unTAG is a unison of two contrasting personalities, Gauri Satam and Tejesh Patil, architecture graduates from Sir JJ COA Mumbai, who have come together to craft a Mumbai based interdisciplinary design studio since 2015. The studio strongly adheres to climatic sensibility, contextual rooting, spatial functionality, material sensitivity and economic viability as their core values.
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unTAG has effectively accomplished cost effective, environmentally conscious residential, institutional and hospitality projects pan-India, while having participated and won some international competitions too. The studio has also received some prestigious design awards like IAB’s Young Designers Award, Trends Sustainability Award for their overly simple, sustainable and cost-effective work.
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We do not want to associate our practice with a particular design language, rather we want our design to be dictated by the brief, budget, climate and context, hence the name unTAG. Being a young zealous practice, we consider each project SPECIAL, calling for a SPECIFIC design solution, SENSITIVE to its context, irrespective of its scale or budget. Through our experimental practice, we wish to lend our service to every strata of society, till the very grass-root level. We have been constantly questioning the current trend of most affluent architects catering mainly to the rich, creating a picturesque image of their practice, while prioritizing aesthetics over rationale.
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For us, it's not just how the built form looks, rather how it is experienced and inhabited by the users, and how gracefully it ages.We ensure an active role of the users while evolving our design, understanding their aspirations, lifestyles and constraints, which helps us collaboratively shape a project which is value for money, time and sentiments.
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We feel the most difficult thing to achieve in design is simplicity, which we always strive towards.
Hear us out at https://youtu.be/I88rP4fbt7M
Gauri Satam
Co- founder
Gauri, a practising architecture for over 17 years, graduated from Sir JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai in 2008, and has done her masters in Landscape Architecture from LS Raheja SOA, Mumbai. Gauri has been the Recipient of the DIADA Global Thesis Awards 2021 as well as Prabhakar Bhagwat Thesis Award 2021 for her Masters thesis on Charkop’s intertidal wetlands and Koliwada.
Gauri strongly believes that architecture is not just a profession but a passion, a way of life. Always preferring function over form, experience over aesthetics, native over exotic, while addressing human scale and its inevitable connect with nature are critical to her design sensibilities.
For Gauri, sustainability is not just a later addition, but an integral part of design, starting from the initial seed of thought. She sees Landscape as an integral part of unTAG, while integrating native biodiversity as a thumb rule for all projects. Being listed in Top50 Women Architects in India by Volzero, featured in HerCircle for her environment conscious practice, Gauri continues to inspire young minds through various educational forums and lecture series.
Tejesh Patil
Co- founder
Tejesh has graduated from Sir JJ College of Architecture in 2008. A practising Architect with a work experience of over 17 years, Tejesh’s expertise lies in designing energy-efficient, environment-conscious and cost-efficient architecture. Through his diligent research, he has been exploring ways of integrating passive solar energy and effective natural cooling systems alongside native material explorations to establish thermal comfort in unTAG’s projects.
He strongly believes that an architect’s passion and sensibility can be rightly channelized to tweak the lifestyle of an individual and the society he lives in, so that some day, man and nature could co-exist hand in hand.
A water colour artist and a farmer by heart, a rider by passion, Tejesh has a multifaceted persona. Having done his schooling in a village in Palghar, Tejesh has a deep connect with the rural setting. He has been trying his best to lend his design service to the grassroot level through social architecture.
The Team
Nikita Patil
Srivibhu Viraj
