Most Jaipur clients arrive having seen enough marble-and-gold rooms to want the opposite: a house that stays cool without announcing it, an office people choose to come into, a building that sits well on its street. In Jaipur NYKS takes on the whole of that — the architectural design of a new house or farmhouse, the interiors, and turnkey fit-outs for offices, showrooms and hospitality.
This is where the studio is, so a project here gets the founders on site, artisans briefed in person and samples that arrive the same week rather than the same month. The studio is at Basement Floor, J12/A, Panchsheel Marg, C Scheme, Ashok Nagar, Jaipur 302001. To see the material board in person, arrange a visit through the contact page.
NYKS’s built work is in Jaipur and Udaipur, and it covers the three kinds of project this page is about: workplaces, buildings, and rooms people live and stay in. Nishtha Kandoi, the principal designer, trained in architecture at the University of Cincinnati and worked at Gensler and AS+GG in Chicago and KPF in New York; Yashvardhan Singh runs operations — the craft networks, site discipline and delivery. Her talk at TEDxMayoor School Jaipur (November 2025) is on the about page.
The briefs vary with the neighbourhood. Family homes in Bani Park and Civil Lines and the older bungalows of C-Scheme often need reworking more than rebuilding; plots in Vaishali Nagar, Malviya Nagar and Jagatpura more often mean a new house from the ground up; farmhouses sit on the city’s edge, where the garden is part of the architecture.
Being across town changes the method. We walk a site at different hours to see where the light, heat and dust come from before a plan is fixed. On a new house or farmhouse the architecture and interiors are drawn together, so windows, jaalis and joinery are placed once rather than negotiated later. The project is modelled and coordinated in 3D before it is built, and the people who drew it run the site.
Offices and showrooms have their own order of work. The landlord’s fit-out rules, the building’s fire approval and your moving date come first; cooling, data, AV and lighting are engineered next; finishes follow. NYKS brings in MEP, lighting and IT/AV specialists where a project needs them — more on how the studio is organised is on the about page.
Interior work that leaves structure, setbacks and the building’s footprint alone generally needs no building permission. New houses, additions and structural changes do. They go to the Jaipur Development Authority or the Jaipur Municipal Corporation, depending on where the plot sits, with drawings signed by the Council of Architecture-registered architect on our team. The city’s Heritage and Greater corporations were merged back into a single Jaipur Municipal Corporation in November 2025, so older papers may carry either name.
The walled city is a different case. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019, and its heritage regulations require prior permission for repairs and renovation as well as new work, granted by the municipal corporation on the advice of its Heritage Cell. Bazaar façades are protected, signage is limited, and the regulations call for local stone, lime mortar and lime plaster. In lower-graded buildings, internal changes and new uses are generally allowed provided the exterior stays as it is — which is how a haveli becomes a home, a shop or a small hotel.
For offices and shops, the building’s fire NOC, issued through Rajasthan’s Local Self Government department, is the envelope a fit-out must stay inside: escape routes, fire separation, materials. We check a layout against it before any finish is chosen.
IMD records put Jaipur’s May afternoons above 40°C on average, with heatwaves pushing past 45°C; January nights average under 8°C; and nearly nine-tenths of the city’s roughly 630 mm of annual rain falls between late June and mid-September. Dry heat is what finishes have to survive. Araish and lime plaster breathe and stay cool to the touch where sealed synthetic paint traps heat and blisters. Floors of Kota stone or Dholpur sandstone hold the night’s cool well into the day.
Shade comes before cooling. Jaali screens, deep reveals and shaded courtyards cut the western glare and still let air move; they are how old Jaipur buildings coped, and they work as well on a new house. Dust, which peaks with May’s storms, decides the joinery — flush shutters, fewer open shelves, windows that seal properly. January decides the soft layer: durries, wool and timber underfoot where stone alone would be cold.
Jaipur has on its doorstep the craft most cities have to import. Araish, lime plaster burnished with agate to a marble-like sheen, is part of the city’s own building history. Blue pottery is a registered Geographical Indication of Jaipur. Block printers work in Sanganer and in Bagru, where dabu mud-resist and natural dyes are still in use. Stone arrives by road from Makrana, Kota and Dholpur.
Because the workshops are close, a thikri panel, a carved jaali or a hand-forged brass handle can be seen at the bench, adjusted and seen again before it is fitted. That is the difference between specifying craft and commissioning it, and it is the part of a Jaipur project a remote studio cannot reproduce.
Yes. In Jaipur the studio takes on architectural design as well as interiors — new houses, farmhouses on the city’s edge, workplaces and institutional buildings. Drawing the two together means the plan, the jaalis and the joinery are resolved once. Approval drawings for the JDA or the municipal corporation are signed by the Council of Architecture-registered architect on our team, as the regulations require, and the studio follows the file through to permission.
Usually not for work inside that leaves the structure and the building’s outline alone — new floors, plaster, joinery, a reworked layout. Structural changes, extensions and extra floors need permission from the JDA or the municipal corporation. In an apartment building, the society’s or developer’s rules also apply. Inside the walled city, even repairs need prior permission under the heritage regulations.
Yes. A turnkey fit-out covers the survey, design, landlord approvals, services coordinated with MEP and IT/AV specialists, procurement, site execution and handover, run by one team against one budget. We plan backwards from your moving date, phase noisy work if you are already in occupation, and check the layout against the building’s fire approval before finishes are chosen.
Often, within the heritage regulations. Repairs and renovation need prior permission from the municipal corporation, advised by its Heritage Cell. The façade stays as it is, and lime and local stone are the expected materials — which suits an old building anyway. Internal changes and new uses are generally possible in lower-graded buildings. We survey first, because old structures rarely match their drawings.
Yes. The studio can come in alongside an existing architect or project management consultant, taking the interiors and craft while they hold the building, or lead the whole project itself. What it does not take is styling-only work: if NYKS designs a room, it stays accountable for the room that gets built.
At Basement Floor, J12/A, Panchsheel Marg, C Scheme, Ashok Nagar, Jaipur 302001, open Monday to Saturday from 10:00 to 20:00. Directions, the map, phone and WhatsApp are on the contact page. It helps to call ahead, so the right samples and drawings are out on the table when you arrive.