

The House of Multiple Courts

The House of Multiple Courts at Nachinola is located in in a settlement in the midst of a serene littoral landscape adjacent to lush paddy fields.

Concrete Void Factory

In India, the torrential rains come once a year and can cause catastrophic flooding.

Fast Company Feature: building designed to flood is a glimpse of things to come

In India, the torrential rains come once a year and can cause catastrophic flooding. And these floods are only going to get worse: A 2017 study found that the monsoon in northern and central India has steadily strengthened over the last 15 years, at least partially due to rising land and sea temperatures. At one metal parts factory in Mumbai, located near a body of water that forms during the rainy season, the architect Sameep Padora has designed a clever solution for when the monsoon flows and the area floods.

Sameep Padora: letter to a young architect

Hindsight is 2020, and looking back I probably learnt more from failures (and there have been a few) than I did from success. However, if there is just one thing I would recommend to a young student architect, it would be to inculcate doubt. For as long as I can remember, doubt has been the only consistent part of my process. It would not be wrong to say that negotiating this singular condition is the pivotal design operation for almost every project I’ve worked on.

Holy Writ School

A campus by definition is, at a purely facilitative level, an armature of infrastructure and open space. Its real potential however lies in its role as a network of event spaces that create the potential of interaction, where the collision of disparate realms of knowledge inspires creativity.

Thinking & Drawing Space

Analyzing and contextualizing the work of master architect Charles Correa through the project Thinking and Drawing Space.

JSW Odisha - Township Project

JSW Odisha - Workers' Housing Project