A developer that behaves like an architecture practice.
Aurelis is a developer of landmark architecture. We were founded in Mumbai in 2003 and we have completed forty-one buildings since — a rate that is slower than every one of our competitors, and deliberately so.
Founded
Mumbai, 2003
Studios
Mumbai · Dubai · London
People
112
In design now
4
We began with nine flats in Dadar and a refusal to cut corners.
In 2003 the Mumbai development market was moving at a speed that made careful building look like a commercial mistake. Ira Naravane had spent six years watching well-drawn schemes degrade during construction, and started Aurelis on the premise that a developer who held the drawings could stop that happening.
The first project was nine flats in Dadar. It is still standing, still unaltered, and the original board-marked concrete has never been painted. We take visitors there before we take them anywhere else.
Twenty-three years on, the structure of the practice has not changed much. We hold the design in-house, we work with the same four contractors, and we still cap ourselves at four projects in design at any moment. Everything else — five countries, forty-one buildings, a hundred and twelve people — followed from those constraints rather than despite them.
Where that leaves us
- 23
- Years of practice
- 41
- Landmarks delivered
- 2.4M
- Square metres built
- 100%
- Certified sustainable
Founded in Mumbai, 2003
Across five countries
Residential, cultural, civic
Every project since 2019
Twenty-three years, six moments that mattered.
- 2003
A practice of three
Aurelis begins above a framing shop in Kala Ghoda with a single commission: a nine-unit building in Dadar that still stands, unaltered.
- 2009
The first landmark
Completion of the Carnac Wharf restoration establishes the practice's reputation for working with existing fabric rather than erasing it.
- 2014
Across the Gulf
The Dubai studio opens. Aurelis begins its first mixed-use work at scale, and its first buildings designed for extreme heat.
- 2019
The carbon commitment
Every project from this year forward is designed to third-party sustainability certification. No exceptions have been made since.
- 2023
Europe
London and Lisbon studios open within eight months of each other, both led by adaptive reuse rather than new-build.
- 2026
Forty-one, and counting
Meridian House tops out over Worli. The practice holds to the same rule it set in 2003: no more than four projects in design at once.
Four people who have to sign every drawing.
Ira Naravane
Founder & Chair
Trained at CEPT and the AA, Ira founded Aurelis in 2003 with a single conviction: that a developer should be judged by what a building becomes in its fortieth year, not its first.
Matthias Reuter
Chief Executive
Twenty years across European civic and cultural work. Matthias leads the practice's expansion into Lisbon and London, and chairs the material standards board.
Saanvi Kulkarni
Design Director
Saanvi directs the in-house studio. Her work on Meridian House established the daylight and cross-ventilation standard now applied to every Aurelis residence.
Yusuf Adeyemi
Director, Sustainability
A structural engineer by training, Yusuf runs whole-life carbon accounting across the portfolio and authored the practice's 2040 commitment.
Awards are not the point, but they are a useful second opinion.
We don’t just build properties. We create landmarks.
We take on four projects at a time. If you are considering a site, a collaboration or a commission, the conversation starts here — and it starts with a real person reading it.