UDC WRITERS

ABINAYA RAJAVELU
Abinaya is a passionate urbanist, with a background in architecture and urban planning coupled with varied professional experience in India, France and the Netherlands. Her primary interest is curating interactive cities and sustainable communities, through engaging arts-based participatory methods. While she isn’t busy trying to solve all issues urban, she is either dancing or cooking away to her heart’s content or often both at the same time.

AJEETHA RANGANATHAN
Ajeetha is an architect, writer and designer who is interested in the larger impacts of design. Her interests tend towards exploring socioeconomic issues and emerging technologies, and how they impact the city.

DEVANGI RAMAKRISHNAN
Devangi is an architect and urban designer, living and working in Pondicherry since October 2012. She provides project-based consultancy to several local, community organizations, and is UDC’s manager for strategic initiatives in Pondicherry.

NANDINI RAMAKURU
Nandini is an architect, graphic designer, closet artist and urban enthusiast. She is fascinated by design in all shapes, sizes and forms. Apart from design, she is also drawn to brightly coloured walls, books read by strangers next to her, postcards, husky voices, ant trails and discarded cardboard pieces.

NEHA KRISHNAN
Neha is an Architect and Urban Enthusiast. Her interests lie in how cities develop in the 21st century, and cultural and economic implications of this growth. She has been a designer, writer and teacher over the last couple of years; and having moved to the United States recently, is currently UDC’s Foreign Correspondent.

NISCHAL BUDDHAVARAPU
Nischal is an architect, urban designer, essayist, thinker, reader, feminist, adventurer and lots of other things that may not be true… He also writes at and as The Myshkin Urbanist– a blog about architecture, cities & being generally pissed off.

SHRUTI SHANKAR
Shruti is a designer and architect who enjoys dabbling in the design of cities and having conversations about urbanism and city-living, among other things. Catch some of her personal rants on all things urban at shrutishankar.tumblr.com. At UDC, she is manager for research and content development.

SUNJANA THIRUMALA SRIDHAR
Sunjana is an urban designer and architect, with a keen interest in understanding the way design and research impacts our socio-economic lifestyles. After graduating from Columbia University, and with five years of prior professional experience, she founded Ud-S (United design Studio), a design practice handling urban, architectural and furniture research and design.

VIDHYA MOHANKUMAR
Vidhya is a reserved architect and an impassioned urban designer with over a decade of work experience in India, Ireland and the United States. She has also been teaching as a guest faculty at various universities since she returned to India in 2008. In other parallel albeit real universes, she is a wishful artist, an avid wanderer, a constant gardener and a newly enthused cook. Vidhya founded Urban Design Collective in 2011.

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WEEKLY ROUNDUP TEAM

NIRUPAMA JAYARAMAN
Nirupama is an urban researcher at Brookings India by profession, development scholar by education, and incorrigible planner-organizer by passion. When she isn’t discussing, debating and mulling over the issues of urban policy and infrastructure or heritage politics, she can be found with her nose buried deep in either a tome of literary fiction or the latest YouTube rage.

ARUNIMA AGARWAL
Arunima is an enterprising dreamer and an ardent explorer. She is an architect and an urban enthusiast. Being in constant search of new experiences, she has some experience working as an UI/UX/ Graphic designer and has ventured out in the field of marketing and advertising as well. She is highly intrigued with the co-relation of the social and cultural fabric on the urban fabric. She believes that major changes and breakthroughs can be brought about by specific and smart design. In her free time, she loves to go out and explore new places in search of new frames, stories and ideologies.

SHRAVI SHARMA
Shravi is an architect and urban designer, currently working with HKS Architects, New Delhi. Since graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, she has been involved in the design of mixed-use projects as part of Living Communities Initiative in the Middle East and South East Asia. With a keen fascination for Resilient design, she has also been working towards developing sustainability metrics for the modern cities

ROSHNI KRISHNAN
Roshni is an architect and urban enthusiast. She is interested in the growth of cities especially in developing nations and resilience in cities. Apart from design, she is also interested in new technologies and how they shape our lives.

SRIDIPTA GHATAK
Sridipta is an urban planner and architect by training. She is interested in exploring the ways in which planning shapes the discourse of infrastructure development in post-colonial India. Sridipta is currently teaching Bachelor of Architecture students at Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

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GUEST WRITERS

NITHYA RAMESH
Nithya is an Architect – Urban Designer, passionate about experiencing and changing cities. She currently works in Jana Urban Space Foundation, Bangalore creating better streets and public spaces.

ANKUSH SAMANT
Ankush is an engineer and management professional by education and currently working as an Observant Explorer at ICE (http://ice.humanfactors.com/) He loves football, traveling, writing, reading, contemplating, photography and meeting new people.

CHELSEA GAUTHIER
Chelsea is Associate Director of the Center for the Living City, a non-profit whose purpose is to enhance the understanding of the complexity of contemporary urban life and through it, promote increased civic engagement among people who care deeply for their communities. Chelsea’s interests and experience includes urban ecology, environmental planning, historic preservation, and community engagement projects that create a platform for citizen activists to create change in their communities.

KETAKI CHOWKHANI
Ketaki, a native of Pondicherry, is a PhD Research Scholar at Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai, India. Her doctoral work focuses on adolescent sexuality and the politics of sexuality education in contemporary urban India.

ARSHIYA SYED
Arshiya is a misfit architect, urban designer, flaneur. Watching clouds is how she likes to spend most of her time when not distracted by minor work. She seldom writes at www.theurbanote.wordpress.com .

PREETIKA BALASUBRAMANIAN
Preetika is an architecture student, writer and designer, deeply interested in exploring new parts of her home city, Chennai. She writes about the need to break the exclusivity of design at Hashtag Urbanism, a website that aims to highlight the immense potential of design in transforming our perceptions of a place.

SAREENA KHEMKA
Sareena is a visual artist working with mixed media drawing and painting. She has always been drawn to large cities, having lived in Calcutta, Chicago, Bombay and now Bangalore. Her drawings are fuelled and inspired by the chaos and vibrant energy of these urban spaces along with the architectural and design forms found within them. Her works can be viewed at http://www.sareenak.com As an artist looking for different experiences and wanting to learn the history of new cities, her curiosity leads her to many places. She has blogged about a few of these travels at https://theindianflashpacker.wordpress.com A novice kitchen gardener and wine lover, Sareena enjoys meeting fellow thinkers and procrastinators willing to engage in existential conversations and collaborate on art projects.

ARCHITA SURYANARAYANAN
Archita is a journalist and architect, who loves reading and writing about cities and urban life, their chaos and magic, heritage, culture and the small moments that make them what they are, all with a liberal dose of nostalgia. She also occasionally writes about social issues, human rights and women, or the odd street vendor down the road. She blogs at architas.wordpress.com and you can also find some of her articles on The New Indian Express, Chennai.

PARAG GUPTA
Parag is an architect and an urban enthusiast. Working and travelling across India and Spain, has enlightened him on innumerable phenomenon which have shaped and built cities in their present forms. He is passionate about manifesting the ideas and lifestyle of sustainability in the minds of the citizens, highlighting the importance of different segments that weaves the city into whole and how they promote culture and their character. He advocates existentialism and is an omnivorous reader.

MALAVIKA MURTHY
Malavika is a young architect, graduated from The University School of Design, Mysore. Her interest in understanding the evolution of cities, led her to complete her professional internship at Indian Heritage Cities Network (IHCN), Mysore, working on urban conservation projects in Srirangapatna. Architecture helped Malavika develop an interest in the making and working of things. She is currently an architect with Murthy Varnishes & Paints Pvt. Ltd., a family business, where she manages the production department and oversees the functioning of the entire factory.

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We welcome contributions in the form of articles/ photo essays or any other format to our blog from other guest writers as well. We’re also open to co-authoring a story. Get in touch with us at info@urbandesigncollective.org and we’ll work it out!

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