I'm a researcher and architect from Mumbai, India. I have a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture, Mumbai. 

During my academic years and after graduation, my focus has been on creating landscapes and ecological interventions that actively remediate or build up the local ecosystems. I have a keen interest in experimenting with micro-ecosystems and studying the feedback loops created within them. The ability of ecosystems to regenerate through natural processes fascinates me, and I would like to create systems that mimic or complement these natural processes. 

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Within design, I believe that projects meant for uplifting communities and ecosystems, and building resilience against resource scarcity are key in developing countries; however, rather than a top-down approach involving mass-scale schemes or "disruptions", regional, hyperlocal and grass-roots movements are more effective and serve the communities better.

Design is not an external body in a "natural" ecosystem: we cannot look at any scale of intervention as apart from nature. There will always be a planned or unplanned confluence of built and natural systems. Acknowledging this, as designers, we must act as agents of natural systems, using ecological processes to our advantage rather than fencing them off. 

Research is as (if not more) important as design. Specifically, research that is augmented by real-world data. I am particularly interested in using crowd-sourced and open data with modern social media tools to develop a system of data analysis for Indian cities and National Parks. Incidences of flooding, power outages or fallen trees in cities can be tracked through social media or photogrammetric data if code can be developed to search for particular parameters. Rare animal sightings and their frequency can also be tracked using similar methods - completely open source and using crowd-sourced data. Research produced using crowdsourced data and open research is, by rights, of the people. Another canon I believe in is the free and open dissemination of information and knowledge. A large part of the practice I hope to create focuses on this - the ability to make important information accessible to all types of practices, even if they may not have large-scale funding or institutional backing. 

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This website is an effort to create an archive of all the information I have gathered through my studies and practice. I am building it as an open resource to those who would like to learn more about natural building, ecosystem design and natural processes. My process (which will eventually reflect in the final structure of this website) goes through three stages: experimentation, research, and intervention.

 

I experiment through various media and techniques, and try to observe and document what I can. 

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Based on my observations, I put together a hypothesis and conduct research upon the subject.

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My intervention design is a result of the research and the experimentation I have conducted. 

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You can learn more about the kinds of projects I have worked on by clicking here