Alok Shetty architect and founder, Bhumiputra Architecture, Bangalore, India is on a mission to improve the quality of life in the slums with his conventional designs salvaging recycled and readily available materials. He even went to the extent of creating a jack that could elevate the house to avoid floods and rat infestations.
He has so far built 50 homes say for 200 people, in Bangalore – the Silicon Valley of India. His next mammoth project is in Belgaum, some 500 Kilometres from Bangalore- building 600 homes for 2,400 people.
He has won Forbes award for social entrepreneurship under “30 under 30” young achievers. Alok Shetty is going beyond house-centric field towards new built environments that improve the quality of life in emerging economies. Holding a master’s degree, he was the youngest recipient of the Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Award for Design Excellence.
A third of the people represented by the Social Entrepreneurs group were South Asian, and one of those people was architect and founder of Bhumiputra Architecture, Alok Shetty. Since Shetty was a teen, he had always been interested in construction. He even built a multi-specialty hospital at a ripe age of 19, still in school, with no architectural license. At Columbia University, Shetty was the youngest to receive the Lucille Smyser Award for Design Excellence. After shaping designs for more clinics, hotels, housing in disaster zones, schools and campuses, he went on to present all of his hard work at Forbes’ Under 30 Summit Asia in Singapore. There, he spoke about his long term goals of building strong, low-cost homes for those living in weak areas. At age 29, he is now both a founder and architect of his company, Bhumiputra Architecture, which builds permanent homes out of recycled material for those living in the slums of India.
Alok Shetty was named as one of the six “International Next Generation Leaders” by TIME Magazine in 2014.
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