Stephane Paumier was born in 1971, in Versailles, France. After completing his Baccalaureat in Ecole Estienne in Applied Arts, he studied industrial design at the National School of Applied Arts and Crafts (Olivier de Serres) and Architecture, at the School of Architecture of Paris-Belleville, under Professor and architect Henri Ciriani.
He came to India in 1996 under the French civil service programme to
works as an architect for the french Embassy in Delhi, India. He stayed further on and won the competition for the Alliance Francaise of Delhi, in 2001 in collaboration with Architects Anupam Bansal and Rajesh Dongre (ABRD Architects). This was the beginning of a long-standing association which helped realize several projects like institute of Pondicherry , French resource centre, open national competition of Minto hall convention center, Bhopal (2nd prize winners)etc.
In 2005 Stephane Paumier founded SPA Design Pvt. Ltd. as a principal, with Anupam Bansal and Krishnachandran Balakrishnan as co directors, both graduates from School of Planning and Architecture Delhi and Masters from Kansas and Berkeley University respectively.
The practice focuses on developing contextual skills for each project. Since 2005, the firm has conceived and realized many notable projects like the Tarun Tahiliani headquarters (nominated for the AGA Khan Awards 2010), the Triburg headquarters, the O.P. Jindal Global University.
Making of projects entails long studies of the context of site, history of the region and technical knowledge for physical realization of desires, forms and spaces. It is the process of going through all these essentials systematically and bringing an order which help develop each project individually and tend to its needs. The organization explores all the opportunities that come with a site and the program to ascertain a strong design concept.
With each project, new constructional and structural techniques are evolved, local materials are discovered and worked upon. Structure being the most important of any project is always dealt with high sensitivity. The organization believes that the structural solutions can not only support the building but also lend an aesthetic idiom to it. The clarity in structural solutions always reveals the simplicity and order of thoughts on which the foundations of a project stand.
The office brings local craft of construction in play along with the latest technological & material development advancement for the benefit of an ecologically responsive design. It gives credit to the existing local constructional techniques, local materials and traditional spatial planning. This provides S.P.A. Design with a good base of knowledge to develop something new and experimental in the spaces, techniques or materials.
