Nishanti Panneer Chelvam

Name

Nishanti Panneer Chelvam

Designation

Founder

Company Name

Dot Architecture and Design Studio

Crafting memories, adventure and emotions,” – that is how Nishanti Panneer Chelvam views her professional endeavour. It makes perfect sense that she has an almost poetic inclination towards architecture, given that it was the only field she could connect to in her student years. However, it became more tangible while she was learning the basics at School of Architecture and Planning (SAP), Chennai. “My trip to college was an average of three hours a day in the city bus, which made me ponder upon the city, its pleasure and pain points,” she reminisces. Seeing how design influences day-to-day existence, she hoped to contribute to the skyline of the city with sensible design.

Inspiring her on this journey are design heroes – Geoffrey Bawa and Bjarke Ingels. The 27-year-old considers them both as contextual designers, and appreciates Bawa’s more rooted and conventional design sense, at the same time is wowed by Ingels’ experimental take on design that defies convention. Her own understanding of innovation in design is centred on re-interpretation, and “giving something better than yesterday with the help of art and science, for the constantly changing needs of the world.”

This design approach unfolds everyday at Dot Architecture and Design Studio that Chelvam co-founded in 2013 with Selvam Sundaramurthy, a mechanical engineer with a business background. “As an architect, I was a dreamer; as an engineer, he was a doer. The initial frictions between our philosophies led to a deeper understanding of the other side,” discloses the architect.

As a result, the studio started reaping benefits of both the worlds and began delivering working designs in shorter time spans. Rush Madras – an indoor sports centre with a yoga studio and a food kiosk – proved to be a fitting challenge for them. It needed the ambience of an open playground, but the privacy of an indoor stadium. The solution was a translucent façade skin engineered to bring in the outdoors inside during the daytime, while illuminating the surroundings in the evening. “With a human-centric approach, we stress that design is an everyday thing and not a luxury anymore,” explains Chelvam. “We focus on value engineering, utilising conceptually curated designs to create commercially viable environments.”