Headquartered in Bangalore, Thomas Associates is headed by T. M. Thomas, the Principal Architect of the firm, who has over 40 years of experience in the field of traditional and specialised architectural services. After a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Madras University, he completed a fellowship with the Indian Institute of Architects and further specialised in tropical architecture at the Architectural Association, England. Tom, as he is popularly known, worked in London for a few years before heading home to Bangalore.
Tilak Thomas, Executive Partner, holds a degree in architecture from the TVB School of Habitat Studies, New Delhi. He is a fellow of the Indian Institute of Architects and Council of Architecture (COA). He has over eight years in the field, during which he honed his skills at the renowned Wimberley Allison Tong & Goo, London, a firm specalising in global hotel and resort projects. TA is supported by a large team of architects, engineers and draftsmen at various levels, backed by skilled specialised consultancy groups in structural and electrical engineering, plumbing, fire prevention, landscape architecture and interior design. TA’s clientele has been painstakingly built up over the years by word-of-mouth referrals. A majority of its client relationships span several decades. The list reads like a who’s who of Bangalore’s real estate: Brigade Group, Prestige Group, RMZ Corp, Bagmane Developers, Puravankara, Salarpuria Group, SJR Group, Fidelity Investments, Hewlett Packard, Intel Technologies, Leela Hotels, Taj Hotels and Accor Hotels, to name just a few. Internationally renowned hotels like The Leela Palace, Bangalore and prestigious ongoing projects such as The Hilton, Accor and Taj hotels in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai, all bear the unmistakeable stamp of a TA project.
Recent commercial projects include UB City Bangalore, Titanium Bangalore, Raheja Towers Chennai and high-end IT parks in Bangalore such as Bagmane Tech Park, RMZ Nxt, SJR I-Park, all of which house a number of global technology companies. In the retail space, high-footfall malls such as The Forum Mall in Bangalore and the upcoming DLF Malls in Chennai and Hyderabad, The Forum Chennai, and Salarpuria Malls in Bangalore are being executed by TA. Special Economic Zones (SEZ) such as the Vrindavan Tech Village and PriTech IT Park bear the TA imprint as well as corporate IT campuses for Fidelity, Hewlett Packard and Intel in Bangalore, Motorola in Hyderabad and ST Microelectronics in Noida.
Velankanni
Each step of the city’s growth has posed new challenges in design, usage of new materials and application of rapidly changing technology. TA has been at the cutting edge, developing prototypes for various types of buildings, right from the earliest multi-storeyed apartments, to some of the first open office spaces and large format malls. In the process of this change, several heritage buildings and city landmarks have made way for new soaring glass and steel structures. Almost every project posed a unique challenge for TA to replace the old with an architecturally significant structure that retains elements of the charming and vibrant character of the city.
Skyrocketing land prices and building byelaws undergoing frequent mutations pose a multitude of challenges both in concept and execution, as well as in resolving commercial, legal and ownership aspirations. TA has adopted an ‘innovative-solution’ method through which it has incubated some of the most successful projects in the country. And what of the future? “We would like to refine our core competence of continuing the TA imprint by designing landmark projects that maintain the quintessence of Bangalore,” says Tilak.