The founder of Studio Mumbai takes a collaborative approach to designing within the limitations of an environment, emphasizing local materials, techniques, builders – and the continuous flux

“You develop a relationship via sight, smell and condition, which in turn becomes a way of caring,” Bijoy Jain, the compound’s architect and founder of the increasingly influential Studio Mumbai, said recently.

Jain is US-trained and spent the early years of his career in Los Angeles and London. He recalls those years as a time of personal pain, when he began to see everything that was possible but as yet remained beyond his ability to realize.

Upon returning to India to practice architecture, Jain found he needed a better way to communicate with the stone masons and carpenters, who often could not read an architectural plan. He added the construction of large-scale mockups to the design-build process, creating an inclusive, collaborative way for workers in different trades to handle materials, sketch out ideas and negotiate obstacles together.

“That’s why our studio was initiated,” Jain says. “There will always be the limitations, the question is how does one find the space to operate within that.”

Jain opened Studio Mumbai in 1995 and quickly gained attention, receiving the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture from L’Institut Francais D’Architecture in 2009 and the third BSI Swiss Architectural Award in 2012.

Presenting the Swiss award, noted Swiss architect Mario Botta praised the elevation of craft skills within Studio Mumbai at a time when the forces of globalization are so often interpreted as “a form of standardization rather than an opportunity for interaction and enrichment”.

In fact, it is just this elevation of those skills, using traditional labor pools and methods, that may best showcase Jain’s commitment to sustainability by avoiding the carbon cost of shipping in experts from abroad or even from across the country.

His interest in local materials is another manifestation of this commitment. Palmyra House, for example, was constructed with traditional building methods and all materials are locally sourced, from the foundation’s stone and sand to the joinery made from an Indian hardwood called ain wood and the ever-present palmyra louvers filtering the light and allowing rich air circulation.

The palmyra palm is considered one of the most important trees on the subcontinent, with as many as 800 documented uses. Not only does it tolerate a variety of climatic conditions, but it provides fruit, medicine, weaving and writing materials, as well as a sturdy trunk for construction that may reach as long as 30 meters.

As well, the house was built on a coconut plantation in a way that avoided the loss of income- and shade-generating trees. (While Western architects must struggle to bring light into a building, Jain’s challenge is frequently just the opposite, to cut the light.) It reflects Jain’s ethic of creating structures that deeply inhabit their environs – rather than seizing space from a landscape – a reflection of his belief that humans don’t enter a space from outside of nature but exist within the matrix.

“When I’m referring to nature, I’m referring to man and nature as being reversible or part of the same entity,” he said. “It’s very personal.”