Episode 2: Yatin Patel | Making A Difference, a Havells Podcast

Neurodiversity is what we design for now today. Architecture is a serious profession. It's as serious as a doctor or being a doctor. Life is at stake. AI will never replace an architect. So we took the whole Gautam computer in an aircraft,

went into their own offices and made the presentation there.

At which point in your journey did you decide to start to make a difference? Hello and welcome to another episode of Making a Difference, a Havels podcast. I'm your host, Ambika Anand. And today we're in conversation with architect Yatin Patel. His vision has created some beautiful spaces across the globe. Over the past few decades, international, multinational giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and KPMG have trusted his design leadership. And back home in India, his creations

have built the skyline, thanks to some beautiful landmark residences that he has made for some of the most influential Indian families. An icon of all things larger than life, Yatin Patel. Yatin, we're so excited to find out more about your life, your journey,

and where it all started. And thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. And I'm happy to be here.

You are known to be bold. You are known as a never mainstream guy. How did architecture come to you considering your parents and your brother are renowned doctors?

So medicine was never meant for me, and neither was I meant for medicine, right? In my early days, because of the medical background that I came from, I visited a lot of hospitals with my brother, with my dad, and the sight of blood used to make me faint.

So clearly medicine was not the profession for me. Architecture was also not something that I was brought up being trained to do architecture or my mindset was not being trained to do architecture, or for that matter, any profession. But as little kids, we all said, I want to be an astronaut, pilot, and whatever, but I was never telling myself I want to be an astronaut, pilot and whatever, but I was never telling myself I want to become an architect. But when we used to travel, I realized that all the structures or buildings or

shapes that we saw were getting imbibed into my brain and never really looked at them as, hey, this is a cool structure or this is a great space. Most importantly what I realized is that what a space did to a person or to different types of people is something that really fascinated me and that's something that we're really doing now. And when we're saying that neurodiversity is what we design for now, today, right?

Oh, really?

So people respond to different spaces differently. Everyone in a quiet room may not be comfortable. But I may be comfortable. I may not be comfortable. You may be comfortable, but you may be even more productive in say a noisy place or a, for me a bar is better.

But you know, what I mean is that all of those spaces that one sees and captures and experiences, that kind of started setting into my head and to say that how can one create spaces that are meant and curated for different sets of people and that that's what then led to ultimately to

architect. How did your parents react when you told them that you are going to

choose architecture over medicine? So they responded very very fairly as you know they knew I couldn't be a doctor because they were treating me all the time when I fainted, right? So they said they obviously knew that this wasn't the profession for me. And so the next, at least in our days when we were growing up, there were three different professions. You could either be a doctor, you could be an engineer, or you know,

a dropout. So engineering it was and engineering then led to architecture.

So you went to Manipal, so they have an engineering and architecture course or a pure architecture course?

So there is a separate architecture course but it was part of the engineering college. Okay. So, it was a large campus, like you know Manipal is a student town, and they had all sorts of colleges, and they had the medical, they had the engineering, they had the management and hospitality, all of it, but architecture came under the engineering section. Now

it is a separate structure altogether. So you finish your five-year degree and then you started your career immediately by working with somebody or did you

start your own firm? Was DSP born immediately? No, no, DSP was not born immediately. But before I even finished college, I interned during the course, we had an internship semester, so I interned for that six months, and then post-college I worked for a year,

and then I thought I knew it all, and said, take the leap of faith, and started my own. And it was not DSP then it was Yatin Patel and Associates at that time and yeah that's where it

started. And how many years was it Yatin Patel before it became DSP? It still is

Yatin Patel, I still am Yatin Patel. No, your company, when did it kind of morph into DSP? I guess it took about seven or eight years to morph into DSP, three or four years into Yatin Patel and Associates. I had Mehul Shah and Vimal Desai come in and work with me and we worked as partners still under the tag of Yatin Patel and Associates, but then it became imperative that we change it to DSP, and DSP is the initials

of the three partners, so it's Desai Shah and Patel actually. So we said let's let everyone have their own identity, but then it was advantageous in a way that we started corporating ourselves, corporatizing ourselves and the need for Yatin Patel to be everywhere kind of took a back seat.

Yeah.

Right, and then it was a brand that was getting created.

But tell me about, you know, having three partners, what was different that each of you was bringing to the table?

So all three of us are completely different. I am the calmest of them all. Mehul is the most hyper and Vimal is a more balanced person. We all three bring different skill sets to the table. We all three operate and do different things within the firm also and that's what kind of gets us to become one unified kind of an organization. And we've been at it for now, at least for me, I've been at it for 36 years.

We've been together for over 30 years now. So I think we all know each other as partners, then our partners.

Yes, I got it. Your wife, Ritu, is an artist. How has

being with a fellow creative shaped your perspective on design? So I think Ritu and me complement each other in the kind of taste that we have. We are very alike in everything that we see in terms of design. So even the art, our color sense, the clothes that we wear, we really complement each other. So there's never been a struggle or a challenge or a commotion ever that we've ever had

in selecting something. So in that sense, we've been very smooth with each other in the way we come across in terms of our selection of furniture or light fittings or everything that we do basically. So I've never had a clash in my mental space

in terms of design, which has been extremely helpful for me when I'm at work. I have enough confidence that I know I'm doing things right. So it really brings a huge, it makes a huge difference to me.

Have you guys ever worked together on a project? Never.

While we say that, well I say that we complement each other, but I'd like to keep work away from home as much as possible. But no, it's better this way that we're not on our face all day.

All right, distance makes the hearts grow fonder. Okay, what was DSP's first breakthrough project?

There were many breakthrough projects. And the reason why I say that is that over the last 30 odd years, we've noticed that every three years there's been some milestone, right? So there've been probably 10 or 12, roughly that. And each one, not necessary, is a

project that led us to doing something more differently. And when I say milestone, so is we've either added another location or we've added another vertical of work, a different typology of work.

Give us examples of the first site, the first vertical.

So the first major break I would say is, you know, once I started off doing retail and small homes for people, the first commercial project that we got was this office that we did for the Reliance Industries way back in probably the early 90s, which was all of 5,000 square feet. And at that time for us, 5,000 square feet of an office was really big. That then led us to do multiple office interiors, which is now the forte for DSP, where a large chunk of our revenues

come from commercial real estate. So that led us to multiple companies and corporates that we worked with to do office interiors. And then that led us to, it was then late 90s by then, and Y2K was around the corner, and there was this whole rush of technology companies trying to beat that,

and there was this large amount of work that came with technology companies, and we started striving to do work for some of the software firms, and we never got that break. Because everyone used to ask us, have you done an office for a software firm earlier? No, we haven't.

But, you know. So finally, we got one. We cracked that, and there's no stopping from there. Which then led us to all the locations where technology started booming. So we started off with Bombay, back then Bombay,

where we started our organization, and then that led us to Bangalore, where again software and technology started emerging in a big way. And then coming back to Pune, which again started developing as a software hub, then that took us to Gurgaon and then Hyderabad. So it gave us that whole software industry, took us to all these various locations to actually set up offices there because of the amount of work that we had on hand at that point of time. So five different locations,

five different milestones, not necessarily in that order. And then we also started focusing our energies on education design because the IB schools started coming in and we said this is a good opportunity to do design differently and we set up and incorporated a specialized firm called EDI to design schools. So we now have close to about 60 architects just doing design for education

institutions. Give us some names of some schools that you've designed.

Well, there's so many. We're working, we are operating in 28 different countries right now through EDI. Of course, it's a partnership between DSP and FNI, back then FNI and now EDI International. So we did in Mumbai, we did the German school, the American school, most of the IB schools that are there are designed by us. We did a school for BD Somani. The Singapore International School is being designed by us. Great stuff happening there. And then we also were extremely interested in technology.

And we said, smart building technology. So we were designing buildings, structures, all of that. And then we said, how do we make our buildings or spaces that we design much more smarter, efficient, productive, all of those words that are really required to in the workspace area.

So we started looking at how do we get this right? And we partnered with a firm called Intelligent Buildings, called IP, and we set up DSP IP in the country to do consultancy services for smart building technology advisory. So whilst we were doing the advisory services for the PropTech space, we realized that there's still systems that are working in silos. So systems are working independently.

So how old was this?

This was pre-COVID. When we started doing advisory services for smart building. And we realized that all the systems within a building, so air conditioning systems, electrical systems, lighting systems, were working independently and not communicating with each other.

And we realized that and we said that, why don't we create our own solution to this? So we now have developed a cradle to grave solution, not just advisory, but our own proprietary product, which we call GridSense now, that takes care of all of these issues

and combines all the systems together. So that was a great milestone in our career and we've incorporated a separate firm that has both the hardware, software and generative AI that takes care of all of this as a package deal.

So that's another milestone. Some of the other milestones, there have been lots. Yeah, but I'm so intrigued. In your introduction, I spoke about the multinational companies, Google, KPMG, Amazon, Microsoft, all being in your, or trusting you for your design leadership. How did that pan out? And was it only for India or internationally as well?

So like I said earlier, that, you know, we started working with corporates way back, and then the technology firms. So that got us to a stage where we were amongst, and at all different locations, we were amongst the top three or four firms that anyone would reach out to. There's no real ranking system within our country,

but on a global ranking, There's no real ranking system within our country, but on a global ranking there's an organized ranking system of different matrices, where we're currently ranked 48th globally for architecture. We've been on that list of top 100 architectural firms for the last 10 years now.

So when did you start collaborating with Google, Amazon, KPMG?

So I'd say it's over a decade and a half. And we've been hand-holding some of them for ever since they've come into the country. And some of these firms had, you know, came with their global standards and global requirements. I'm not gonna name the example,

but one such corporate came and they had enclosed offices for every individual or every partner. We now have handled them into a complete agile office and a no address kind of a system. So really tech driven, advanced and out there cutting edge kind of an environment that we've created for them.

And so it's been a long journey with them in India as well. So coming with global standards, we've localized how they should work. And like I mentioned earlier, how people respond. So culturally, we don't work like, our workforce doesn't work the same way like somebody in the United States or in Europe, right?

So we come with our own different ways and means of how we do things here in our country. Let alone country, but for every city, of course, works differently, right? So and has its own needs. So we design these offices to become more contextual and adapt to the local cultures, policies, practices that are followed by people who are going to,

you know, occupy those spaces.

Now we heard in the early days you were extremely ambitious. You carried your own CPU and monitor on a flight for your meetings and back. Tell us about the early days of DSP.

I think you've done great homework to find that out. Right, but we actually did, I actually did. And this was early days when we were trying to pitch for our first breakthrough into the software industry. And I recollect doing a presentation for one such firm, and we had to go to Bangalore. And we had done work through the day, through the night, and done everything on back then CPUs and monitors and no laptops then.

So we took the whole goddamn computer in an aircraft, went into their own office and made the presentation there.

And did you get the deal? Of course we did. How will this brand beautifully blends tradition with modernity? How important is that philosophy for you at work?

So I'll give you an example of a building that we designed or a project that we did. It was a real traditional firm based out of Ahmedabad who wanted to get out of that mold of traditionality and portray an image of a really modern enterprise. So we said, fine, let's do that. But if I just took this piece of commercial real estate and say, I make this real fancy, iconic looking structure, people would, the people, the employees who are used to working the way they are, would get completely disoriented, right? to and still make them feel comfortable and still be able

to say and embrace that, oh wow, now I'm in a really modern structure. So we took all the traditional elements of Ahmedabad, we studied where the people came from and where they lived and understood their environment. So Ahmedabad has a lot of these neighborhoods which are called poles and you know very small entwined kind of neighborhoods with a central courtyard and smaller courtyards and then traditionally Ahmedabad is renowned for kite flying and you know they have a lot of terraces with different at various heights. So we created the building in a

manner which had multiple courtyards in you know entwined with each other multiple terraces within that but the materiality was extremely modern. So from a form perspective, they started feeling more and more comfortable. It felt like their own environment that they came from, from the traditional environments that they came from, but they started feeling the expanse and modernity through all the materials that I use.

And we were there the other day and it's fantastic to see how the employees are using the space, not just that, after office hours they are inviting their family members to come and you know enjoy the space. So it's great because the productivity level of the employees now has gone right out there and the message for the organization to the external world is already being portrayed.

In coming to Havels, they have a strong set of core values. The core values are now being transformed and are being brought about in the way that their products are being designed, a lot of research going into that, and bringing out all the needs of the modern built spaces. So they're building great products that, you know, applications are for the modern environment. So it's a blend of, you know, balancing traditional values with modern concepts and bringing out the whole thing in a much more futuristic way.

Okay. What impact did engaging with software industry in the 2000s have in DSP's journey?

There you go, super, super cue for what I was thinking of. That other landmark achievement for us is when we got our first breakthrough, our first architectural project, which was again for a software company.

Which year, which company? Give us the details.

So this was... Give us the details. So this was pre-2000. So this was 25-26 years ago. Probably when we designed it, it was 27 years now. So we had done work for them. We had done some interiors for this company. It was called City Corp then, City Corp Information Technology, it used to be called CITIL.

And then which now got christened to iFlex and now bought over by Oracle Financial Services. So while we had done a few interior offices for them, then there was this site that they took up in Bangalore. Great site, lovely site, and they said, okay, you've done great work for us. You're an architect, we trust you, you can do a building for us.

And then the CEO, we walked the site, we went to visit the site. Beautiful barren land with a lake on one side. And the CEO just gave me one single line as a brief. Says, Yatin, if you go to Agra, what do you think of? We want something like that over here, really iconic.

So wow, this is cool. First building you get and somebody wants some, is imagining that he wants something like that. He didn't say it, he said Agra, he never said Taj Mahal. Obviously they were price conscious,

they were price sensitive and all of that. So we came up with this really unique design. And it was a cable-stayed building. So it had a central core and all the floors were suspended on cables. So quite like the Worli ceiling that you came by, the cables stay in structure. We designed that 27 years back. And we're proud to say, even today the homepage of Bangalore on Facebook has a picture of that,

of the building. So it stood the test of time and you know it's still an iconic structure. And when we completed the building, I walked the site again with the CEO. And when we first walked the site, when it was a barren land, we saw people, you know, couples taking pictures of themselves with the lake in the background. And when we completed it,

we saw a few people hanging around, taking pictures, but with the building in the background. Nice. Now that was back then, but since then you have scaled enormously. As firms scale, creativity can get minimized. How do you keep it alive at DSP?

So we've always believed that we should be one up above our competitors and to keep striving for newer things, look at newer technologies, look at newer ways of doing things and to be there and you know really out there ahead of time, competition and all of that. So what we also have is a collaboration and with One Global Design, which is a coming together of 25 different firms

from across the globe. So we have our partners and feet on ground in 43 different cities across the globe. And we host and we hold a lot of summits and meetings with all of these knowledge sharing sessions. So we're always abreast with whatever newest trends

are available and there's a lot of knowledge sharing that happens within on a quarterly basis. We share a lot of information. We have common clients across the globe. So learning sessions from different projects that have been executed at, let's say, an office that has been designed by somebody in New York and the same client is there in

India. How do we make sure that some of those learnings are brought back into the country and we localise them here.

A lot of great exchange of ideas and thoughts.

So talk more knowledge sharing, the next question is interesting. Havill's offers an extensive lighting range for public infrastructure,

residential, commercial segments including indoor lighting, outdoor lighting, sports lighting, outdoor lighting,

sports lighting, chandeliers, and so many other options. What new trends do you see defining the future of lighting, and where do you think Havels has a unique edge in addressing them?

So of course, the LED lighting has changed the way lighting is being designed now. The products are different, the outputs are different, lifespans are different, the applications are completely different. With the range that's now available, there's a whole new way of looking at applications of lighting. And it's really great to see that companies like Havels are embracing all of those newer ways. I was at the Havels campus recently.

They do a lot of work or spend a lot of money doing research. Probably, I've never seen any other company doing so much of research. We saw one dye or one mold that they've spent some really serious amount of money doing that. So they're really doing a great job in doing a lot of research and good great work out there. Okay, entrepreneurship

comes so naturally to you. You have this lifestyle real estate development called Kala Gate Collective in Alibaug. You're also on the board of several companies

including DSP, DSP IB, EDI. How do you balance it all? So I'll start with Kala Gate. It started off as a hobby and then it's turned into a whole new venture. So we used to go to Alibaug over weekends to you know just unwind and then get refreshed and come back. So my wife and me and the kids used to go there, just unwind and come back. It's now become the opposite. We go to Alibaug on the weekends and we're still working. So my wife's doing her own bit, I'm doing my own bit.

We're only having meals together. And of course, spending enough time with our dogs. But through the week, my main focus is still on DSP. For EDI, we have a separate CEO that looks into it and we are just on the board. So we have just the regular meetings, but there's a separate... It runs as a self-sustained organization, independent of the way we work in DSB.

And DSB IB now is transformed more into GridSense. Like I said, it's the whole support system that is the solution for smart technologies. And Bimal looks into that and he spearheads that. So my focus more is on the DSP side. So through the week or even on weekends, I'm still hardcore DSP-ian. But on the weekends, it's a mix of Callagate and DSPian but yeah on the weekends it's a mix of Kala Gate and DSP.

But as a fan of Alibaug I'm just inquisitive, tell us a bit more about Kala Gate Collective. By when will it be ready? Is it a township? Are you making villas? Are you making apartments? A bit of both?

So apartments is a clear no-no. Alibaug is not a place for apartments, right? And the way we started it is we lived in Alibaug through COVID. For two years, my wife and me, we lived there. And, you know, whilst we were still doing all our Zoom calls, we had enough spare time at that time because the world had enough time because not much was happening. I mean, there was much happening.

We were all trying to do a lot, but we had spare time. So there were these developments that were happening in Alibaug. So, you know, villa developments and stuff. So, you know, we had enough time to go and look around and see inquisitiveness as to who's doing what and what's being created from an architectural standpoint.

We came across some of the developments which were not so great, I would say. And, you know, friends of ours said that we held few pieces of land here and there, scattered pieces of land, and we said, Yatin, why don't you do it yourself? You're an architect, you have the bandwidth, you can do it on your own, and you can deliver better products and better quality.

So, yeah, let's give it a shot. We started the Colourgate Collective like that. And we built two villas on one acre each plots. And we realized it was so easy to sell because just by word of mouth, there was no marketing really required. Just through our network of friends, you know, they said, Yatin's doing it, it's a no-brainer. So that's how it started.

And there's a few more that we will do now, but no township plans right now. Definitely no buildings, no high-rises, though people have approached me for some of these. And both the projects that we've completed and delivered have won multiple awards, both domestic as well as international.

The AsiaPAC awards for best residential space, both the projects have got. There are two more that we're starting with that have been designed. Those also as unbuilt structures have also received similar acclaim from the Asia Pac Awards.

You've worked extensively on intelligent buildings that integrate automation. How do you see brands like Havel with their advanced connected lighting systems and smart automation

technologies shaping the way modern living spaces evolve. So like I said when we do smart building advisory services and try and integrate all the systems Havel's has some of the suites and some of the pieces of that. They've got the smart lighting system that they have, they've got the automation that they have. It really blends in well to modern ways of living, working, but when we combine all of those and try and integrate those systems with other systems is where it becomes much

more powerful. Give us an example. So if I can say that the lighting system can talk to an air conditioning system, it'll be helpful. Or if the air conditioning system can sense the number of people, let's say, in this room and control the amount of air that is blown into this space based on the number of people. And if that can talk to a lighting system, or for that matter, if in the lighting controls, there is a way of monitoring how much daylight is coming into the space, and therefore the light

could dim on its own or come back to whatever. So you're saving energy, basically. And if those can communicate with each other, it's a great space to be in.

Okay. Now we've heard from some of your closest colleagues that they call you the fastest, youngest guy in the room when it comes to AI adventures and progressive thinking. What role according to you will AI play in the future of architecture?

So AI is, you know, changing the way we live. As we speak, there's so many newer things that are happening on the AI front. In architecture, there's two sides to it, or there are multiple sides to it. One is it's giving you tools to design things a little more differently.

It's giving you tools on the business side of things, and for that matter, not just an architectural practice, for all businesses, AI is enabling people to do things differently, faster. I'll just give you an example, and I keep telling people about this, is that before we had computers, for an architecture firm, we were drawing things with a pencil or a pen. And then when we started using computers, it was much more simpler.

Imagine if we had a site and you drew the whole plan and somebody said that everything is six inches off. You had to erase everything and redraw the whole thing from scratch. You could do it on a click of a button now or with a computer, right?

So things became faster and much more efficient. AI is the next level. It enables you to do, it will enable you to do things exponentially quicker. Of course, skill sets required will be different. It will not replace an architect. AI will never replace an architect. AI will never replace an architect. But the way we do things is going to be different. So the skill sets will, requirement will be different. So you'll need people who are experts at AI.

You'll need prompt engineers. So it's all going to be a little more different. Life will change, the way we do things will change. We'll be able to do many more things faster than what we're used to doing right now.

Alright. You've spoken about PropTech and GrinSense. Now, how is DSP adapting to the changes that AI is bringing?

So, like I said, we're using AI from a business side, so to manage our accounts, HR, all of the support functions. In our hiring as well, we're using AI. And on the architecture, and on the design side as well, we're using AI in different, different ways. So, you know, we need color schemes, you know, thought starters and things like that.

OK, now, how do you see Havel's combined aesthetics with functionality in its product designs? How important is this balance in architectural planning especially while selecting fixtures and

fittings? There has to be a balance between getting a space right or getting a space illuminator, space structure or whatever it may be, the right amount of lighting to create the right mood or the right aesthetic to it. And Havel's, I've seen, I visited their campus and they're doing a great job in research and developing newer products to really bring a variety of products that help us select the right type of fixture for that application. So be it a concealed light fixture, be it a diffused light system that one wants.

For me, when I design, I don't like seeing the source of light. There's some great products available there. And so they're creating this whole range of products that all architects would really like to use.

Okay. Now, a DSP is a great place to work. You feather different economic conditions. How have you managed to create this lovely, happy, successful place where people like to go and work?

So, as an architectural practice, the firm is made up of people, right? And our resources, our asset, and they are our capital. So if we don't look after our capital, I mean, what's the use? If our knowledge capital is not happy, we're not going to be able to survive or sustain. So we take great joy in ensuring that

everyone that's coming to work is happy and they're happy coming to work and they look forward to coming to the space where...

How do you make sure they stay happy? What is the secret HR sauce?

So it's not just HR, it's all about connection between people. It's the way we communicate with people or not communicate with people. Not communicating is not okay, right? So the way we communicate with each other, of course we've got all our HR policies and practices. We're very extremely flexible in our working hours. Even before we had the newer post-COVID kind of work from home scenarios, we were always extremely flexible.

People are happy about that. We understand people. We understand their needs. People sometimes come from far off places. They're tired. We make sure that everyone's comfortable in their work environment.

Okay. Do you think Indian architecture has found its identity on a global stage?

I'd say we still have a long way to go, but yes, we are making a mark in terms of our, the designs that we're doing. We always had that mark. We had all our historical structures, the Taj Mahal and all of those. We made the mark anyways. But in modern architecture,

we have the contemporaries like Charles Correa who made his mark globally. In the contemporaries and the newer generations, we are making our mark in different ways. So be it technology, be it design, there are so many brilliant and talented architects who are winning international awards, you know, left, right and center.

So a dear friend of mine, he's won over 300 international awards.

What's one uncomfortable truth about architecture nobody talks about or the industry?

There are quite a few, but it's not that it's not spoken about, but you know, architecture is a serious profession. It's as serious as a doctor or, you know, being a doctor. Life is at stake. In architecture, again, life is at stake. When you design a building, it changes the way you will respond. If I have four straight walls, vertical walls, you will feel normal

but if I have all the walls at an angle you would probably feel distorted or disoriented. And this is something that I keep telling people in our organization. Every line that you draw is going to have an impact on somebody's life or the way they would work or the way they would live. So it's really important that you have a qualified person to do what they're supposed to do. Unfortunately, there are so many people who are so-called architects or designers who are unqualified and have become celebrities on their own and self-acclaimed architects,

stoke interior designers and people are you know just giving work to them with no real qualifications. So it's really unfortunate.

Okay. Now with evolution and sustainability at the heart of Havel's philosophy, from energy efficient lighting to innovations like Havel's solar systems, how do you think such initiatives reflect the way technology is reshaping sustainable architecture

today? So, like I said, our own proprietary grid sense, it's making an impact on sustainability anyways. So all newer ways of doing things to make our buildings or all our built forms to be more energy efficient and sustainable is the way one should really go. And Havels is also playing an important part in solar energy, LED lighting, automation, all of those systems really add to becoming more and more sustainable.

And as the architectural firm, do you all make a conscious attempt to kind of add a lot of solar heating systems into your designs?

For the last two decades, we as a management of the firm have mandated that we will design for green, irrespective of whether a client wants themselves to be certified as a green or LEED certified building, we by default would design for LEED. And it's really important and that as a philosophy, as a practice, that's what we've maintained and that's what we do.

In the wake of commercialization, is urbanism killing the beauty of your passionate base Alibaug? 100%.

So, Alibaug now is going to become an extension of the island city. And with that, unfortunately, the whole character and the charm that it has currently, or it had and still has in bits and pieces. Not bits and pieces, but there's quite a bit of it. But there are all of these sporadic developments that are happening, which are creating multi-storey towers and things like that, which will just kill it.

We are doing a project, which is a gated community, which is still 84 villas, it's just villas, it's not high rises. Kala Gate, for example, we had the opportunity and we had the FSI. I mean, like any developer, who currently, you know, developers currently are looking at exploiting land parcels to exploit them to the fullest potential of FSI. We at Calagate chose not to do that. We had enough and more FSI.

We could build a 20, 30, 40 storey tower. We chose to build a villa of 10,000 square feet where the potential was 100,000 square feet.

The next question is my favorite question. I believe you have a legendary walk-in closet. Tell us a bit about it.

I don't know where you heard that from, but I like my shoes. I like collecting a lot of shoes. Not just collecting, but collecting and obviously using them as well. So I have a lot of people complain about the collection that I have because we've run out of space, completely. Here at Ocean View, we've run out of space. We have another apartment down the road.

It's full.

Of shoes?

Of shoes. We have my place in Alibaug that's full of shoes. My office closet is full of shoes. We've seriously run out of space on the shoe collection.

Now we've heard about your love for machines, cars, speed boats. Is it the thrill, the relaxation or a bit of both? And what's your favorite? Yachts, cars,

speed boats? So bit of both, relaxation and thrill for sure

I'd say yachts

Because that's being out in the sea is much nicer than being on a road that has a lot of traffic

You are also a lifestyle model. What do you think is your thought process when you're styling yourself?

So I carry my stylist everywhere I go.

Seriously? Seriously.

That's your wife?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, she's, like I said, she's a very creative person. She does a lot of things. So right from a concept home store, she designs clothes, fashion, and of course my entire wardrobe, she's instrumental in most of the stuff that I wear. So yeah.

Baha, what would you say is your signature look?

There's no signature look. It really depends on what the mood is, what the occasion is, and for the event. So there's no signature.

The Grams are always buzzing about you winning awards. How does it feel like? Is it as exciting now as it was in the beginning?

Of course, it is. It's still the same. Because every award is a recognition of the kind of work that you do, the work that we collectively as an organization do and it's a reward for not just me individually because it's a collective effort, it's the entire organization, the entire team that's working on projects.

Okay, now we have some rapid-fire questions for you.

I thought these were rapid enough.

Rapid is like even faster. Okay, shorter answers, but you can obviously say what you like. A building you wish you had designed?

So I wish I would have designed the one single multi-storey tower that exists in Alibaug right now, I would have really made sure that it is not more than a ground plus one structure.

Smart tech or sustainable design, what excites you more?

Both because one leads into each other. Smart tech leads into sustainable design.

Okay, one city you'd love to design a landmark in?

I think it would be New York. Both my daughters are architects by profession. I'd love to work with them on see one building designed together.

Okay. Most overrated architectural trend?

LEED certification is most overrated and people say we would want us building LEED certified without even knowing what it means. Okay, glass or concrete? A mix of both. One non-architectural skill every architect must possess? Entrepreneurship and business management.

Alright. Which architect's journey do you admire?

Mine.

Okay. What's one moment from your journey that always brings a smile to your face? The I-Flex building that we did and looking at it as being the homepage for Bangalore. Mr. Patel, before we wrap this conversation, going down memory lane, any moment that brings a smile to your face from your journey as an architect?

Yes, like I mentioned to you, the building that we designed for iFlex, the one that is a cable-stayed structure. And when we saw it as the homepage on Facebook for Bangalore as a city, that really brings a smile on not just my face,

but everyone who worked on the project and for that matter, for all DSPs to have a structure that we designed 27 odd years back, is still, you know, stood the test of time and outlast tomorrow.

Wow. For all the young architects who look up to you and are watching this right now, what is your advice?

So I keep telling the youngsters that I meet is to stay hungry and stay curious, because if you're not curious and inquisitive, you're not going to really learn. Even when we have the younger architects in the firm, we encourage them to keep asking questions and I keep telling them, ask the most stupidest of questions. You are not stupid by asking those questions. So in fact, it's better that you ask and you learn and you learn much better rather than sitting on the fence and saying, oh, what will someone think about me? Right. So just keep being curious.

Mr. Patel, thank you so much for your time. It's so fascinating, your journey. And there's so much to learn. You are so dedicated. You are so creative and an inspiration to so many. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks for having me over.

And I hope all of you enjoyed this podcast, Making a Difference by Havels. And in case you can make a difference to somebody's life, please do so. Thank you again. Thank you again.

See you soon.