Coffee and Architecture

From Building Blocks to Beans

Newly installed President Gordon Dow's year started well when he welcomed fellow member Sundeep Salins to speak on his career, firstly as an architect and more recently as coffee shop owner in Perth.

Sundeep originally hails from India where his parents operate a medical charity and he jokingly referred to himself being the 'family reject' and moving to Scotland in 1992 to commence studies at Dundee University to become an architect. Sundeep has very fond memories of Dundee, even if he found it a bit of a shock having to re-learn English all over again!

Following qualification Sundeep joined an architectural practice in Glamis where he was involved in quite a lot rural work. He explained how we can learn a great deal about our past social values through architecture and gave the example of how sometimes the materials used for farm buildings, designed and built for the animals, were often of a higher standard than some of the workers cottages. Sundeep also interested his audience with how the quality of old sandstone across Perthshire varied so much, with the quarries north of the Tay generally producing far better stone than those south of the river. 

Sundeep then took up a senior architectural post with Perth and Kinross Council overseeing an extensive schools and housing building programme before taking on an entirely new role as owner and operator of new coffee shop Blend. Sundeep has always been involved with charitable work through church and youth groups, and although there is little obvious connection between architecture and coffee, he made the association that buildings are essentially meeting places for people activities and in some ways coffee houses are just the same, often seen as replacing the old pub communities as places for people to meet and connect.

Ben Gunn thanked Sundeep for a very interesting and enjoyable talk.