– 10 years of work experience as an Urban Designer, Architect + Research. – Led and implemented low-cost tactical urban interventions, streetscapes, public parks. – Contributed to journals, book chapters, and conferences focused on spatial equity.
Key Professional Experience
Urban Designer |Egis Group + Van Leer Foundation (VLF), URBAN95 (2023-24)
Designed and executed child-friendly cities through low-cost tactical urban interventions school streets, playparks, school yards, primary healthcare center yards, crèches Capacity-building workshops with the Government, led community-participation events
Urban Designer , HCP, Ahmedabad, India (2019)
Mumbai Port Trust, Brownfield Project, Regeneration of a Commercial District Architect, Katerra, India | Townhomes in Santacruz, CA, Prefabricated Construction Architect, BRIC Design Pvt. Ltd., India | Primary School Design, Villa Housing Scheme Architect, Urban Interventions, India |Conservation of Portuguese Churches
Education
UC Berkeley, California, USA | Master in Urban Design (MUD) (2024-25)
Thesis: Redesign of the Civic Center in San Francisco, CA
Mobile Home Parks, Santa Cruz, CA
Pinnacles National Park, CA| Presented to the City of Hollister, CA Improving Street intersection at Sliplanes| Presented to the City of Berkeley, CA Garage as the startup space for home-grown businesses, Richmond, CA
CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India | Master in Urban Design (M.Arch) (2016-18)
Politecnico di Milano, Milan Italy | Master in Urban Design (Thesis Exchange)
Thesis: Examining transformation of Industrial Districts: Case of Art Districts in Milan,Italy Mumbai University, Rizvi, India | Bachelors in Architecture (B.Arch) (2009-13)
Awards and Research Grants
Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC), UC Berkeley Finalist
Research Grant: Awarded the Saint Gobain Research Grant Program 2022-23
Grant Awarded Urban Studio Research Project (USRP) Council of Architecture
CEPT University Excellence Awards: for Studio Unit “Ungendering the Everyday City” Citizen ‘Spirit of Mumbai’ Award for aiding rescue operations for flood victims
Academic Positions
Assistant Professor, Mumbai University | Masters in Urban Design
Lead Studio Co-Tutor, CEPT University, Ahmedabad| Bachelors in Urban Design
Harvard Urban Review: The (In)visible Aides of the Tenebrous Urban Networks. Cidades. Comunidades e territórios |Affordability in the habitat planning of new towns
Tekton Journal|Case of Industrial Design Districts in Milan
Cultplay | culture of play for children in informal settlements edging the highways
Metropolitan Tourism | changing tourism patterns for the expanded metropolis Mumbai
Geographies of the Anthropocene| Negotiations of Cultural Markers along the coast
Blurred Boundaries | Role of Beaches in Reclaiming Women’s Right to the City
CAMOC-ICOM| Curating Informalities: Syncretism of Social Innovation in the Museum
Certifications
“Mapping Cultural Resources: A Tool for Strengthening the Future” “Public Policy Research”
Skills and Focus Interests
Drafting and Visualization tools
Adobe suite, AutoCAD,Sketchup, InDesign, Photoshop, Illusrator Urban Infomatics ArcGIS, MS Office, Python Interpersonal Skills: Equity Leadership, communication collaboration, decision-making
01 child in the city child friendly cities professional on-site
Pune, India
Egis + Van Leer Foundation
03 paradoxes of lake development
water equity research on-site
Mumbai, India
Council of Architecture
05 integrating industrial districts form and morphology
academic thesis
Milan, Italy
Politecnico di Milano
02 off the main street garage as economic equity model academic studio
Richmond, California
UC Berkeley
04 resurging bridges making of a Lake + Tech district urban design competition
Cleveland, Ohio
UC Berkeley
06 geographies of incineration spatial equity and landuse policy Journal Article
Harvard Urban Review
01_CHILD IN THE CITY (constellation of spaces)
Programming urban interventions for child-friendly public spaces
Project Type: Office Work
Role: Urban Designer, 2022-2023
Organization: Urban95 program
Egis India in collaboration with Bernard Van Leer Foundation, Egis International and Pune Municipal Corporation
3 # URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES CAPACITY BUILDING WORKSHOPS COLLABORATION WITH COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS
As a part of Pune Municipal Corporation’s Urban95 program, supported by the Bernard van Leer Foundation, Phase 2 of the Project focused on scaling up Child-centric urban interventions across the city of Pune. Infant, Toddler and Caregiver destinations like pre-primary and primary school, day-care centres, maternity homes, dispensaries, vendor kiosks, safe public transport facilities were identified and examined to create a fostering safe play in neighbourhoods, crime prevention, and providing a clean and healthy environment.
The guidelines are targeted to assist a range of stakeholders with an interest in working towards creating safer environments for ITCs. These include urban practitioners, Pune Municipal Corporation officials, Relevant District and State Departments, Local communities, activist groups, NGOs, working in any field related to safety in an urban environment, and ITC welfare.
The present neighbourhoods in our cities are not primarily designed to manifest this perception and hence, many instances of crimes, road accidents are recorded every year. Also, due to rapid urbanization, our environmental quality (air, noise pollution, etc.) degrading, therefore, impacting the health of the surroundings. Growing up in unsafe or unhealthy urban environments will negatively impact the ECD of our next generations. Hence, it is important to include this vision of providing a safe and healthy environment while designing and planning our urban spaces.
spectrum of child-centric urban spaces in Pune City
Tactical - School Streets
Capacity Building Govt. Dept Childcare + health workers
Brainstorming tactical design with Students
Low-Cost Design Testing
Community Participative Survey
Tactical - School Yards
A neighbourhood with a network of child-centric anchors
Improves social skill development Improves Sensory & Fine motor skills development
Builds balance and muscle coordination
Creates a calming effect Builds a sense of alertness
Open Yard within a Health Care Center
Seating around Tree
Tot-Lot I (covered area)
Sandpit
Reflexology Path
Sensory Planter beds
Painted Floor Track
(EPDM)
Seating along Planter beds
Wall-Play area
Tot-Lot II
01_CHILD IN THE (IN) FORMAL CITY
Culture of Play at the intersection of the highway and slum
Project Type: Research Publication Book Chapter 2021-2025
Publisher: The People, Place, Project
Site: Mumbai, India
Collaborator: Shruti Ramesh
Theme: Child-Centric Urban Design
3 # URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES SLUMS AND INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS
COLLABORATION WITH COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS
How is play experienced when a highway CUTS through your house?
The everyday experience of play for these children entails unsafe avenues of playing along these spill-over spaces on highways and expressways. The severe strain on land presents a deficit of safe, uncrowded and uncontested permanent playscapes. The defining attribute of playscapes for children here is the ‘openness’ of accessible spaces on the routes between home and school, often found along open streets/highways. The street is the familiar landscape for play in Mumbai, with children utilising street infrastructure such as ramps, drainpipes etc. as playscapes. The role of knowledge centres as critical agents of play-based learning is pivotal for creating safer avenues of play. The act of learning through play is vital for cognitive development in children. This modality of play is especially relevant for slum children as the built environment deprives and endangers them and intends on spoiling their future[PK2] . The concept of knowledge centres designed for children has evolved to propagate ‘learning through play’ in safe and stimulating albeit formalised public spaces. Their location within sanitised urban precincts generate sanctuaries of privilege and exclusive environments, detached from informal settlements. Such institutions in the city can only extend conditional access for children in marginalised communities. The acts of ‘play’ for children in informal settlements are posed with the challenges of accessing ‘formal, sanitised’ parts of the city for play and learning. Spatial segregation widens travel distance; exclusions of income by ticketed access and adverse socio-economic conditions limit adult supervision and resources. The chapter examines various scales of knowledge centres in Mumbai as playscapes facilitating ‘learning through play’ for children residing in slums. The research further explores possibilities of play-based learning to create safe playscapes along transit corridors.
02_OFF THE MAIN STREET
A racial-equity model for home-grown BIPOC-Owned Businesses
Project Type: Urban Design Graduate Studio
Master of Urban Design
Summer Semester, September 2024
University of California, Berkeley
Instructor: Pol Fite Matamoros, Andrea Gaffney
Site: Richmond, California
Collaborators: Ayesha Ateekh, Shivani Atre
Theme: Spatial Equity, Ephemeral Urbanism
AS A POTENTIAL ECONOMIC STARTER SPACE
This is a study of the spatial inequity faced by BIPOC small business owners in the historically marginalized city of Richmond, California. The research examines the survival strategies of the lowest economic denominator. Richmond’s turbulent history of corporate land controls and commercial powerplay has subjected BIPOC businesses to its present landscape of vulnerabilities and vacancies. The research taps into the alternate ‘non-traditional’ markets by relying on incremental, impermanent and temporal units of infrastructure integrated within support networks.
The study uses systems-thinking to address spatial and economic challenges through models of co-ownership and co-sharing. Our fieldwork traced the spatial geographies of surviving BIPOC businesses through an extensive ethnographic study. Despite the main-streets challenged with foreclosures due to high rents, dominance of developer ownerships and changes in taxation systems, there exists an alternate market operating off-the-main streets and anchored within the houses, the street frontages and communal flea markets.
Our study recognises the varying stages of economy for micro-businesses, and proposes an alternate spatial-economic model growing gradually through time and spatial visibility. With the help of community associations that can enable flexible, ground-up policies and design interventions, the proposal advocates for a shift of power from the hands of corporations to small, self-empowered business-owners.
Community+Spatial reliance networks to support small-businesses The Garage, the Church and the Street
SPATIALIZING DYNAMICS + RELATIONSHIPS
URBAN SYSTEMS.
BETWEEN MARKETS AND CONSUMERS WITH THE ALTERNATE
What if maps could distort our perception of the Main Street?
Kit of Parts- Strategies
The (incremental) Garage
The (makeshift) Parking Lot
The (collapsible) vending cart and the Flea Market as a space for visibility
03_PARADOXES OF LAKE DEVELOPMENT
Changing values of small, water bodies in a growing metropolis a spatial memory project
Project Type: Urban Research, 2022-2023
University of Mumbai , University of Berkeley
Site: Panvel, Mumbai, India
Research Grant Award: Saint Gobain Research Grant Program 2022-23
Research Grant Award: Urban Studio Research Project (USRP), Council of Architecture, India
Research Symposium Presenter : Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative, Berkeley Collaborators: Students of Pillai College of Architecture, Mumbai, India
Theme: Land Solutions for Decarbonization and Resilience
ENDANGERED SMALL WATER BODIES
HERITAGE WATER TANKS
UNESCO WATER WE WANT CHILDRENS’ ART CONTEST
LAKE-EDGE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS
LAND-CENTRIC GOVERNMENT POLICIES
COLLABORATION WITH COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS
The research examines the challenges of governing and spatializing small water bodies in a pro-development metropolitan context in India. The project traces the socio-spatial modifications of heritage water tanks or talavs, in Panvel, a 17th century port town in the outskirts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. The talavs were built under the patronage of influential families and spatially anchored religious communities within a tight-knit urban cluster. The symbolic triad of the temple-tree-tank of the hindu precinct to the tranquil canvas for the Bene Israel Jews Jewish burial ground, the talavs represented a cosmopolitan nature in a historic setting. The study further decodes urban historic spatiality to community values. The houses faced the market street, opened into the talav through the rear end, creating a seeming decentralized enclave for each community. These alleyways leading to the tanks, passed through smaller water wells, as a liminal pause. Post-independence, on the pretext of lakefront development projects, new concepts of leisure were imposed through ‘placemaking’ attempts. It significantly altered the talav boundaries, erasing the meaning of the local community’s everyday urban interactions. The micro scale of the water clusters within the expanding region excluded them from the eligibility of state and national funding. The need to create geometric centrality and axiality of the talavs to the city were outcomes of them being illegible and insignificant to the oblivious planning municipality. The municipality’s physical interventions are a result of misaligned definitions of ‘lakes’. The research attempts to re-theorize definitions of small urban water bodies. Lake development has connotations focusing on the ‘built’, while lake conservation encompasses aspects that enable continuity and preservation. The research attempts to shift the focus of lake edge modification to the urban fabric leading up to the lake as demon-
LAKES AS CLUSTERS WITH DIFFERENT
HARD EDGE DEVELOPMENT SCHEMES AND CENTRALIZATION
Decentralised Cluster of Small, Water tanks their community specific association disassociation with the hard edge development schemes
MEMORY PROJECT
The social aspect of the lanes that used to connect the houses to the wells to the lake
Reconstructed Spaces
Temple and the Well
The Well and Niches between the street
The lake and the temple precinct
The Lake and the Market Street
Lake as a traffic junction
Vendors along the lake edge
Edges opening into the Lake
Drawing credit student: Rohini Govindrajan
Cultivating potential open-access, barricade-free public spaces
Shifting agency, ownership and accountability to the community through collaborative decisions
Tactical placemaking to enable equitable public spatial design
Adaptive Reuse of domestic Heritage co-op development policies
Setting up an Integrated Institutional-reliant knowledge network
Creating ‘open-source’ urban data enabling a feedback loop with civic authorities
Drawing credit student: Dhiraj Jadav
04_RESURGING BRIDGES
Lake and Tech as a Bridge between the City and social history
Project Type: Urban Design Competition Entry 2025
University of Berkeley
Site: Cleveland, Ohio
Collaborators: Ayesha Ateekh
Theme: Environmental Equity and Social Inclusion SOCIAL EQUITY
LAKE ERIE BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES
Cleveland’s urban image and value represent a complex patchwork of cultural diversity, environmental assets, and emerging growth corridors. Developments such as the Opportunity Corridor and advancements in health technology highlight potential avenues for employment and economic revitalization.
This project explores the existing patchwork growth, not only as a framework for development but also as a series of implicated boundaries and barriers that challenge cohesive and unified urban progress. The city’s divide—caused by the river and central industrial valley, which segregates the east and west, and the shoreline separating the city from its lake edge—presents opportunities to “bridge the gap” and foster connectivity.
Historical segregation and redlining, exacerbated by infrastructural and environmental pollution, have deepened divides, limiting access to employment opportunities and increasing vacancies. However, the energy transition at the lake edge offers a transformative opportunity. This project identifies the lakefront as an origin point for reimagining Cleveland as an environmentally conscious lake community.
Envisioned as a foundation for a new urban identity, the project proposes infrastructure that supports small-scale economic initiatives, emphasizing flexibility, incremental growth, and live-work spaces. These incubators for environmental technology aim to integrate water sensitivity, sustainable energy, and cutting-edge innovation to regenerate the city and redefine its relationship with Lake Erie.
Housing - as a hub of mixed typologies, transit hubs and commercial
Apartment-style - Type 1
Unit Area = 800 sq.ft
Total No. of units = 800
Market rate units: 300
Affordable rate units: 500
Townhouse-style - Type 2
Unit Area 1500 sq.ft
Total No. of units = 48
Market rate units = 48
Condominiums
Unit Area 2000 sq.ft
Total No. of units = 40
Market rate = 40
Live-Work-Loft Districts - as a space for economic starters, collaborations, workshops
Examining the Economic Systems of the Main Streets in Richmond/ McDonoald Avenue
Live-Work-Lofts - Type 3
Unit Area 2500 sq.ft
Total No of units = 54
Market rate units = 30
Affordable rate units =24
Live-Work-Lofts - Type 2
Unit Area 2500 sq.ft
Total No of units = 76
Market rate units = 50
Affordable rate units =26
Live-Work-Lofts - Type 1
Unit Area 1000 sq.ft
Total No of units = 180
Market rate units = 100
Affordable rate units = 80
05_FROM RELICS TO CREATIVE NETWORKS
Integrating the Historical Core to Industrial Art Districts in Milan, Italy
Project Type: Urban Design Graduate Thesis
Master of Urban Design (M.Arch)
Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
CEPT University, India
Instructor: Guilia Setti
Site: Lambrate, Milan, Italy
Theme: Spatial Equity and Open-Access
ADAPTIVE REUSE
COURTYARDS AS POP UP EXHIBITION SPACES
FORDIST PLANNING ART DISTRICTS
DESIGN WEEK MILAN
CREATIVE NETWORKS
The deindustrialization process in Europe resulted in many large-scale factories to be shifted out of their city-limits and aimed to redevelop cities as centers of creative productions. In Milan, Italy, this process left distinct voids in its urban fabric due to its defined urban morphology and separation from its heritage core. The process of re-adapting this industrial infrastructure into sites of innovation resulted in a new typology of public space. The juxtaposition of the two notions of public spaces; the traditional, mixed-uses at the heritage core and the institutional industrial districts called for integration strategies to be formulated at a city-scale. The paper analyses Lambrate Industrial Design District as a model for adapting public functions within its built forms, inclusive creative networking at a cityscale and sustaining local micro-businesses. The transformations include maintaining the structural integrity of the industrial morphology as a key to conserve its industrial past. At a city-scale, vacant pockets allow for flexibility in the master plan that caters to the inclusive needs of cities in constant flux.
The nature of the public space is in the form of fragmented courtyards, visually disconnected from the main axis. The courtyards provide a semi-public interaction space for the offices during the daily working hours, while the shopfronts anchor the public space. In the faceof the ‘functionalistic top-down strategies of traditional urban planning’, this allows for alternative urban functions. They signify a bottom-up approach, representing the local neighbourhood and utilizing art as a method to bring to light the temporal nature of cities.
Tracing the Design Week path along Lambrate Design District
Mapping the porosity of edges across the changing spatial morphology
Lambrate Industrial Design District is analysed as a ‘model of a sustainable urban regeneration’ that inclusively integrates with the local community and the larger context of the creative city
Tracing ‘access’ and opening up of courtyard boundaries during design week
Pop-up shops occupy the courtyards and industrial warehouses
The physicality of the space is characterized by blank compound walls that run continuous up till the junctions
The group of galleries and institutions at this junction becomes a congregation point.
06_GEOGRAPHIES OF INCINERATION
the (in)visible aides of the tenebrous urban networks
Project Type: Research Paper 2022-2023
Site: Mumbai, India
Publisher: Harvard Urban Review
Collaborator: Shruti Ramesh
Theme: Spatial Equity and Urban Policies
SOCIAL EQUITY
CASTEISM FILM AS SOCIAL COMMENTARY
CREMATION WORKERS
COVID-19
UNTOUCHABLES
As the vehicles charge in bearing corpses, the cremation ground worker mechanically unloads them onto carts. He scrapes out the ash and bone fragments in the pyres, resets them, prepares the firewood, places the body in its midst, and burns the pyre; a process he resets and repeats as the day erodes. The flames soar the landscape, engulfing the deceased, indistinguishable as a factory of mortuary rituals. He knows he has to keep going; his daily work, unattached, hoping against hope that it is not his loved one being propped on the pyre, and moving on with the next task.
Nagraj Popatrao Manjule’s Vaikunth- a segment of the anthology series Unpaused - Naya Safar explores the otherwise untold struggles of a marginalised, front line essential service worker - a cremation ground worker. The lens of visual narrative highlights the social apathy within an environment of urban systemic exclusion. It also brings to light the inequities within the superficial urban construct resting on a fragile network of invisible workers.
07_VIEWPORTS OF A LANDSCAPE A Landscape Literacy Project
Project Type: Urban Design Studio Fall Semester 2024
Site: Pinnacles National Park, California
Collaborator: Ayesha Ateekh
Theme: Improved access to Landscape experiences DISABILITY ACCESS
OBSERVATION TOWERS COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ALTERNATE WILDERNESS EXPERIENCE
A park is a place to discover and wander. What if you didn’t have the choice to wander? Our project is titled ‘Access and Abilities’ envisions a park of adventure for people with disabilities. When you visit the park, you plan for activities such as hiking, climbing, where your physical and mental abilities are challenged- within unguided paths- it gives you a sense of accomplishment. But are these activities for all? Are the trails accessible for all? Can the activities be performed by all people? Can all the areas of the park be experienced by all? Therefore, we ask how can the park be designed for all people?
Within the scope of our project, we consider 4 categories of disabilities and using terminologies defined ‘appropriate’ by the ADA- we studied the blind, the deaf, physically challenged and the neurodivergent. We had a chance to interact with experts in the field of disabilities such as the Center for Independent Living, Bay Area Outreach Program and Disabilities Rights Education and Defence Fund. to understand their barriers, desires and aspirations. For the Blind, They stressed on the challenges of using temperature sensitive material, and continuous communication links - trails that are not overly simplified, with reductive experiences, to quote ‘a walk around the parking lot’ - while the neurodivergent- wanted spaces that are low-stimulating, serene and shaded. That leads us to ask the question: how can the design improve experience for people with disabilities?
The Preview point presents a space to introduce the main points of attraction at the pinnacles through the aids of design as mentioned in the taxonomy of design. We propose a diorama at the centre of the Bear gulch centre. giving the feelings of sensory experiences, wandering and informing at this point. - where you can touch and feel the wall of sensorial textures
