NAME TO KNOW Rochelle Santimano

With a repertoire brimful of restored Portuguese-era gems, the architect's restoration work is a subtle hat-tip to her Goan roots

By the time she was four, Rochelle Santimano knew that she was destined for design. "I remember my mother would hand me a colouring book and a box of crayons. I'd spend hours poring over the ivory paper, precisely shading in each outline. And then through school and college, I was constantly toying with design in various capacities," Rochelle recalls. And yet, when it came to choosing a career path, architecture wasn't the obvious choice. "But once I saw how it blended art and science, I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else."