Why Rooshad Shroff is in the Design 100

Rooshad Shroff trained as an architect at Cornell University before completing a Master of Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where his thesis work was exhibited at the Shanghai Expo and the Venice Architecture Biennale. He began his career at OMA, then joined Zaha Hadid Architects in London, working on the design team behind the Dubai Opera House and residential towers in Vienna and Singapore.

In 2011 he returned to Mumbai to found Rooshad Shroff Architecture and Design, treating architecture, interiors and furniture as a single continuous discipline. Trained separately in carving, he works directly with artisans in Jaipur, Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow, bringing marble carving, joinery and embroidery into buildings and objects rather than leaving craft as decoration applied afterwards. That combination of engineering rigour and hands-on making has earned him a recurring place on Architectural Digest India’s AD100 list.