Jaskran Singh Kalirai is a British architect, son of Punjabi parents, who arrived in Ecuador in 2002. As SUMAC’s head of architecture, Jazz guides our architectural philosophy, overseeing all of our sustainable architecture projects and ensuring the best possible outcomes for our clients.
Jazz received his remarkable academic training at Leeds University, England, and the University of Pennsylvania, United States. During his training, he had the opportunity to work in the studios of architects such as Enrique Norten and Daniel Libeskind, with whom he worked on the World Trade Center Memorial project in New York. In New York City, Kalirai also worked as a corporate project designer at the international architecture firm KPF.
His interest in sustainable architecture stems from two important experiences during his postgraduate studies at University of Pennsylvania. The first was to personally meet Ian McHarg, landscape architect and inventor of the milhoja method of territorial analysis (forerunner of Geographic Information Systems), whose book Design with Nature (1969) marked his vision of architecture. The second experience was to participate in a summer program in Japan, where he learned traditional Japanese carpentry and discovered ways of projecting architecture while being respectful of humans and the natural environment.
