(“Text as taken from the website”)
Harman Bumrah
He graduated as an architect from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, in the year 2015. He pursued his internship in Sri Lanka under K+DS Associates and went on to gain work experience at the Co.Lab design studio located in Delhi. His problem-solving attitude, coupled with his outgoing nature, makes him a strong fit for the office. Harman also has a sarcastic sense of humour, which he often uses while advising people, indirectly nudging them in the right direction. He has a passion for cooking and can be found concocting some of the most tedious, lip-smacking, and inventive dishes during the weekend. He loves to enjoy his meals with his wide collection of unhinged movies and TV series.
Jagbir Singh
He pursued his bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, and completed his internship under Matharoo Associates, where he refined his architectural ideology. He went on to hold the position of architect at M:OFA Studio, followed by Co.Lab Design Studio in Delhi, for a span of 3 years. On a day-to-day basis, you can find Jagbir thinking deeply about ideas to explore and stitching stories around those ideas. He spends the first half of the day at his workspace and the other half in the office garden, expressing love for his favourite plants. With his casual humming and lack of lyrical expertise, he ruins other people’s favourite songs.
Practice Ideology
Sifti Design Studio was founded in 2018 by a group of young professional architects. After working in collaboration on various projects of different scales in Delhi for 3 years, they decided to officially establish their firm in the city of Amritsar. Their aim is to make creative designs and build projects that are close to nature, aid in creating a better living environment for people, and contribute to changing the outlook of Indian residents about the architectural landscape of the country. Through their curated architectural works, they wish to create a social image that promotes the exploration of novel and unique solutions for the different construction conditions existing in India.
Through an iterative design process, the firm aims to address four principles: creativity, sustainability, efficiency, and significance. By approaching the design problem creatively, they intend to produce simple but distinctive works translated through architectural form, spatial structure, material, and spatial technology. Attempting to bring light in mystical ways by playing with the volume and geometry of the built form, they try to create a unique experience for the users visiting their building.
The firm’s occupant-centric design approach tries to create awareness about designing buildings that are sustainable. Addressing the surrounding environment, weather conditions, and material availability, they intend to create spaces for users that provide comfort and an area for enjoying their surroundings. With regard to the efficiency of the built environment, they understand the economic and locational constraints of the project and actively take on the challenge to develop effective alternative solutions to meet the envisioned design. Finally, the team also understands and constantly contemplates the significance of the designed projects for the urban fabric of the locality and the city as a whole.
In the Peri-Urban area of Amritsar, several plotted housing developments have emerged with standard planning schemes, i.e., plots for row housing placed on both sides of a 6-metre-wide road, while premium plots are given frontage to parks. In the following section, the practice would like to show how, through their design approach and principles, they have designed houses for this scheme. The varying designs are a result of their specific design briefs created through extensive discussions with the clients and the principles that SIFTI Design Studio imbibes.
