Harshal Shinde

Ms.Arch (USA), B.Arch

Architect • Interior Designer • Furniture-maker • Educator

Harshal is passionate about interior design, adaptive reuse & architectural conservation, sustainability, emergency architecture and rapid housing.

Harshal has won many awards as a top ranking and outstanding design student through out his architectural education. After pursuing higher studies at the University of Cincinnati, USA, he worked at the Chicago architecture firm of Otis Koglin Wilson. After moving back to India in 2001, he joined Urban Arts. Since then, he has completed hundreds of turnkey interior design projects for clients all over India.

His 20+ years of experience in architecture & interior design practice spans a multitude of building types including:

Residential,
Retail,
Hospitality,
Infrastructure,
Schools and Ashrams,
Institutional Campuses, and
Office Spaces.

In 2018, he lead a team of student apprentices to a nationally shortlisted proposal in affordable rapid-housing for disaster affected areas. This design is slated to enter the prototyping stage shortly.

Harshal has been a frequent jurist in student design reviews at the JNA&FAU School of Planning & Architecture, Sri Venkateshwara College of Architecture, and Aurora’s Design Academy. He presently also serves as the Director, JNIAS School of Planning & Architecture, JNA&FA University, Hyderabad.

He was the youngest architect ever to present a refereed paper at the prestigious International Conference hosted by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, USA (2001).

Harshal's interest in furniture design led him to venture into furniture manufacturing in 2006 (together with his wife, Anita). That business quickly grew into an advanced furniture manufacturing unit and four retail outlets.

Custom-designed Bar-chair Frames | Raw finish

In a residential interiors market largely dominated by on-site carpentry, in 2006, Harshal developed and introduced a unique mix of factory–made woodwork installation system blended with bespoke hand–crafted finish — reducing the time traditionally taken by on-site carpentry works from 3–4 months, to within 2–3 weeks.

Despite the drastic time reduction, this system delivers a fit–&–finish that trumps the workmanship of meticulous on-site carpentry for high–end projects.

Till date, others in the home-interiors manufacturing industry have not been able to replicate this technique.

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His other interests are photography, travel, writing & painting.

He maintains a blog of his thoughts on design and architecture.

Read his Blog!