Architects & Interior Designers · Gurgaon / Gurugram · Delhi NCR
Rajiv Marwah & Associates is an architecture and interior design practice established in 1985. We design and deliver private homes, banking environments, schools and industrial facilities across Gurugram, Delhi, Noida and Faridabad — principal-led, drawing-driven, and on site until the last snag is cleared.
Practice / Sectors
Four sectors, one standard of documentation and site discipline.
Independent kothis on 150–500 sq yd plots, stilt-plus-four builder floors, floor additions to older family homes, and complete interiors — from plot feasibility and sanction drawings to site supervision and handover, across Gurugram, Delhi, Noida and Faridabad.
Branch and office environments engineered for daily public use — durable materials, clear circulation, security and services coordination, and phased execution inside live, operating premises.
Schools and institutional buildings planned around how children and staff actually move through a day — daylight, ventilation, safe circulation, and robust, low-maintenance finishes.
Production and process facilities where the drawing set carries real consequence — regulatory compliance, services-heavy planning, material flows and future expansion built into the layout from day one.
Homes / Residential
Most of our residential clients build once in a lifetime. That is exactly how seriously we treat it.
Independent homes on 150–500 sq yd plots — planning, elevations, structural coordination, plan sanction and site supervision through to handover. The principal attends your site, whatever the plot size.
Design under Haryana's stilt plus 4 (S+4) provisions that extracts every legal square foot of FAR — and floors people actually want to rent or buy, because light, parking and services were planned, not improvised.
Adding a second floor — or a full storey on stilt — to a 30–40 year old Gurgaon or Delhi home starts with a structural assessment, not a hammer. We establish what the old structure can carry, get the revised plan sanctioned, then design the addition.
Shop-cum-residence and rental buildings: maximum sanctioned coverage, rentable units that let well — and a structure deliberately designed so a future floor can be added legally when you are ready.
Whole-home interiors and renovations documented with drawings and an itemised BOQ — so the quotation you sign at the start is the amount you pay at the end.
For NRI and out-of-town owners: scheduled site visits with a written note and photo/video report on WhatsApp after each, and contractor bills certified against the BOQ before you release a rupee from Dubai, Singapore or Toronto. The free first meeting itself can be a video call, in your time zone.
This is a live project — our school campus under construction in Gurugram (RMA-025 in the register below). The sheet is from the issued working set; the views are the same building as designed. Scroll through it once more if you missed the point: the drawing is the building. Real plans, photographs, costs and timelines matched to your plot are shared at the studio or on a video call — see below.
A family home is not a showroom, and our clients let us photograph their houses for prospective clients — not for the open internet. Sit with us for thirty minutes — at the studio or on a video call, wherever you are — and we will walk you through completed homes matched to your plot size and budget: plans, photographs, costs and timelines. Where a past client has agreed, we will put you in touch directly, so you can hear about working with us from someone who has done it. Better still, bring the proof checklist below to that meeting — and to every other architect you interview.
Renders shown here are from our working drawing sets — the same houses are on our sites today. Our residential sites span the DLF phases and Gurgaon's plotted colonies, and the older colonies of South and West Delhi. Photographs of completed, lived-in homes are shared at the first meeting with our clients' consent.
Sanction & compliance
Whether you call it the house naksha, makan ka naksha or the building plan — approval from the authority comes first, and in Gurgaon which authority depends on your plot. The one part of building you cannot hand to a thekedar — and should never leave to chance.
Before a single brick is laid, your building plan must be sanctioned by the local authority — and which authority depends on your plot, not your preference: DTCP for licensed colonies in Gurugram, HSVP (the old HUDA) for sector plots through the estate office, MCG within municipal limits, MCD in Delhi, the Noida Authority in Noida, MCF in Faridabad. Get the setbacks, ground coverage, FAR or stilt-plus-four provisions wrong and the best case is a rejected file and months lost. The worst case is a demolition notice on a finished floor.
We prepare sanction drawings to the letter of the applicable building bye-laws, prepare and submit the file, respond to objections, and stay with the project through to the completion and occupation certificate. Objections are not a crisis — they are the normal life of a file. What passes a naksha is written responses and persistent follow-up, not "setting". For every residential project we take on, this is built into Stage 1 and Stage 3 — not sold as an extra.
Advisory / DTCP enforcement, DLF Phases 1–5
Under High Court orders, DTCP has surveyed 4,000+ properties across DLF Phases 1–5. Notices, sealing and demolition are ongoing.
What is being demolished right now: floors built beyond the sanctioned stilt+4, stilt floors enclosed and rented out, basements dug or used beyond sanction, rooms added on terraces and parapets, and residential plots converted to PGs, guest houses and offices. In DLF Phase 3 alone, over 1,100 notices have been served — and for the first time, machines have been sent inside stilt floors to bring unauthorised construction down.
Every one of those structures was built by somebody's contractor. The thekedar who says "sab aise hi banate hain" will not stand next to you when the notice arrives. He built it, got paid, and left. The owner holds the notice, pays for the demolition, and loses the rental income the extra construction was supposed to earn.
This is the quiet half of an architect's job — the half nobody photographs. Every plan we submit is what the bye-laws allow, and our stage-wise supervision certifies that what rises on site matches the sanctioned drawings. A building that matches its naksha has nothing to fear from any survey.
If you are about to build — a sanctioned plan and stage-wise site supervision cost a fraction of one demolition. We design within the bye-laws, get the naksha passed, and certify that what rises on site matches it.
If you have received a DTCP notice — do not wait for the sealing team. We survey your building against the sanctioned plan, tell you honestly what can be regularised and what must be restored, and prepare the revised-sanction drawings the department requires.
Get a compliance review →The honest question
Every second client in the NCR asks this — usually silently. Here is the straight answer.
You can. The drawings we issue are yours, and some clients engage us for design and documentation only. But understand what you are choosing: the fee was never really for the drawings — it is for what happens after them. On site, without an independent professional checking the work and the bills, the person quoting you the lowest rate decides what your house is actually made of.
| Thekedar-only route | With the architect through handover | |
|---|---|---|
| The quotation | A lump-sum "per sq ft, all-in" rate. Nothing is itemised, so every deviation later becomes an "extra". | An itemised BOQ — brands, quantities and rates in writing before you sign anything. |
| Choosing the contractor | One quote, usually through a relative. With nothing to compare it against, you negotiate blind — and the "discount" was priced in before you asked. | The BOQ doubles as a tender: two or three contractors bid on identical, itemised terms. You compare line by line, and the number that wins is written down. |
| The structure | As per the mistri's habit. Nobody independently checks the steel before a slab is poured. | A structural engineer's drawings; reinforcement checked on site before every slab. |
| The sanction | "Setting ho jayegi." Deviations from the sanctioned plan surface at completion certificate — or in a notice. | Built to the sanctioned plan; completion and occupation certificate closed out at handover. |
| Changes on site | Verbal. You discover them after the plaster is on. | Written site instructions; you approve deviations before they happen, with the cost impact stated. |
| Payments | Advance-driven. Once the contractor holds your money, the leverage is his. | Bills certified against measured work — you pay for what has actually been built, when it has been built. |
| When something fails | The warranty is a phone that stops ringing. | A 40-year firm with its name on the drawings, answerable through the snag list to handover. |
A column set out a few inches off position, discovered at the first-floor slab. The choices: break and recast, jacket it, or live with a beam across the bedroom. On an unsupervised NCR site this classic error typically costs several lakh to correct — more than a supervision fee for the whole stage.
Without an itemised BOQ, the handshake rate quietly inflates: extra for electrical points, extra for "better" putty, extra for the parapet. Final bills on lump-sum jobs commonly land 8–25% above the number that won the work — precisely because nothing was written down.
Waterproofing is the easiest corner to cut because nobody sees it — until the second monsoon. Redoing bathrooms and terraces in an occupied house costs a multiple of doing it correctly once, and no thekedar warranty survives that phone call.
An extra few feet of coverage, a stair moved for convenience — and the building no longer matches its sanctioned plan. The completion certificate stalls, regularisation drags on, and in the worst cases the deviation comes down.
These four patterns are illustrative of typical, widely-observed failure modes on unsupervised sites in the NCR — described here to educate, not as claims about any specific project or contractor.
Put numbers on it
All figures are indicative and illustrative. Built-up area assumes roughly 65% ground coverage per floor; your actual entitlement depends on your plot's bye-laws. In addition/renovation mode the bands are applied directly to the budget you enter. The fee band shown is an industry-typical NCR range for full service (design through supervision), not our quotation — we quote in writing, for your specific project, after the free first meeting. The "drift" band reflects typical rate inflation and rework patterns on unsupervised lump-sum jobs; it is an educational illustration, not a guarantee of savings. And independent of any drift arithmetic: the itemised BOQ the fee buys lets you put the same job to two or three contractors on identical terms — competition on paper is a price lever a lump-sum handshake never gives you.
If you already trust your contractor — or already hold a set of drawings — Stage 4 is available on its own: slab reinforcement checked before every pour, running bills certified against your quotation before you pay, a written site note with photographs on WhatsApp after every visit, and a snag list before the final payment. It is quoted as its own line, in writing, at the free first meeting — the smallest, cheapest way to put independent supervision between your money and your site. Many clients start here; the drawings can always come later.
Proof, on demand
We don't publish clients' homes. So here is exactly what to demand in person — from us, and from anyone else you interview.
Every firm on a 'best architects in Gurgaon' list claims the same things. A website can claim anything. Paper is harder to fake — each item below either exists for a real project or it doesn't. Any architect asking for 4–7% of your construction cost should put all six on the table at the first meeting. We will. Tick what matters to you and ask for it.
0 of 6 selected
Request these before you commit →This is the specimen format of the note issued after every site visit — shown so you know what to expect, and what to demand from anyone supervising your site. It is not a record of a specific project; at the first meeting you will see real, completed ones.
One tap each. Every request below is answered on WhatsApp within one working day — before any meeting, from Faridabad or from Dubai.
Live sites, this season
Unstaged photographs from our running sites. This is what stage-4 supervision looks like — scaffolding, green netting and all. Ask to join a site visit before you sign.
Built work / Commercial
Empanelled architects to State Bank of India. 200+ commercial projects delivered across Delhi NCR. Site photographs, not renders.
These are working premises photographed on site — banks, offices and training facilities in daily use, not staged showrooms. Residential portfolios (plans, photographs, costs) are shared in person at the first meeting, with our clients' consent.
On the boards / On site
A practice is best judged by what it is building right now.
Independent homes, builder floors and residential interiors at various stages from concept to handover. Residential work is shared privately out of respect for the families who live in it — ask for a walkthrough matched to your plot size and budget, and where clients have agreed, a direct reference.
A multi-branch interior refresh programme for State Bank of India, delivered across North India. Standardised design language adapted branch-by-branch, executed in phases so banking operations continue uninterrupted throughout the works.
A ground-up school building in Gurugram: classroom blocks, assembly and activity spaces planned for daylight, cross-ventilation and safe movement of children — with finishes selected to take a decade of hard use.
A services-intensive pharma production facility — process-driven planning, compliance-ready layouts and utilities coordination. We designed the facility, initiated construction on site, and handed the coordinated drawing set over to the client’s execution team to carry forward.
Drawing register
Selected engagements. Detailed portfolios and photographs are shared on request.
| No. | Project | Typology | Location | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RMA-026 | SBI Branch Interior Refresh Programme | Banking interiors | North India | Active |
| RMA-025 | School Campus | Institutional | Gurugram | On site |
| RMA-024 | Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Facility | Industrial | North India | Handed over |
| RMA-023 | Private Residence | Residential architecture | Gurugram | On request |
| RMA-022 | Residential Interior | Interior design | NCR | On request |
| RMA-021 | Private Residence | Architecture + interiors | NCR | On request |
Four decades of completed work cannot fit in one table. Request the full portfolio for your sector and we will share relevant projects, drawings and references.
The studio
Rajiv Marwah & Associates was established in New Delhi in 1985 — when the NCR's growth was only beginning. After more than three decades of work across Delhi and the wider region, the studio moved to Gurgaon — today’s Gurugram — in 2018. Our work is shaped by a simple conviction: a building succeeds or fails in how it is used, not how it photographs.
Every project is led personally by the principal, from the first site visit to the final snag list. We produce thorough drawing sets, stay close to contractors during execution, and take responsibility for the result — which is why much of our work, four decades in, still comes through repeat clients and referrals.
Today the studio works across banking, education, industrial and residential projects throughout North India, combining the judgement of a legacy practice with current tools and standards.
Architecture and interiors for residences and small institutions across Delhi.
Residential, commercial and institutional work across Delhi, Gurgaon and the wider NCR.
Larger institutional and workplace commissions; long-term repeat-client relationships.
New studio in DLF Phase 3, Gurugram — closer to an expanding North India project base.
Multi-city banking programme, a school on site in Gurugram, industrial work in progress.
Rajiv Marwah, principal architect, founded the practice in 1985 and has led every project since. The first meeting is with him — not a sales team. He is registered with the Council of Architecture; the registration number appears in the title block of every drawing we issue and in your written fee proposal — and it is one WhatsApp message away right now: use the one-tap request above and verify it on the COA's public register before you ever meet us — ours, and every architect's you shortlist. And a four-decade practice does not rest on one pair of hands: sites are run day-to-day with the studio's associate architects and long-standing structural and services consultants, and your fee proposal names the team on your project — so you know exactly who stands on your slab when the principal is on another site. Continuity is on paper too: every project's drawings, sanction file, site notes and certified bills live in the studio's records, not in any one person's head — the named associate carries your project through on the same paper trail, whatever happens.
How we work
A defined sequence — so you always know where your project stands.
Site visit, requirement mapping, budget and regulatory feasibility. We tell you honestly what the site and budget can support.
Concept options, plans and elevations, material palettes — iterated with you until the design is settled, not rushed past you.
Complete working drawings, services coordination and BOQs — the drawing set a contractor can actually build from.
Regular site supervision, quality checks and snagging through to handover — we stay until the building works.
Fees / Straight answers
Silence about money frightens people. So here is how it actually works.
In the NCR, residential architects' fees are typically structured one of two ways: a percentage of construction cost, or a rate per square foot of built-up area. For full service — design, sanction, documentation and site supervision through handover — industry-typical fees generally fall in the range of 4–7% of construction cost. Design-and-documentation-only engagements typically run at roughly half to two-thirds of the full-service band, because Stage 4 — supervision — is where the labour lives; and Stage 4 is also available the other way around, as supervision on its own, keeping your own contractor. These are indicative industry figures, not our quotation.
So that the band is a number and not an abstraction, here is the same industry-typical range applied to three common NCR scenarios:
| No. | Scenario | Full-service band (4–7%) | Est. construction |
|---|---|---|---|
| FEE-01 | New kothi · 250 sq yd · G+2, good finish | ≈ ₹3.9 – 6.8 lakh | ≈ ₹96 lakh |
| FEE-02 | Floor addition · ₹40 lakh budget | ≈ ₹1.6 – 2.8 lakh | ₹40 lakh |
| FEE-03 | Shop-cum-residence · ₹1.5 crore build | ≈ ₹6 – 10.5 lakh | ₹1.5 crore |
Indicative arithmetic on the industry-typical band — not our quotation. Our own figure for your project is stated in the written proposal that follows the free first meeting, and is fixed for the project.
On a typical NCR kothi, that fee is a single-digit percentage standing guard over the other 93–96% of your money — the concrete, steel, labour and finishes that a lump-sum "all-in" rate leaves entirely to trust. And the fee buys leverage before it buys supervision: the itemised BOQ is a tender document, so two or three contractors bid on identical terms and compete on price instead of promises. On a rental or shop-cum-residence plot the arithmetic is even simpler — every square foot of FAR a casual naksha leaves unclaimed is rent lost every month for the life of the building. Illustratively: 100 sq ft of unclaimed FAR on a commercial street letting at ₹100 per sq ft per month is ₹1.2 lakh of rent a year — every year, for the life of the building. A careful naksha recovers its fee inside a few years and keeps paying. Run your own numbers in the calculator above.
Yes. The drawings you have paid for are yours, and some clients engage us for design and documentation only. We will still tell you plainly: the drawings are the map, and Stage 4 is the driver. Without independent supervision and bill certification, the contractor decides what actually goes into your walls. Read the comparison above and choose with open eyes.
No. Independent homes on 150–500 sq yd plots are core work for this studio and have been since 1985. The principal attends your site the same way he attends an institutional one — a family building its only house deserves more care, not less.
Yes. The studio is in DLF Phase 3, Gurugram, and we work across Gurugram, Delhi, Noida and Faridabad. For sites farther from the studio, the fee proposal states the supervision cadence as a number — minimum visits per stage for your specific location — so "agreed later" can never quietly become "less often than you thought". A Delhi or Noida site gets the same written notes, photo reports and slab-before-pour checks as a site ten minutes from the studio; only the stated frequency, and Stage 4's own price line, reflect the distance.
We design Vaastu-conscious homes whenever the family wants one. Tell us your priorities — or your Vaastu consultant's requirements — at the first meeting, and we plan with them from the first sketch rather than patching the plan afterwards.
Yes — sanction is built into our residential scope, not an extra. We prepare the sanction drawings, submit and follow the file with the relevant authority (DTCP, HSVP or MCG in Gurugram, MCD in Delhi, Noida Authority, MCF in Faridabad), respond to objections, and close out the completion and occupation certificate at handover.
Yes. HSVP sector plots run on their own building-plan process through the estate office, with their own zoning plans, permissible coverage and completion requirements — a different file from a DTCP licensed-colony plot two streets away. We prepare the drawings to HSVP's format, respond to objections in writing and follow the file until it moves. Ask at the first meeting to see a sanctioned file for your authority, details masked — it is item four on the proof checklist above.
The principal leads every project personally, from the first site visit to the final snag list, supported by the studio's associate architects and long-standing structural and services consultants. Your fee proposal names the team on your project, including who covers site visits when the principal cannot — so "principal-led" is a named arrangement, not a slogan. Every visit produces a written site note with photographs, so nothing rests on memory — yours, ours, or the contractor's.
Because our clients' homes are private residences, not advertisements. We share full residential portfolios — plans, photographs, budgets, timelines — in person or on a call, matched to your plot size. Where past clients have agreed, we connect you with them directly. Ask, and it is on the table within a day.
Yes — with structure. For NRI and out-of-town owners we run a defined remote protocol: scheduled site visits with a written note and photo/video report on WhatsApp after each visit, contractor bills certified against the BOQ before you release payment, and milestone-based approvals so nothing is poured or plastered without your sign-off.
Yes. The first meeting is free and can be at the studio in DLF Phase 3 or on a video call — from Noida, Faridabad, or another time zone entirely. Portfolio walkthroughs, the COA registration number, sample BOQ pages and masked sanction letters are all shared on WhatsApp or a call within one working day — use the one-tap requests in the proof section. Nothing about verifying us requires a trip to Gurugram.
Yes. Stage 4 is available as its own engagement: reinforcement checked before every slab pour, running bills certified against your quotation before you pay, a written site note with photographs after every visit, and a snag list before the final payment. You get a written quote for exactly that scope at the free first meeting — the smallest way to put an independent professional between your money and your site.
Indicatively, for the NCR: a new kothi on a 200–350 sq yd plot typically takes 2–3 months of design, 2–4 months of sanction depending on the authority (largely overlapping design), and 12–18 months of construction. A floor addition typically takes 2–3 months for structural assessment and revised sanction, then 5–9 months on site. Your written proposal states the programme for your specific project — and our stage payments follow deliverables, not dates.
Contact
Whether it's your own home, a branch network, a campus or a factory — the first meeting costs nothing and usually saves a great deal. You leave it with an honest feasibility read on your plot and budget, and a written fee proposal follows, so you can compare us on paper before committing a rupee. We take projects across Gurugram, Delhi, Noida and Faridabad.
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