The studio
A small practice, kept small on purpose
Atelier Nord was founded in 2009 above a hardware shop in Nadakkavu. Sixteen years on, it is eighteen people across two studios, still working the same way — measuring sites by hand, drawing at full size, and staying on site until the building agrees with the drawing.
- Founded
- 2009
- People
- 18
- Studios
- Kozhikode · Bengaluru
- Projects a year
- Nine
The practice
We measure the site ourselves, and we stay until it is built
There is a version of this practice that would be three times the size. We have chosen not to build it. Nine projects a year is the number at which a partner can walk every site every week, review every shop drawing, and still have the afternoon to draw.
What that buys is specific. Junctions get mocked up before they get built. Nothing reaches a contractor as a note saying "to be confirmed on site". When a supplier substitutes a material, someone from the studio notices the same week.
We work almost entirely in Kerala and Karnataka, in a climate that punishes anything careless: two monsoons, salt air on the coast, and forty-degree afternoons inland. It is a good place to learn that detailing is not decoration.
Light is the first material
We set the section before the plan. Where the light enters, how high it reaches at noon in April, what it lands on — those decisions fix everything downstream, and they are almost impossible to correct later.
Honest to the hand
Materials are specified as they arrive: laterite that still reads as quarried, concrete that keeps the grain of its formwork, teak that will grey. Nothing is applied to look like something it is not.
Climate is the client
Kerala gets two monsoons a year. A building here is designed for water, shade and cross-ventilation first, and mechanical cooling last — which is also, incidentally, how it stays cheap to run for fifty years.
History
Sixteen years, in five entries
2009
Founded above a hardware shop in Nadakkavu with two people, one drawing board and a residential extension.
2013
First public commission — a bus shelter and market canopy in Kozhikode — begins a decade of civic work.
2017
The Bengaluru studio opens, taking the practice into workplace and campus projects.
2021
A permanent material research bench is set up: earth blocks, lime renders and reclaimed stone, tested in-house.
2025
Eighteen people across two studios, with work under construction in four states.
People
Four partners and associates, and fourteen others
The studio is deliberately flat: whoever draws a detail sees it built. Below are the people who lead the work.
Meera Reuter
Founding Partner
Founded the practice in 2009 after eight years on public buildings in Chennai and Oslo. Leads concept design and every cultural commission.
Rahul Nambiar
Partner, Design
Joined in 2012, partner since 2018. Runs the residential portfolio and the studio's long argument with detailing — nothing leaves the office undrawn.
Ingrid Løvaas
Associate, Research
Leads the material research bench and the studio's environmental modelling. Teaches building science one day a week at the school in Calicut.
Kabir Sen
Associate, Delivery
Heads delivery across both studios: tender, contract administration and the weekly site rounds that keep drawings and buildings in agreement.
Awards & press
Cited, longlisted and occasionally won
2025
AD100 India
Practice of the Year, shortlist
2024
Indian Institute of Architects
Public Building Award
2023
Dezeen Awards
Civic Building, longlist
2022
ArchDaily
Building of the Year, nominee
2019
Domus India
Emerging Practice
Start a project
Tell us about the site. We will tell you what it can hold.
Every commission begins the same way — a conversation, a walk around the plot, and an honest read on whether the brief and the budget can hold each other. That first conversation costs nothing.
- Telephone
- +91 98464 60337
- Response time
- Within two days