Becoming a doctor, lawyer or engineer was considered de rigueur in his family – so when Jay Vidyut Shah wanted to pursue design and architecture, he had to overcome resistance to this ‘new’ profession. Now that he has won awards and design competitions, the tide has turned. After completing his B.Arch from the Rachana Sansad Academy of Architecture, Mumbai, he worked with Architect Hafeez Contractor for about a year before pursuing his Master’s in Advanced Architectural Design in the US. Jay then acquired around three years’ valuable experience with a boutique architectural firm Robert Scarano, working on high-end luxury condominium buildings and apartments in New York city and its boroughs. Once he returned to India, he was offered an associate partner position at Talati and Panthaky Associated and rose to senior associate partner. During his decade of working with the firm, Jay designed and executed various architectural and interior projects – hotels, airports, villas, highend luxury residential and commercial, pan India. Ravid & Co Designs, which Jay started in 2018 is a one-stop solution for Design & Build and interior design – apart from architecture, master planning and landscape architecture. The firm has successfully executed award-winning projects including the Kalhaar Blues & Greens near Sanand, Ahmedabad, comprising 801 villas overlooking an 18-hole golf course spread over 500 acres, besides luxury villas in Amravati, Nagpur and Chennai. Jay Vidyut Shah Founder & Principal Architect, Ravid & Co Designs “Luxury interiors is all about the finesse of design, the materials chosen and the finish” Kunal Shah Kunal grew up with a keen interest in drawing, painting and craft. Fascinated by the “cool, bohemian” students of the architecture college he could see from his school classroom window, he wanted to be like them. So, he did a Bachelor of Interior Design from the Institute of Environmental Design, Sardar Patel University at Anand (Gujarat) in 2004, followed by a post-graduate Diploma in Indian Aesthetics from Mumbai University. A year after he began interning with Rajiv Saini & Associates, someone he met at a party asked him to design his living room. Thus was born Kunal Shah Designs, based in Mumbai and Goa. Since its inception in 2004, the focus of his interior architecture consultancy has been spatial quality - harnessing natural light, drawing in breeze, sculpting volumes, and teasing out natural textures. The studio has designed residences, offices, restaurants, art galleries, sets and boutiques as well as furniture - among them the Satvik floor of art hotel ‘Le Sutra’ and the flagship store for leading fashion and costume designer Manish Malhotra in Mumbai. In 2020, Kunal had co-founded ‘claro’, a store in Assagao, Goa. Currently, he is restoring a 300+-year-old baradari in Jaipur, building two cottages in Alibaug, designing interiors for four residences in Mumbai, and restoring a colonial house in the Nilgiris. And he still found time to curate ‘Ahmedabad - Mecca of Design’ for Gallery 47-A in Khotachiwadi, Mumbai! Founder, Kunal Shah Designs “LuxeBook, to me, is a compilation of the finest things the country has to offer” | 29 | 28
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTcxNzM1