Resort & hotel architects in Uttarakhand

Our Uttarakhand work starts with the AC Hotel by Marriott in Dehradun, designed to the brand’s standards for the state capital, and draws on resort projects elsewhere in India for IHCL SeleQtions, Hilton, Sarovar, Lemon Tree and ITC’s Epiq Collection. Dehradun is a five-hour drive from our studio in New Delhi, which is close enough for the principal architect and our site engineers to visit through construction.

Hill sites in Mussoorie, Rishikesh, Nainital or around Corbett ask for a particular discipline, and it is one we practise at Madar Lake in Udaipur: let the master plan follow the contours, keep cars at the arrival level and move guests up by cart, build in local stone that ages into the slope, and give every room its own view.

The first decision on a hill is where to put the arrival. We place reception, banquet and spa at the lower level so the upper zones stay quiet and car-free, then step the guest blocks up the slope so none of them blocks another’s view. Retaining walls become terraces; the stone cut from the site becomes the walls. Load-bearing stone masonry, left raw, needs no maintenance and looks better each monsoon.

Services are planned early: water storage and treatment, power backup, fire access and the road a truck can actually climb. These decide the layout as much as the view does, and they are the questions an operator’s technical team will ask first.

Each brand publishes standards for rooms, bathrooms, public areas, back-of-house and fire and life safety. We read them before we draw, design the guest room first and let the plan grow from it, and build a mock-up room wherever the programme allows. A design that meets the standards on first submission saves an owner months of review.

Master planning, architecture, interiors, landscape and site supervision from one studio of 25+ architects, interior designers, visualisers and site engineers. For an owner in Uttarakhand this means one team responsible for the resort from the first sketch to the operator’s handover inspection.

Dehradun is a city hotel brief: a business or leisure hotel on a flat site, built to an operator’s standard, as the AC Hotel by Marriott was. Mussoorie and the hill stations are about slope, access and winter – snow loads, heating, a road that works in the monsoon. Rishikesh is about the river and the yoga and wellness guest: quiet rooms, spa and open pavilions. Corbett is about the forest: low buildings, native planting and dark skies. We read the site and the guest before we read the brand standards.

Water, power, sewage treatment and fire access are harder on a hill than in a city, and they decide where the buildings can go; we plan them with the master plan rather than after it.

We prepare the concept, key count, areas and massing that owners use to approach an operator, then develop the design with the brand’s technical services team, design the guest room first and build a mock-up where the programme allows. Architecture, interiors, landscape and site supervision come from one studio of 25+ people, so there is one team responsible from the first sketch to the handover inspection.

Hotel owners we have worked with include IHCL SeleQtions, Hilton, AC Hotels by Marriott, Sarovar, Lemon Tree and ITC’s Epiq Collection; our hospitality page lists the projects.