In the realm where imagination meets innovation, Sudharsan JP Founder & Partner in Oculus Design Studio stands as a beacon of creativity and design excellence. As the visionary behind Oculus, his journey is not just a narrative of success but a testament to the transformative power of design.
Mr. JP has over 15 years of industry knowledge and experience in managing workplace design and delivery for the best-known IT, ITES, and banking industries and worked for IPC/PM firms, managing corporate interiors for top MNC clients under the Design and Build model.
His design philosophy is to first understand the customer’s business strategy and culture, and translate them through inventive design into a functional, productive, and creative work environment.
Join us as we delve into the world of Mr. Sudharsan JP, exploring their inspirations, insights, and aspirations. Discover the story behind the designs, the philosophy that drives his creativity, and the projects that have redefined the landscape of design.
Sudarshan has worked in multiple organizations for almost twelve years in terms of workplace and corporate interiors specifically before starting the journey at Oculus. So it’s been nine years in Oculus. JP continued the conversation and briefed that he started this firm in a very modest way as a boutique design firm and only the two of them (him and partner) who worked from home for almost a year and we have been consistently contributing something to the industry that has helped us to grow.
So from two people, we are now around 50 people and done close to around 15 million sq. ft. workplace in terms of design and delivery till now pan India. Now we have our presence in Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune and apart from that, we have also served close to around 25 plus locations in India. Apart from India, we have served for a few of our clients as a concept architect outside India as well. Typically offshoring happens the other way where an international architect kind of gets us a concept architect doing projects in India. We are proud to be innovated as concept architects for projects.
So this has been really an exciting journey for us and we look forward to much more as we go along.
Sudarshan shared his philosophy of work that I am more of a practical person, so I don’t really kind of get into philosophy in terms of thought starters, but there is one thing that i always start with ‘Why?’, as I personally believe that understanding why, ‘why we do’ something is much more important than ‘how we do’ or ‘what we do’, which means the real purpose of our work has to be explored. And this is being top driven in our firm, be it a junior or at any level or any kind of work, we reinforce in people understanding the real purpose of what they are doing.
Probably that would be a key philosophy, which means they know the grounds, in and out of everything in terms of reality because after that, they can really contribute towards their work. So it’s not merely getting some work out of people with us, but in terms of grooming them, giving them a long sight, the complete 360 degree perspective of what we are as I believe the why also must be helping them to get connected by heart to the work that they are doing.
When we speak about efficiency of organization, what I personally kind of believe is in terms of leadership, leadership is the key, said Sudarshan. He continued that in terms of support, pillar, towards making any organization efficient and being a good leader is nothing to kind of take care of people with you, that’s why we diligently do that. We also ensure to maintain a very flat hierarchy. So, we maintained ourselves as leaders, team leaders, department leaders. So everybody is called a leader in my organization.
So we call ourselves founders or mentors mainly when we say we take care of people in all aspects, be it in terms of their well being, knowledge, nurturing them with regards for their daily work, or giving them in terms of targets.
What I personally believe is as long as you take care of your people well and guide them on the right track, this is the help to grow and make an efficient organization. This philosophy has worked with us, though we are around nine years old, some people are there from day one sticking to us and as you have more people like this, that obviously makes a very efficient organization.
On asking about challenges, MR. JP said it is to kind of align all designers, stakeholders and different people in a project and bring them together for a single purpose. This would be my primary challenge and I feel when it comes to the design fraternity, that would be a primary challenge for anybody because there would be multiple stakeholders in a project. Though the requirements are on paper, the end purpose is the same, but there are multiple stakeholders and each person has their own perspectives.
He continued with the point that if you are able to kind of bring everybody on the same page towards a common project interest towards a common purpose, 50% of our job is done. Rest would be in terms of managing the three paramounts of a project, which is quality, time and cost, which we would be able to do at ease through our experience.
One more challenge, specifically myth, which is there in the design industry is like creative designs don’t come cheap and this is a tagline most architects use but we would like to kind of not be the same stereotype. We want to question the status and what we preach here in Oculus is if you are creative, you have to break the boundaries, irrespective of time constraint, cost constraint as creativity is challenging. You can create a task with these constraints. Provide best design service is what is being top driven in our company and that has also helped us to overcome the cost and time challenge in most of our projects.
To be Continued >>