Shimul Javeri Kadri: Shaping Spaces and Dreams in Indian Architecture
Shimul Javeri Kadri is an Indian architect. She is the founder of SJK Architects, an architectural firm in the city of Mumbai, India. As an architect she has achieved many accolades and much success, however, it is her ethos and ethics, those things that she measures architecture and life by, that marks her as singular.
She has won multiple international & national awards including the Prix Versailles Award in 2016 and the World Architecture Festival Award in 2012). She has also been named one of Architectural Digestโs Top 100 and Top 50.
That features the most influential architects and interior designers in India. Kadri has a philosophy of building in harmony with nature. She always try to use natural elements, sunlight, wind, natural materials, and cultural contexts.
Her projects include museums, hotels, office and industrial buildings, educational institutions and bungalows.
Early life
Shimul Javeri Kadri was born on 18th October 1962. She was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. She grew up in a family full of architects. Her grandfather is the veteran IM Kadri, who designed the landmark Shiv Sagar Estate.
She is the youngest of three children and was thirteen years old when she decided she wanted to be an architect. Kadri first studied architecture in Mumbai at the Academy of Architecture where she graduated in 1985.
Later,she travel to US for masterโs degree. she set a new direction for her work and moved her focus from architecture to urban planning. From 1986, she studied urban planning at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.
She got married with Rahul Kadri.
Career
After graduation, she began her career working for a company in California. In 1990, she set up SJK Architects after she returned to India from the US.
Her practice, SJK Architects, is one of the most renowned in India and, as its Founder, she has led a 40-strong team for more than 30 years, building an exemplary client portfolio and creating projects that impact the social and cultural fabric of her country.
For Shimul, architecture is about the big picture not the vignette. Urban planning allowed her to think large-scale. As her client base grew so did the commissions.
One project and client led to another and she began to work, not only in her hometown of Mumbai, but across the Indian continent. She has carved her pathway in the profession and today there is a road for others to follow.
In 2024 SJK Architects is defining the role of architecture and that of women practitioners in India. She has handled a variety of projects that include masterplans, workplace, hospitality, retail, cultural and institutional, education, industrial, residential and adaptive reuse projects across architecture and interior design.
Some of her significant projects are the Synergy Lifestyles factory in Karur, Sparkrill International School and SR Engineering College in Warangal and Ayushakti. Ayushakti is an ayurvedic health resort in Mumbai.
The challenge was to build this ayurvedic resort in a crowded Mumbai suburb within a narrow 16 m wide plot bounded on three sides by residential buildings, yet infuse it with light, air, space, joy and peace. Kadriโs also design for a hotel at Bodh Gaya and an apartment building in Chennai.
She serves as a trustee for Akshara. Akshara is a womenโs resource centre in Mumbai a for Save the Children India where she has been actively steering education and womenโs projects.
Shimul Javeri Kadri is an inspiration to us all. She has forged her way in a patriarchal country and world and has reached the zenith of her career. With three female partners who explore their talent and showcase the practice, along with an inspired workforce, SJK Architects is stronger than ever.
Honors and awards
There are many award-winning buildings Shimul Javeri Kadri has designed, some of them are..
- Automobile Design Studio for Mahindra and Mahindra Limited, India, which won the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design Award 2016.
- The design of the Dasavatara Hotel in Tirupati, India won the Prix Versailles Special Prize in 2016.
- The design of the Lotus Cafe in the same hotel won the Prix Versailles in the Restaurants category.
- The design and architecture of the Nirvana Films office, Bengaluru, has won multiple awards including the World Architecture Festival Small Project of the Year Award 2012, the Excellence in Design Award, and the FuturArc Green Leadership Award.
- In 2018 Architectural Digest named her firm as one of their AD100 awards.
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