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This newsletter reflects on the making of Streets of Aspiration, SJK Architects’ pavilion for the Architecture + Design Film Festival (ADFF):STIR 2026, held at the NCPA, Mumbai, from January 9–11, 2026. Developed through a competitive selection process and a collective studio effort, the pavilion interprets Mumbai through its streets—reading the city as it is, while gesturing toward what it hopes to become. Reading the City Mumbai is a city shaped by contradictions. Aspiratio

This newsletter reflects on how SJK Architects designed two automobile studios for Mahindra a decade apart—and how each responded architecturally to the brand’s changing design language. From the bold, upright ruggedness of the Thar era to the sleek, futuristic styling of Mahindra’s Born Electric (BE) vehicles, the studios reveal how architecture can evolve alongside a brand without losing its core DNA. Era 1 — 2015: The Studio of Crafted Metal   Rugged, Sculpted, and the Spi

A Calm Home that Thinks Through Timber Set in Alibaug, Awas House is a retirement home that we designed for a Mumbai-based entrepreneur seeking a simple village home nestled in nature. We resolved every space with care to preserve clarity and quietude. The house rests lightly on the land, opening itself to changing seasons. At the heart of this quiet architecture lies a material innovation: we reinterpreted the region's timber and brick 'wada' tradition through glue-laminated

Write up by Vaishali Mangalvedhekar The Light House, Nagpur; SJK Architects Designed for a north Indian family of eight- the matriarch, her two sons, two daughters-in-law and three grandchildren- the Light House Nagpur sits on a 20,000 sq.ft. site in the city of Nagpur in Maharashtra, India, which housed the client’s former two-storeyed residence. The multigenerational residence is conceived by Mumbai-based Indian architecture practice SJK Architects, which crafts grounded, c

Write up by Sarika Shetty Composed of timber, stained debris concrete, and hempcrete, our proposal for the new Headquarters of the International Office of Migration in Geneva creates a calm oasis for leaders confronting global crises by enhancing connections with nature and providing multiple opportunities for social interaction. The International Office of Migration (IOM), part of the IOM UN Migration system, is a United Nations entity dedicated to promoting humane and order

Write up by Roshni Kshirsagar Hampi is both monument, magnet, and muse Beyond its timeless boulders and magnificent temples lies a living repository of craft—traditions that have endured as a result of its position as a global 15th century empire. Our hotel for the Taj in Hampi had to pay homage to these skills, distilled into contemporary design. We turned to Karnataka’s living traditions—Khana, Ilkal, and and the intricate Lambani embroidery of the Banjara community, reima

Write up by Vaishali Mangalvedhekar Thermal comfort is as much a psychological experience as it is a physical one. In the spirit of sustainable architecture, SJK architects – a leading architecture firm in Mumbai  – acknowledges that our expectations deeply influence how we perceive temperature. As Vaishali Mangalvedhekar notes, our increasing reliance on air-conditioning has disconnected us from natural patterns of adaptation—making buildings, and by extension, cities, hotte

A Cultural Addition to Ahmedabad's Legacy of Public Spaces Located just outside Ahmedabad, a city celebrated for its public spaces, the upcoming Jain Heritage Museum in Koba adds another meaningful public layer to the landscape. The museum preserves rare Jain artefacts, and is designed as an all-white structure echoing the religion's simplicity and austerity. Lifting off on stilts round a central water body, the architecture creates an open and accessible ground plane for al

Written by Vaishali Mangalvedhekar A Case Study on how school can be designed as active educators As one of the several sustainable architecture firms in India, our approach reimagines campuses as living classrooms where nature and built form work together as educators. Being architects for schools, we believe that the design of schools must go beyond functional buildings to become nurturing environments that spark imagination, curiosity, and well-being with Sparkrill Interna

Write up by Vaishali Mangalvedhekar As cultural architects and advocates of context-responsive design, we often find inspiration in India’s traditional wisdom. Whether designing as a boutique hotel architect, a museum designer, or for an office building architecture project, the challenge remains the same: how do we marry time-tested architectural intelligence with rigid urban regulations? As architects navigating both sustainability and contemporary design, we often encount