Sandeep Jha

1. Your career so far as one of the leading architectural firms in India.

Architecture was always my passion since I got through School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi. I was fortunate to be a part of SPA in a phase when many of our contemporaries are heading the most influential practices in the profession. However, I was not very comfortable with the fast pace of lifestyle in a metropolitan city like Delhi, where a large part of your day could be spent in travelling for meeting across the city. Born and brought up in a small town till my secondary school, I was comfortable in smaller towns and hence destiny bought me to this wonderful city of Ranchi, which is my workplace. Although our practice is based in Ranchi, we work in entire Eastern part of the country including the state of Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand. Our projects range from bungalows, institutions, housing, commercial buildings, resorts and townships. Architectural practice is a continues learning experience and we, as a team, work in a manner which enhances this experience of learning from our interventions and try to engage with every project in a manner that the client and end user’s life is touched and they enjoy the experience of living through these spaces. I started this journey all alone around 20 years back and now we are a bunch of around 18 enthusiastic learners in the Studio, whom we call AXIS Pariwar.

In this journey, we participated in several competitions of primarily large scale Govt. projects and were fortunate to get through quite a few of them. Thereby we could be part of shaping the campuses of several institutions in Eastern India Ltd. We did several housing projects in the IIT Kharagpur campus, Forest Research Institute at Munger, Bihar and three Govt. Engineering Colleges in Jharkhand. Our recent works, Archaeological Museum at Lakhisarai, and Parivahan Parisar in Patna were appreciated as significant works. A Rehabilitation & Resettlement Colony in a village in Hazaribagh dist in Jharkhand won us award at National Level.

2. What is your approach and strategies being followed by you for overall design of a space?

Whenever we start working on any project of any scale, our approach is always to do an in depth study of the site context, requirement brief and the aspirations of the client or end user. Once these are done, we develop a concept for the project in a way that the design tries to meet the aspirations of the end users and at the same time apply innovative solutions to the complex issues of design through a rigorous design process with several to and fro among the teams and apply construction techniques that are sustainable and appropriate for the context.

In a resort project currently under construction, we have used Rammed earth Adobe wall construction which was the primary construction technique of our rural houses, but hardly used these days. The earth excavated from site itself has been stabilized with around 5% cement and after mixing with colored pigments created load bearing walls which are stronger than the local burnt bricks and at the same time are thermally more comfortable than the regular brick masonry construction.

Overall, our strategy has been to design and create spaces that enhances the life of people using these spaces.

3. How do you incorporate light and lighting into your projects?

Natural light has a very significant role to plan in how spaces can make you feel different in different parts of the day just with the play of light and shadows. However most architects still do not pay attention to this aspect of building design.

Somehow lighting design has been perceived by most architects as a matter to be handled by electrical consultants. Even we did the same mistake in our initial projects. But after completion of the buildings and our appraisal of our own design, we realized that improper lighting design can ruin an otherwise well-designed space and similarly a good lighting design can enhance an otherwise simple design too. Now we are trying our best to look into aspects of lighting design inside the building so that we can make it aesthetically appealing and energy efficient. The façade lighting of a building too plays a very important role in enhancing the architectural character of a building or a campus. I still feel that we, architects need more exposure in lighting design than just lighting up spaces up to the desired Lux levels. Spaces need to be illuminated to enhance the mood of the users and make them happy.