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Brinda Chinnappa Somaya[1], Architect and Urban Conservationist completed her Master of Arts degree from Smith College, USA after graduating from the Sir J. J. College of Architecture, Mumbai. She believes that development and progress must proceed without straining the cultural and historic envronment. Her philosophy: the Architect's role is that of guardian - his is the conscience of the built and un-built environment.
This belief underlines her work at "Somaya and Kalappa", the company she founded and has headed for the last three decades. Her oeuvre, spanning corporate, industrial and institutional clients extends to public spaces, which she has rebuilt and sometimes reinvented as pavements, parks and plazas. These include the Colaba Woods, Ganeshpuri Temple and a slew of pavements in South Mumbai & the reconstruction of an entire village in Kutch. She has done the master planning and building design of multiple corporate and educational campuses. Some of these award winning campuses include the Tata Consultancy Services - Banyan Park, Mumbai, the Nalanda International School, Vadodara, the Zensar Technologies limited, Pune. Other campuses include the Goa Institute of management and the Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, Pilani.
She has won numerous personal and professional awards through the years.But perhaps one of her most fulfilling involvement has been in Progressive Conservation - best exemplified in the restoration and renovation of her alma mater, the Cathedral and John Connon Schools, prime examples of Victorian Gothic architecture in the historic precinct of the Fort area, Mumbai. An example of how the future can be embraced without erasing the past, this conservation effort embodies, in microcosm, what other historic areas of the city might do to renew themselves and by extension, the city, through focused environment-conscious (and history-sensitive) architecture. She emphasizes time and again that her involvement in conservation is neither self indulgent nor reverential, but an intelligent meshing of the old and new to develop an architectural form that serves the present.
Brinda Somaya has delivered analytical and critical talks as well as presented papers in India and abroad on Conservation, Women in Architecture, the changing role of Indian Architects and innumerable other subjects.
Brinda Somaya is also a founder trustee of The HECAR Foundation and has chaired the highly successful conference and exhibition on the work of Women Architects with a focus on South Asia. The foundation has also brought out various books on architecture.