Studio Symbiosis founder Amit Gupta joined Snøhetta’s Richard Wood on the Design Perspective stage at FOAID — a pairing that brought two distinct architectural perspectives into conversation: one rooted in India’s rapidly evolving urban landscape, the other in the social infrastructure thinking that has defined Snøhetta’s global practice.

The curated evening, part of FOAID’s Design Perspective series, gathered architects, designers, and young professionals for a focused dialogue on the questions driving contemporary practice today.

Ideas Over Ceremony

Amit Gupta spoke from the body of work Studio Symbiosis has built across Stuttgart, London, and Delhi — a practice defined by its position at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and human experience. The conversation moved through the decisions that shape architecture today: how design responds to cultural context, how emerging tools are changing the act of making buildings, and what it means to create space for human experience in cities that are transforming faster than the profession can comfortably keep pace with.

What did Amit Gupta speak about at Design Perspective FOAID?

Amit Gupta explored how architecture operates at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and human experience — drawing from Studio Symbiosis’s work to examine how context-driven design engages with the tools and ideas reshaping the built environment. The talk was less a retrospective than a provocation: what does contemporary practice actually demand of architects right now?

Richard Wood brought the international counterpoint — presenting on architecture as social infrastructure, drawing from Snøhetta’s work on the Oslo Opera House and Times Square to argue that the built environment’s deepest function is to strengthen the connections between people, place, and culture.

Two practices. Two geographies. One question about what architecture is for.

What is FOAID Design Perspective?

About the platform

Design Perspective is a conference series produced by FOAID — the Festival of Architecture and Interior Designing — India’s most established platform for architectural knowledge exchange. Over a decade and across Indian cities, it has consistently brought together prominent national and international voices with working professionals and emerging designers for evening dialogues that prioritise depth over spectacle.

About Studio Symbiosis

Studio Symbiosis is an architecture and design practice with studios in Stuttgart, London, and Delhi. Founded by Amit Gupta and Britta Knobel Gupta, the studio works across residential, mixed-use, and urban scales — with a design approach that holds technology, cultural context, and human experience in deliberate tension.