The Mastermind of Modernity— Aman Aggarwal, Principal Architect at Charged Voids, is on a quest for a sense of temporal continuity

Aman Aggarwal, the visionary Principal Architect at Charged Voids, embodies the essence of architectural brilliance and innovation. Leading this internationally acclaimed architecture and design practice from the vibrant city of Chandigarh, India, Aman brings a unique perspective to the field, intertwining spirituality with the physicality of built forms through a profound understanding of the elements and a keen responsiveness to climate. Aman’s design philosophy is a testament to the rich tapestry of influences that have shaped his thinking. Trained under the late Pritzker Prize-winning architect BV Doshi and grounded in the core principles of modernism by the iconic Le Corbusier, Aggarwal seamlessly weaves tradition and modernity into his creations.

At the helm of Charged Voids, Aman has been a driving force behind the conception and execution of some of the firm’s most remarkable projects. Noteworthy among them are the Student Hostel for Chandigarh Group of Colleges, the avant-garde Office 543 in Mohali, and the elegant Residence 91. Each of these projects garnered international acclaim, earning finalist status at the esteemed World Architecture Festival (WAF) in 2019. The Student Hostel, in particular, received the coveted ‘Highly Commended’ accolade, a testament to Aman’s unwavering commitment to excellence.

In the dynamic world of architecture, Aman Aggarwal stands as a beacon of creativity, seamlessly blending tradition, spirituality, and modernity in a quest to shape timeless spaces that transcend the boundaries of the present. In an in-depth conversation with us, he shares insights about resource utilisation and efficiency planning.

Can you share with us your background and how your training under architects like BV Doshi and exposure to Le Corbusier’s principles have influenced your design philosophy, particularly regarding sustainability?

My time with Doshi Sir (Late BV Doshi) taught me how to decipher great architecture as a practitioner setting out on my path, especially as a young mind. Owing to his work with Le Corbusier, his core ideology resonated with the architecture I had been acquainted with since a very young age. Learning from Doshi Sir, hence, was a profound turning point for me, not just as an architect but also as a human being.
Doshi Sir was able to understand Indian life more than anybody else. In his work, we can see a beautiful adaptation of Western ideas—his learnings from his guru, Corbusier—into the Indian context. Growing up in Chandigarh, the experiential attributes and the choreography of Corbusian architecture had been a subconscious learning. To be able to reinterpret that under the guidance of Professor Doshi and Mr Rajeev Kathpalia helped me translate the Western ways of thinking into learning around Eastern spatial planning. At Vastu Shilpa Consultants, I also had the fortune of helping Sir document a few of Corbusier’s buildings in Ahmedabad. In the process, I learnt some of the finer things of architecture, including how humans will always be more at home with nature than anything man-made.

You’ve recently shown a commitment to the educational sector with your contribution to Chandigarh University’s Lucknow Campus. What does sustainability mean to you and how does Charged Voids incorporate sustainable practices into its projects, specifically in terms of resource utilization and efficiency planning?

As an evolving practice, we were offered medium to large-scale public projects in earlier stages, allowing us to branch into exploring parallel projects. Extracting learnings out of these, we as Charged Voids, set out to redefine sustainability through ways that go deeper than just applying green building technologies. We considered the resources a project uses—both at its construction stages and lifetime—and aimed to optimise each parameter, including the land a building occupies. For us, going green means imposing less.
For Lucknow Campus, drawing from the intent to maximise the land resources, we have been able to condense the compartmentalised university departments into a single mega-block with centralised amenities. The proximity of these modules enables pedestrian connectivity within the 2.5 million square feet campus and could be traversed in under 10 minutes. Microclimates within these interconnected modules are enhanced by interventions like skylights, double-skinned corridors, projections and recesses. The addition of green liminal spaces invited abundant ventilation and daylight influx, ensuring maximum efficiency.

In the context of Chandigarh University’s Lucknow Campus, what is Mega-Block Planning and how was it conceptualised? According to you, why was it necessary to relook at campus master planning?

Spread across 5M square feet, Chandigarh University’s Lucknow campus compartmentalises itself into 7+ academic departmental modules, hostel blocks, sports arenas, halls and amphitheatre. The concept of ‘Mega-Block’ planning not only groups these individual modules – centralising the common amenities – but also optimises the land and energy resources. The segregation of traffic and creating a pedestrian-friendly campus that could be traversed in under 5 minutes was also an objective. With this mega-block master plan, the interconnected volumes maximise the usage of land resources, thereby reducing capital expenditure, providing us with flexible utilisable spaces and lowering lifetime maintenance costs.

A reinvention of the existing campus-planning norms, which often results in fragmented and inaccessible planning, gave us the impetus to consider a technologically enabled campus design that is ecologically responsible too.

How do you achieve spatial equilibrium between the outdoors and indoors in your architecture, and why is connectivity with nature crucial in achieving a balance within the built environment?

Indian culture has always practised judicial usage of resources. The idea of a circular economy was not a mere concept but a commonplace habit. Our design approaches are inspired by elements of Indian architecture and informed by the site context backed by knowledge of the elements.
Establishing an indoor-outdoor dynamic between the built mass and its immediate environment helps the inhabitants to connect with the elements of nature. By integrating courtyards, skylights, local materials, strategic orientation and other passive cooling measures, this connection can be established across buildings of all typologies. Such tools of passive cooling help in reducing the dependency on artificial methods for light and ventilation. Constructing buildings that are pen but do not waste energy or space contributes to passive cooling mechanisms. Coupling this with the practice of maximising the utility of the resources — land, energy, or capital — a truly efficient built environment can be developed.

Can you share instances from your projects where indoor-outdoor connectivity was a pivotal part?

Transitional spaces have been a core element of Indian spatial planning. Planning for incidental zones or semi-covered spaces, irrespective of the functionality, becomes of key importance. Some instances where the spaces were devised to foster this indoor-outdoor relationship are mentioned here:

Situated in Mandi Gobindgarh, a dense industrial town in Punjab, the RIMT School attempts to reimagine school typology for tier-3 cities in India. The large mass of the school structure was broken down into smaller modules that feel inviting to children. Each module becomes a rotated cube on a grid that extends into the spill-over green spine, fostering healthy micro-environments for the children to interact with. With RIMT School, Charged Voids draws on nature, scale, and the element of play to elevate the quotidian school experience.

Residence 1065, a house for a multigenerational family of six, is a reimagination of the traditional ways of living against the backdrop of Chandigarh’s modernist legacy. The open plan, the curved concrete roof, and the overlapping volumes all reinforce the characteristics of this modernist heritage and maintain their connection with the outdoors. Nature becomes a part of the interior spaces through multiple courtyards and terrace gardens—staying true to the idea of interpreting traditional transitional spaces like verandahs in a modern context. As they open onto courtyards and deep verandahs with tall sun breakers on the front facade, they grant access to the outdoors while not compromising on the element of privacy of the residence.

Looking ahead, what trends do you foresee in sustainable architecture, and how do you believe architects can contribute to a more sustainable future?

With artificial intelligence taking over the administrative aspects, the physicality of many spaces would become obsolete, if they serve singular functions only. The spaces would then be required to accommodate interaction and socialising. Hybrid education and soft-learning mechanisms would be commonplace pedagogical practices. We should plan the spaces that foster nature and interactions in educational institutes. Similarly, all public spaces should be planned as cultural spaces that function to meet the demands of social interactions. What remains true with changing times is the requirement for the most efficient solutions at immediate disposal and an achievable action plan for the question of sustainability. We should generate architecture that holds its relevance for “the now” and for the next century.

The lifespan of the building constitutes a prime attribute in the context of the sustainability of the built form. In my opinion, the answers to these universal questions can solve any ideological dilemmas around the future of design. Optimisation of resources to fully maximise the available resources like land, capital, energy and other related assets, is a functional philosophy that we operate on when designing for any scale or function. With this learning informing our core understanding of the concept of sustainability, the only outlooks that would need redefining in the AI-present world would only be technological and not fundamental. This way, when presented with questions in an AI-run future, the immediate solutions would be the only ones to be cracked and not the core understanding of these problems.

Website: www.chargedvoids.in