Pooja Thareja Architect

Our little office is situated at Wp-4A in Aada Basti Sheikh. It’s a local neighborhood where everyone seems to know everyone else. Pooja Thareja is the one in charge here, and she spends most of her day at the big drafting table or on her laptop. The office isn't very large, so we have to be careful not to trip over the rolls of paper that often end up on the floor. It’s a simple setup with a couple of chairs for visitors and a lot of shelves for all the technical books we need for our projects. We don't have any big corporate banners or anything like that. The walls are mostly covered with sketches and notes we’ve pinned up over the months. Living and working in Aada Basti Sheikh means we see the same faces every day, which is nice. We get our lunch from the nearby stalls and talk to the people who live in the surrounding houses. The work is mostly about figuring out how to make a space functional and safe for the people using it. We spend a lot of time measuring things and re-measuring them just to be sure. It’s not a glamorous job, but we enjoy the process of seeing something go from a messy sketch to a real building. We keep the doors open when the weather is good, and you can hear the kids playing.