Sameep Padora founded sP+a in 2007, and the Mumbai-based practice has gained a reputation for pushing its projects beyond the briefs to deepen their social impact. In 2021, sP+a received the Wallpaper Design Award for Best Public Building for its Temple of Steps: an abstracted interpretation of the classical Hindu typology that became the center of a remedial landscape strategy, replenishing water reserves below ground to irrigate the cotton and chilli farms surrounding the site.

Through hands-on research and continual collaboration, the studio aims to bring local craftsmanship into conversation with advanced construction methods, expanding ‘preservation’ to allow tradition to evolve and endure. 

Across an award-winning portfolio featuring housing developments, educational institutes, places of worship, and the adaptive reuse of a historic fort, the practice has traversed southern India with its projects, each as diverse as they are beautiful. What connects them—across the peninsula’s disparate geographies, climates and cultures—is a profoundly contextual approach to design that has become the practice’s hallmark.