Studio emergence is a design studio found by two architects, Seeja Sudhakaran and Khushbu Davda, with a penchant for geometry in design and Parametric Design Approach. Both Seeja and Khusbu are under 30. They recently worked on the Andheri Metro Design
1. What did you both study?
Khushbu Davda and Seeja Sudhakaran studied together in Barcelona, we both did our masters in Advanced design and digital Architecture from Elisava, Barcelona school of design and engineering. Khushbu worked with adytum Designs, Sanderson group and arris architects while Seeja has worked on numerous high rises with ACIPL, ZZ architects and Ashleys prior to that.
2. How did you begin the process of setting up your own firm?
It was a very organic process, we were taking some seminars on parametric design and it’s possibilities in architecture and also teaching in IES college of architecture, when we landed a parametric consultancy for a huge project in Navi Mumbai, while the project is yet to be executed, this paved way for the beginning of our firm in Mumbai
3. The biggest challenges
The biggest challenges faced during our early days was learning skills required to run a company since we are artists by skill and heart, It took a couple of years to understand the numbers that go into running a company from scratch.
4. How did you land your first clients/project?
It was a seminar at IES college of architecture, there were a lot of industry experts attending the event, One of them happened to love the idea of computation in architecture and decided to collaborate on a large scale project in Navi Mumbai
5. The most fun you had on a project
We had the most amount of fun doing the urban Intervention at Dadar. The project is located at a busy junction at Gokhale road, has a lot of pedestrian movement and electrical and other service lines in the site. We had to also seek permission from the BMC authorities since it is a public space. The site was very high tension and we only had around 45 days to finish the installation, so the energy on site was always palpable.
Also a lot of locals contributed their insights to the project, we incorporated a storage space for a local newspaper vendor, extended the seat for senior citizens, added a removable part for servicing the storm water drains, etc. It was an enriching and a fast paced learning project for our team.
6. What qualities served you well?
We work with details for any project. The process of design is some times more important than the product itself, so meticulous research is involved at every stage to make sure the context is taken into the primary parameter to design any project.
Also since we specialise in Parametric Design, each project focuses on the future use of the space/Product and the design is the outcome of a lot of these considerations.
7. How do you manage the team and work with one another?
We have a young studio, in fact both the Principal architects are also below 30, so one can assume the team environment. Most of the team members are enthusiastic about parametric design, so we collectively research on the new technology, softwares, digital fabrication methods, etc. Apart from work, we bond over coffee, new events happening around the city and also new Netflix shows!
8. The design of MMRDA Andheri Metro Design for Line7 – what inspired you, functional & aesthetic details you considered?
Andheri Metro station was designed keeping in mind the city! New elevated structures are suddenly cropping up in the city which not everyone is happy with, especially the residents living next to these structures.
For the Andheri Metro Facade, we decided to solve the problem of Lack of Privacy faced by these residents once the Metro stations are functional. The facade is a myriad of panels with apertures changing in size. The size of the apertures increases proportionately with the distance from the building next to it. This also creates a dynamic looking structure which creates dramatic shadows inside the structure during daytime.
Visit their Website: https://www.studioemergence.in/