Ar. S. SIVARAMAN

The year 2013 saw Ar. Sivaraman rejoining DesignQube along with Ar. Arun Karthik and being instrumental in their momentous growth from 7 employees to about 100 employees within a year. The partners have their niches worked out in the company where Sivaraman took care of client management and site management, Arun developed their growth strategies while both presided over the design process. Within two years, they realized the need for multiple bases to handle their numerous projects has since opened branches in Bengaluru, Coimbatore, and Jaipur with about 1000 projects to their credit to date ranging from architectural, Interior design, and Project Management.

While every project was taken up as a new challenge the lion’s share of their biggest challenge has been credited to their first resort project in Kothagiri. The site came with numerous challenges in terms of site conditions and staying onsite for extensive periods. However, DesignQube faced their biggest challenge in designing for the NRI client they had never met in person, where all their coordination’s happened online.

Ar. Sivaraman’s view on globalization is to “Think global but act local, in terms of methodologies, best practices, design principles, theories, and languages”. Armed with extensive knowledge of working with world-renowned practitioners and clients, he realized that the same couldn’t be applied in Chennai, since they were out of context here thereby giving rise to his current principle.

On the other hand, his views on sustainability are twofold. He believes theoretically a lot of building gain momentum as “sustainable and environmentally conscious”, but are less efficient in the practical world. Deriving inspiration from an architect he admires from student days, Ar. Sanjay Mohe. Ar. Sivaraman believes there are numerous ways to design with sustainable integrity like basic orientation, natural ventilation, lighting, and material usage to help provide a healthy living to the client than a certified rating. Citing the example of TERI building, he asserts ‘to design such a building without the sophisticated tech knowledge of today is inspiring.’

On being requested by championsofinfra.com for his recommendation to budding architects, Ar. Sivaraman quotes, “Don’t listen to naysayers. Don’t let anyone say it’s too early to start or don’t pressurize yourself too to start off until you’re ready. An architect’s career, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. You have to be physically and mentally strong enough and have the endurance to keep pace. When you start you also have to understand that you may not know it all. It’s a learning process”. He further strongly believes that in the current work climate architecture fraternity should work as a team, where a senior member of the fraternity should empower and guide the fresher’s and young architects.

Ar. Sivaraman dreams to collaborate with the hospitality group “Six Senses” to develop and design a hospitality project that will influence and focus on the wellness of users, in the near future.

Excerpts transcribed from an Interview with #championsofinfra.com.