Nihad Ovungal

Name

Nihad Ovungal

Designation

Co-Founder & Partner

Company Name

Attiks Architecture, Calicut

While growing up, I was always fascinated by façades, landscapes blended in projects,” begins architect Nihad Ovungal. The love for architecture directed him to a  post-graduation in Environmental Architecture from McGan’s Ooty School of Architecture under Anna University after his B.Arch from TKM College of Engineering at Kollam, Kerala.

“The biggest takeaways from architecture school were time management and dreaming big,” says Ovungal, adding that architect Geoffrey Bawa and his principles always inspired his vision towards sustainability. In addition to being a project architect for health, hospitality and residential projects, the 29-year-old worked as a visiting faculty in various institutes across South India.

He established Attiks Architecture in 2014 along with architects Mahir Aalam and Naseem PK, with the objective of creating “eco-friendly designs that would blend with nature, with minimum alteration on the site,” discloses the young architect. The firm strongly believes that, just like humans, buildings are social beings; and architecture cannot live and prosper unless it relates to its environment. Sadly, at times, the effort and dedication to work on large footprint buildings does not get recognised.

“Our recently completed residential bungalow, which we call Lucid House, translates into many idioms; simple, articulate, logical, coherent and clear. Lucid, in this context, means terms of aesthetics, use of building technology and material, visual connections, linking the built and unbuilt, landscape and nitty-gritties,” he explains.
One aspect from the modern design scene that doesn’t go down well with Attiks Architecture is the typical glass façades that are taking away the culture and identity of each state/region. “I would like it if there was more respect towards Indian traditional architecture and its principles, instead of fusing Western culture into our architecture,” says Ovungal, whose design tool is “travelling and reading” as it’s an imperative part of his creative process.