R. Varma

Rohan Varma is an architect, researcher and educator who graduated as an architect with first-class honours from the KRVIA (University of Mumbai) in 2009 and subsequently worked for Charles Correa on several important commissions such as the Champalimaud Centre in Lisbon, the Charles Correa Foundation in Goa, the Mahindra Research Valley in Chennai, the Masterplan for the redesign of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and the Aga Khan Ismaili Centre in Toronto.

As a Tata and Mahindra Scholar, Varma received his Master's in Architecture, graduating from the TU Delft in 2013 with honourable mention and an Archiprix nomination. For the next two years, he gained further experience at the Delft-based international practice Mecanoo Architecten, working on several large-scale architecture and urban design projects in the Netherlands, Russia, the U.K., and Chile.

Currently, Varma combines his work as the Principal Architect of the Mumbai-based VARMA Architects and the TU Delft, where his doctoral research and teaching activities focus on affordable housing design in the rapidly urbanising cities of the Global South.

Parallel to his private practice and research, Varma also actively engages in teaching and is currently a graduation studio tutor at TU Delft’s Global Housing Study Centre and has lectured and presented papers at several universities worldwide, such as ETH Zurich, Tunghai and Harvard. Varma also regularly engages in academic and public writing and has contributed papers and essays to various publications and platforms such as Archdaily, Learning from Mumbai and The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization. In 2018, along with Prof. Dick van Gameren, he co-authored the book Living Ideals and co-curated an international travelling exhibition on the housing designs of Charles Correa. More recently, in 2020, he was appointed as a Delft Global Fellow, and in 2022, he, along with his colleagues at TU Delft, won the global edX Prize for Exceptional Contributions in Online Teaching and Learning for the online course ‘Global Housing Design’. In 2023, he was appointed editor of the journal Delft Architecture Studies on Housing.