Aman Aggarwal / Charged Voids
Mr. Aman Aggarwal is the founder and design principal at Charged Voids, a Chandigarh based architecture and spatial design practice. He graduated from Chandigarh College of Architecture and trained under Ar. B.V. Doshi, after which he started his own practice in 2007.
His work is grounded in the principles of conscious design, an approach that celebrates the transcendent and spiritual qualities of architecture. The philosophy of his firm has been to metamorphose eastern lifestyles and western aesthetics. Living in a culturally and traditionally rich society, he strives to keep his designs contextual, from space planning, use of materials to the response to climate.
He has successfully spearheaded many institutional, commercial and residential projects. The scale of the commercial and institutional projects range from large buildings that are over a million sq. ft to private offices that are 2000 sq. ft. in area. He has also designed several private and holiday homes pan India.
Over a slim span of time, he has won multiple awards and citations at national and international platforms, including the World architecture festival (WAF RECOMMENDATIONS), ID HONOURS, ACES OF SPACES, IGEN– DESIGN FORUM, INSIDE WORLD FESTIVAL OF INTERIORS (WAF), ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN & CERA AWARDS, IIID –MK National Award. He has also been featured in various national and international publications including Ad Russia, Elle décor India, Id Honours, Trends magazine India, Archdaily , Dezeen, and twice in AD 50.
Ayush Kasliwal / AKFD
Ayush Kasliwal, a National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad alumnus, is one of India’s leading design thinkers, practitioners and advocates for artisans. He, with his wife, Architect, Geetanjali Kasliwal, founded AKFD, focused on Furniture, Lighting and Accessory Product Design & AnanTaya to retail artisanal craft within the culture space. They live and work in Jaipur.
Ayush has numerous awards to his credit, including Lexus Design Award India 2019 and 2020, the Highest employment genrerating enterprise in the small –medium scale enterprise by SIDBI, AD Top 100 Designers of India, the EDIDA Designer of the year 2013 award, the Interior Lifestyle Award 2015 by Messe Frankfurt, POOL Best Furniture Design Studio of India 2016, and best project for the Narendra Bhawan in 2018. The UNESCO Award of Excellence recognized his designs in 2018, 2017, 2006 and 2007. He has licensed products to MATER, a Danish ethical design house and Edition Nouveau Objet (ENO) and has also collaborated with many architects on projects and installations.
He concluded the Charpai project for the Serendipity Arts festival, in Goa and design of the partner country pavilion at Ambiente 2019 – for Messe Frankfurt.
Prashant Pradhan / Prashant Pradhan Architects
Prashant Pradhan (MCA, MIIA) is a graduate from CEPT, Ahmedabad and has done his post graduation from the Berlage Institute, Netherlands. He has spent time working in offices in Amsterdam and New York and has also taught at the City University in NYC. In 2007, he started Prashant Pradhan Architects, PPA, a design firm based in Gangtok focused on multidisciplinary design. The practice does not distinguish between urban, architecture and interior considering each discipline being seamlessly interrelated. The design philosophy is rooted in the context therefore; issues of identity and culture get as much attention as architecture in the contemporary context. He is also a visiting professor at the Faculty of Design in the CEPT University at Ahmedabad teaching a course called – ‘Contextualising Interior Space Making’ dealing with Hospitality Design.
Takbir Fatima / DesignAware
Takbir Fatima is the director of DesignAware. she has lived, worked, studied and taught in Al-Khobar, Dubai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai and London. Takbir has a barch from csiit school of architecture & planning, secunderabad, and an march in architecture + urbanism from the design research lab at the architectural association school of architecture in london. she is a licensed architect registered with the council of architecture, new delhi.
Takbir is passionate about design research, digital prototyping and computation. she aims to work on socially relevant projects. takbir is associated with various schools of design and architecture, including vit university, the boston architectural college, and turenscape academy to name a few. she is a global teaching artist with facebook open arts.
Takbir was named emerging architect of the year 2016 by grohe NDTV design & architecture awards and telangana young architect 2016 by the indian institute of architects.
Meghana Kulkarni/ M+P Collaborative
After having completed her B.Arch. from Pune University, Meghana completed the post graduate diploma course in Natural Resource Management and Ecological Restoration from Ecological Society, Pune. Having previously worked at The Auroville Earth Institute, Abhijit De and Associates, Pankaja Bagul and Associates and Narendra Dengle and Associates, she started her independent practice in 2009 and subsequently established M+P Architects collaborative with Pooja. She is also a visiting faculty in PVP college of Architecture, Pune.
Pooja Chaphalkar/ M+P Collaborative
Pooja graduated from Pune University in 2007,and had excelled in college academics as a first ranker. Her internship under Architect Sanjay Mohe, Mindspace architects gave her exposure to large scale sensitive projects. Pooja did post graduate studies for a year in Natural Resource Management under the able teachings of ecologist Prof. Prakash Gole. Inclined and influenced to work with an ecological sensitivity, she tried to cover various aspects of ecology by studying water, sanitation, building tech, biodiversity and energy aspects. She had the opportunity to work with Rahul Gore (Opolis architects) for
a year. She later worked in Bangalore with Ar.Chitra Vishwanath and Vishwanath Srikantiah on urban ecologically sensitive developments. On returning to Pune she established a practise along with Meghana as M+P Architects Collaborative which she continues to steer.
Pulkit Soni / Black White Grey
Pulkit Soni is the founder of Black White Grey design studio based out of Jaipur. Graduating as an architect in the year 2015 from ASA Jaipur, Pulkit has been running his independent design practice since 2016. He is an avid photographer and a freewheeling writer. He has been vocal about issues affecting architecture and the architectural fraternity. His pieces have had great impact on the working of the CoA on multiple issues.Growing in a short span of time, his design practice is engaged in works across the spectrum from small residential project to large scale luxury hospitality. His design approach is largely pragmatic, solution oriented design that doesn’t confirm to any stylistic signature. He also has keen interest in contemporary interpretation of Indian crafts. He draws inspiration from the works of Charles Correa, Daniel Libeskind and Thomas Heatherwick among others. He follows the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei closely. He has a complex take on sustainability and context in architecture. For him, the genesis of architecture doesn’t lie in designing for the needs but designing the needs.
