Ar. Krishna Kishore

A conscious decision taken with his partner not to restrict themselves to one particular genre or let money be a constraint for the inceptive 5 year period aided them in giving the best shot at any project that came their way. Looking back, Ar. Kishore recollects that to be his most challenging phase in his career, since most of the projects involved spaces he designed for the first time which brought upon challenges of its own and comprised numerous nuances to be comprehended. Once that hurdle was navigated, it was all about learning to push their boundaries further.

K Square has about 90 odd projects in all genres, like the Floating water villa in Nungambakkam that took 4 years to complete, where they understood it’s easy to design and highly challenging to execute unless thoroughly thought thru. A Cinema theatre in a tiny nondescript town called Pedanandipadu in Andra Pradesh with hardly 3000 homes and later gained a feature on ‘Internet Editorial’ and winning a design competition of a corporate giant against familiar senior members of the fraternity, which resulted current working on bringing a Lighthouse in Dhanushkodi, South of Tamilnadu.

He strongly believes that the solutions provided by Architects may have become globalized, but design is contextual. It comprises of multitude things like location with its various possibilities and constraints along with an underlying socio-economic and cultural aspects. He personally believes globalized approach should be for the solution provided, and not the design as such.

An innovative dictum helped him overcome communication challenges, which chiefly have led people to believe Architects don’t listen. He came up with a checklist they go through for each project and while contracts are drawn up, defining the roles and responsibilities of the Architect as well as the clients quite clearly given no rise to miscommunication emphasizing the importance of briefing the client about the design. Although design is subjective to a person’s perspective, he believes it’s only until client and architect completely understand each other and it’s a smooth sailing from there.

Furthermore, Ar. Kishore emphasizes the ‘responsibility’ of each architect in enlightening people about their designs and proposals. Sustainability for examples, has a huge weightage from the conceptualization of a project and remains to be an integral part of it. However, client should also be educated on its benefits and their ROI from it. It is imperative for Architects to explain why they do something so people could relate/connect to their proposal irrespective of them, being your clients, contractors or vendors.

In lieu of role models Ar. Kishore considered his mind similar to an adolescent deriving inspirations from a great many, like the doyens of Indian architecture B.V. Doshi and Charles Correa, who are highly admired for creating marvels in a bygone era, which architects are not able to achieve today. Subsequently Ar. Murali Murugan for his bold move from public sector to core residences which he deems very challenging and highly admirable, Ar. Frank Gehry for his offbeat designs & Ar. Zaha Hadid for her fluidity.

Striving to constantly dream, keep chasing and try something new, K Square is currently doing a resort and night club in Seychelles and that being Ar. Kishore’s current dream. Happy in his currently pace of his career, but never completely satisfied is what he believes is the force that pushes him to try something new and constantly evolve.

On a parting note to budding architects,  Ar. Kishore quotes “When you answer the ‘Why’s’ of the task you are doing, things become much easier to go on from there”.