Christopher Benninger
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CCBA Designs (formerly known as Christopher Charles Benninger Architects) is a world-renowned award-winning multi-disciplinary design firm providing comprehensive architecture, urban design and master planning services. It is mentored by the late Harvard and MIT educated Master
Architect Prof. Christopher Charles Benninger (1942 - 2024); one of India’s great modernists and the firm stands on the immense body of experience spanning nearly half a century. CCBA is a laboratory of exploration and experimentation. The team has always functioned as a studio, only accepting commissions involving study, analysis and the exploration of visual, spatial, social and technological concepts impinging on architecture, urbanism and human settlements. As an internationally known ‘design house’ CCBA has created products ranging from a capital city and new towns; educational campuses and corporate headquarters; housing communities and complexes; hotels and resorts; and on to the design of chairs and art works. In the end, it is not the “things” we design, but the transcendental experience of the people using them, looking at them, or just being in them, which is their essence. For the studio, the good life exists just a step outside of materiality, in a mystic twilight zone, which is called architecture. Our endeavour is to create environments, ambiances and milieus that enrich people’s lives and make living a meaningful experience. Operating from the founding directors own premises, India House, this abode of design provides a salubrious work enivironment with galleries, recreational facilities and gardens. A culturally diverse team of young architects and support staff, over the past two decades, have won nearly a hundred prestigious national and international awards. The designs of the studio have been published widely in national and international journals. Mainstream magazine Business Week (USA), named the Mahindra United World College of India as among the ten “Super Structures of the World,” and Construction World has repeatedly confered ‘TOP 10 Architects of India’ award to the studio. Over the years CCBA has built an enormous pool of knowledge and experience. Many young architects have travelled long distances to work with the studio. A healthy atmosphere in the studio generates deliberations leading to well thought out and articulate designs. Youngsters in the studio employ their exceptional talents through advanced digital simulation, to explore massing compositions, inter-spatial relationships and contextual issues leading to refined spaces emanating from Benninger’s simple hand sketches. The final designs of the studio are an outcome of numerous iterations exploring diverse assumptions and possibilities. Young architects who came to explore their individual potentials, subsequently moved on to establish nationally recognized, award-winning practices. As an intellectual ‘design house’, CCBA operates from its iconic office ‘India House’ in Pune, India and is supported by an extremely talented and experienced team led by Managing Director Ramprasad Akkisetti, Directors Rahul Sathe and Ar. Daraius Choksi along with long time associates and senior architects Ar. Shivaji Karekar, Ar. Noel Jerald, Ar. Rahul Deshmukh, Ar. Sundar Bommaji and Ar. Mandar Mhaskar.
