Studio Dotbox is the architectural practice of Pratyush Sharma.

I founded Studio Dotbox in 2020, after completing my architectural education and receiving my licence to practice. For the first four years, I worked on the studio alongside full-time roles at established architectural firms. I went full-time on Studio Dotbox in 2024.

I chose “Studio” to signal a design-focused practice, not a firm that happens to offer design. “Dotbox” came from an approach I kept returning to: designing out of the box, for every brief, at every scale.

In those years, I have designed across a range of typologies: pavilions for Auto Expo, office interiors, private homes, government buildings, hotels, mixed-use projects, retail rollouts executed across India, and luxury residential and commercial work. That variety has shaped how I think about the practice: every project is specific, but the thinking underneath it is consistent.

Alongside the design work, the studio has built a network of 500+ architects, 50+ contractors, and 150+ vendors across India. For a studio-based practice, that network is as important as the drawings. It is how we move from design to delivery, at any scale.

I studied at Amity School of Architecture and Planning, Jaipur, from 2014 to 2019. Architecture school changed the way I see the world. I came in curious about buildings and left believing that everything around us is designed: a chair, a spoon, a mobile phone, a street. That shift, from thinking of architecture as a discipline to thinking of it as a way of seeing, is still at the core of how I approach the work.

Alongside the studio, I completed a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning at VGU, Jaipur, in May 2026. The masters came out of two interests: the first, a curiosity about how cities are designed, which I found myself returning to after architecture; the second, a long-term intention to teach. During the programme, I worked on an urban redevelopment project for several industrial areas in Delhi. Urban planning is now part of how Studio Dotbox thinks about projects at every scale.

The first move on any project is not a drawing. It is a questionnaire. Before I draw a line, I need to understand what the client actually needs, which is often different from what the brief says. The brief is the client’s guess at what they want. The questionnaire is where we get to what they actually need.

The second move is the site. Orientation, sun, wind, climate, access, topography. These are not poetic considerations. They are the constraints that determine where the building opens, which walls block the heat, how the air moves through the space, and which rooms belong where. By the time I know the site, most of the plan has quietly been decided.

The third move is where experimentation begins. Form, material, experience. These decisions matter, but they come last in the work, because they are the least constrained. A strong plan in a well-understood site can support many forms. A strong form on a misunderstood site cannot support any.

I take on a limited number of projects each year, regardless of scale. Every project gets my time in full sittings of three or four hours, not fifteen-minute check-ins between other work. The week is structured around the projects, not the other way around.

I stay involved with every project from the first conversation to the completed space, and beyond. Once a space is inhabited, the relationship does not end. My relationship with a space I have designed is not temporary, it is permanent.

I design best with clients who want to be part of the process. Who can tell me how they live, how they move through a day, what a space needs to do for them. The brief is where we start; the conversation is how we get to a design that works.

I prefer to be involved from the first idea, not brought in to execute a decision that has already been made. Design is the expertise I bring. Execution follows from it.

Clients can expect regular communication. Weekly during design. Daily during execution. Every decision documented, nothing left to “the designer will figure it out.”