Anupama Kundoo is an Indian architect. She established herself as an architect in Auroville. She is an internationally recognized and award winning architect. She was awarded the Vastu Shilpa Foundation Fellowship for her thesis on “Urban Eco-Community: Design and Analysis for Sustainability”.
She also received her doctorate degree from Technische Universität Berlin. Kundoo has built extensively in India and has had the experience of working, researching and teaching in a variety of cultural contexts across the world.
In 2013 she received an honourable mention in the ArcVision International Prize for Women in Architecture for ‘her dedication when approaching the problem of affordability of construction and sustainability in all aspects’.
Early life
Kundoo was born on 24th April 1967. She was born in Pune, India. She studied architecture at the Sir J. J. College of Architecture, University of Bombay. In 1989, she received her degree. In 2008, she got her doctoral degree from Technische Universität Berlin.
She received the Vastu Shilpa Foundation Fellowship award in 1996 for her thesis on “Urban Eco-Community: Design and Analysis for Sustainability”.
Career
In 1990, she established herself as an architect I Auroville. At Auroville, she designed and constructed many buildings with “energy and water efficient infrastructure” adaptations. She worked there till 2002 from middle of 1990.
She taught at Technische Universität Berlin.
Later during 2005, she Darmstadt at Technische Universität. At The New School for Design at New York, she worked as an Assistant Professor. She worked there until 2011. Later she leaved to Australia as a senior lecturer in the University of Queensland.
Later in 2014, she shifted to Europe. There she began working at European School of Architecture and Technology at the Universidad Camilo José Cela in Madrid.
Her approach to building design is based on material research to minimizes environmental effects. Her basic design approach is to use “waste materials, unskilled labour and local communities”.
“Wall House” is one of the notable buildings build as her own residence. It is built in a community area of 15 acres with a built-in space of 100 square metres. It is constructed for one million rupees in 2003.
It is located at Auroville for communal living. This L-Shaped building has courtyard in the middle. She adopted traditional “vernacular” use of materials such as compressed earth, concrete, and steel for building it.
It is modern in concept. Its bathroom is set in an open-to-sky design. It has smooth merging with the interior and external spaces and landscaped. That gives it both a modern and a regional appearance. A full-sized replica of her Wall House was made by hand and exhibited at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. New York Times called it as “a gem among rubble”.
Her another theme is “Liberty”. Which presents a reading place as a free library, a creation built with three types of trees fixed in the centre of a square space. The trees’ trunks and branches of it are made from steel and the leaves made of salvaged books, with the floor made of concrete. During June–September 2014 it was exhibited at the Placa de Salvador Segui in Barcelona.
In 2024. Kundoo has joined the judging panel for the Dezeen Awards 2024 alongside other prominent architects.
She is currently Professor at UCJC Madrid where she is Chair of ‘Affordable Habitat’. She is also the Strauch Visiting Critic at Cornell University. She taught urban management at the TU Berlin and recently proposed her strategies for a future city for Africa, as part of the Milan Triennale 2014.
Publications
Books
Some of her books are as bellow:
- Roger Anger: Research on Beauty
- AVPNY Auroville and Pondicherry Architectural Travel Guide
- Anupama Kundoo.The Architect’s Studio
- Her latest publication is a book chapter ‘Rethinking affordability in economic and environmental terms’ in the Routledge book ‘Inclusive Urbanisation: Rethinking Policy, Practice and Research in the Age of Climate Change’, 2015.
Awards
- She received The RIBA Charles Jencks Award in 2021. She was awarded jointly by the Jencks Foundation and the Royal Institute of British Architects.
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