ARCOP Associates Private Limited

Sustainability Through Passive Architecture

The desire to improve environments, to breathe new life in the people that inhabit them, has been a driving force for Debasish Guha and his firm ARCOP Associates Private Limited, which he co-founded with Ramesh Khosla in Delhi in 1985.

The company has expanded its offices to four locations in India and overseas in Oman. Over the last three years, it has made between `50 crore and `55 crore in revenue per year.

Creating designs to have a positive effect has been at the core of every project in the firm’s portfolio. Guha says the Garden Estate in Gurugram, which was one of the first residential gated communities in the country in 1989, “had a very positive effect in transforming the real estate scenario in India”.

Some of the firm’s major projects include the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Hyderabad campus design, government housing in Amravati, Medanta Super Speciality Hospital in Gurugram and the Taj Resort & Convention Centre in Goa. Its ongoing projects include residential and real estate developments for Emaar and Bharti Realty.

For Guha, working on the Kabul Sarena Hotel in 2002 was one of the most exciting and challenging experiences. “Kabul was devastated after the long war in Afghanistan,” he says. “With the challenges and the unknown frontier in mind, we created a strategy of partnering between client, architect and contractor to work together towards achieving common goals.”

Sustainability through passive architecture has been a major element in the company’s design process. “All our institutional projects such as IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, IISER etc. are designed as GRIHA-rated sustainable campuses using regenerative principles and a lean design approach,” says Guha. “My design philosophy is to achieve simplicity through a creative process which is sensitive to the surroundings and the natural environment.” He adds that technology will play a dominant role in shaping architecture in the future. “Technology should be used as a tool to enhance our design and creative capability,” he says.

By Darielle Britto