Work
Experiential layer + AI application layer. Three projects that show the pattern.
Workplace Design
IFF was opening a 75,000 sq ft GBS hub in Hyderabad for 600 people across two floors. The standard brief for a GBS hub reads: open plan, enclosed meeting rooms, pantry, reception. Budget-optimized. A workplace that doesn't offend anyone. The problem: when a company's product is fragrance — when their R&D is literally the science of sensory experience — and their workplace smells like every other office building, something has gone wrong. The real challenge wasn't square footage. It was coherence. How do you build a workplace for a company that exists to design sensory experience, when the workplace itself ignores sensory design?
Retail Design
Retail in Bengaluru has a problem. Every new format — co-working, QSR, convenience — looks like every other one. The visual grammar is identical. Branded walls. Uniform lighting. Transaction-first layout. 7-Eleven was entering India with a brand that in Japan and Thailand carries genuine spatial energy — stores that feel like destinations, not transactions. The challenge in Bengaluru: how do you translate that energy into a format that works for Indian urban demographics, when the local retail design vocabulary is purely transactional? The brief wasn't "make it look like 7-Eleven." The brief was: make it feel like something worth entering.
Smart Building Design
50,000 sq ft. 110 dedicated workstations. 66 alternative seats. 200+ collaborative work-points. One floor that had to serve all of them simultaneously, with no one "owning" any particular space. This is the reality of hybrid work at GCC scale: more people than desks, more work modes than floor plans account for, and a coordination layer that doesn't exist yet. The standard solution is space optimization: reduce assigned desks, add "hotelling" software, call it flexible. The problem is that flexibility without design intelligence just moves the friction — from "I don't have a desk" to "I can't find the right space for this kind of work." The real challenge: how do you design a workplace that adapts to what people need, rather than what a fixed layout assumes they'll do?