Hafeez Contractor was born in Mumbai on 19 June 1950 into a Parsi family.[8] He attended Boys' Town Public School Nasik before moving on to the University of Mumbai's Academy of Architecture in 1975. He then won a scholarship to Columbia University, where he completed his master's degree.[9]
Career
While pursuing his architecture degree, Contractor began working in 1968 as an apprentice under the supervision of his uncle and mentor Tehmasp Khareghat.[10][11] He joined his uncle's company T. Khareghat in 1977 as an associate partner.[11]
In 1991, Contractor was enlisted to add buildings to Infosys' Bangalore campus.[12][9] He went on to design that firm's first software-development park outside Pune,[13][9] and its corporate educational facility near Mysore.[14][9] His most famous project is Hiranandani Gardens, a township in Powai, a suburb of Mumbai.[9] In 2005, Contractor designed the twin-tower residential skyscraper, The Imperial, whose 254 metre-tall Tower I became the tallest residential buildings in India (with Tower II slightly behind) upon completion in 2010 – a distinction it held until it was displaced by One Avighna Park (266 metre) in 2017. That building was, in turn, displaced by The 42 in Kolkata, which was also designed by Contractor and architecturally topped out at 260m.[3] He also designed 23 Marina in Dubai,[15] which was briefly the world's tallest all-residential building, and is currently third behind the nearby Princess Tower and 432 Park Avenue in New York City.
Contractor has referred to the standardized ratings used in Western countries for certifying green buildings as a "joke".[19] In his view, conditions in India require a rating system that takes into account the unique problems faced by that country, such as the loss of farmland.[19]
In a New York Times profile he was described as Bollywood's "Starchitect". The article described Contractor's style as having "no signature, save a penchant for glitz." Contractor said of his own work, "[Y]ou definitely like a woman with lipstick, rouge, eyelashes. So if you make your building more beautiful with some appliqués, there’s nothing wrong."[9]
^Veer, Peter van der (19 May 2015). Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century. Univ of California Press. p. 167. ISBN978-0-520-28122-6.
