FHD Consultants

Proponents Of Net Zero Living

At the heart of every project created by Hyderabad-based design firm FHD Consultants is the exploration of new typologies of eco-habitats to catalyse a stronger social and environmental bond between end users.

“We critically question our own assumptions and learnings every time we seek a design solution that is localised, empathic, natural and simple (LENS),” says Mathan Ramaiah, partner and director of  design, at FHD Consultants, which was founded by architects Nagesh Batulla and Vijaya Durga in 1996. (The two have moved into the firm’s development arm called Organo but continue to mentor at the firm.)

The firm, whose current financial year revenue is `16 crore, also has offices in Bengaluru and Mumbai, and a diverse portfolio—multi-family residential communities, hotels, resorts and sustainable commercial buildings.

The Grand Sheraton Beach Resort in Chennai, the Polycab Wires headquarters in Halol, Ahmedabad, and the GM Infinite Global Techies Town in Bengaluru are some of their prominent projects. But it is the Organo Naandi, a farm community of 73 homes in Hyderabad that won the firm the WGBC Asia-Pacific Leadership in Green Building Award in 2018, which embodies the firm’s contribution to advancing ‘net zero’ living. Designed to produce its own power, vegetables and dairy, it also stores and recharges rainwater and has natural geothermal cooling systems.

“We feel that this is the future of conscientious living where a healthy productive lifestyle is made possible,” says Ramaiah. A 42-storey residential tower for Aurobindo Realty in Hyderabad and a 100-acre mixed-use township in Mecca are among their ongoing projects.

The design process entails the firm’s ‘four-quadrant’ thinking to create structures with a human-centric approach. “It involves seeing empathically from the points of view of the owner, builder, end-user and caretaker,” says Dhamotharan Sethuraman, partner and director of operations. “We believe in a future where we develop a uniquely Indian way of design ideation and solutions in architecture, which the world can also learn from.”

By Darielle Britto