Designing What a City Remembers

Designing What a City Remembers

The journey of Sanjeev Sharma, founder and principal architect of Orionn Architects, from intimate spaces to the wider life of cities.

Cities are remembered in fragments: a shaded walk, the edge of a river, a public garden, the ease of moving from one place to another. For Sanjeev Sharma, founder and principal architect of Orionn Architects, these everyday encounters are as consequential as the buildings that frame them.

Since establishing the Noida-based practice in 2006, Sharma has moved between the intimate and the infrastructural, between the scale of a residence and that of an urban landscape. Landscape architect Neelima Rana Sharma joined as partner in 2011, deepening the studio's integrated approach to architecture, interiors, landscape, heritage conservation and urban design.

Perhaps its most resonant expression is Vedvan Park in Noida. Across 12 acres, a landscape inspired by the seven Vedic sages becomes an experience of pathways, planting, water, light and storytelling. Rather than treating heritage as ornament, the project brings cultural memory into the language of contemporary public space.

The ambition broadens in the studio's Chambal and Britiya Kund riverfront work, where water is considered a civic edge rather than a boundary. The Noida International Golf Course and sports-complex portfolio engage large-scale recreation, while the Sector 51–52 metro skywalk and model-road initiatives enter the choreography of everyday urban movement.

Though the commissions vary, a conviction binds them: good architecture responds to its setting and to the people who inhabit it. Material, climate, movement and memory are not finishing touches, but starting points. For Sharma, the enduring achievement is a place that continues to matter long after its drawings have been put away.