Venkataramanan Associates (VA) is an architecture and urban design firm based in Bangalore. Over the forty-six years since its founding, VA has built a formidable and growing knowledge base in architectural design and design-build processes that is as vast as it is deep.

The teams at VA combine high critical thinking skills and visual acuity, design intelligence and hands-on involvement in the design-build process. VA treasures knowledge, intelligence and perseverance in learning, and these inform the firm's work culture.

From a 19-person office founded in 1970 that gained a reputation early on for its work in real estate and for scientific institutions, to a 200-person firm straddling 10 different sectors that are often cross-disciplinary and highly complex, the focus has always been on design and the power of communicating through drawings.

Sekar James, the Principal of the firm, is the pre-eminent landscape architect in South India and has been so for the past 26 years. He first established the firm 'Black Rose' in 1974, a name that was synonymous with cutting edge designs, with the greatest attention to details and quality par excellence. He is solely responsible for establishing landscape architecture as a design form in its own right in South India.

'Black Rose' was dissolved in April 1993 and Sekar James now operates under the banner 'Master Plan', with offices in Chennai and Bangalore supported by associate offices in Hyderabad, Mumbai and Cochin.

'Master plan' is a family business with Sekar James' wife Marlene James being the C.E.O and their son Zhayynn James having recently joined the company as the Associate landscape architect.