A place for working notes
Short observations from fieldwork, reading and the studio — the kind of thing that doesn't fit in a paper. I'll add notes here as they come.
Cities are a canvas of inequality. I study how to redraw them toward spatial justice.
I'm a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft, working where urban inclusivity, resilient living environments and vulnerable communities meet.
Trained as an architect, I've built international action-research experience across India, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands — including working closely with two Pritzker laureates, Norman Foster and Balkrishna Doshi, at their respective research foundations.
My through-line is urban inequality: reading the social and spatial power structures of cities, and using participatory, evidence-based methods to push them toward something fairer. The built environment, to me, is the canvas on which inequality is drawn — and redrawn.
Alongside research I've taught architecture and urbanism, led my own action-research practice, and co-developed a UN-Habitat-supported MOOC on Transformative Living Labs with MIT, TU Berlin and the Wuppertal Institute.
COVID-19 put the spotlight on our living environments — and exposed the built environment as a de facto canvas of inequality, where mitigation measures often hit the most vulnerable communities hardest.
My project analyses the reciprocal relationship between living environments and the pandemic in order to design concrete, evidence-based urban interventions that make cities more resilient, adaptive and just. Drawing on case studies in the Netherlands and India, the work foregrounds spatial and social justice — asking how the lives and livelihoods of urban dwellers can be protected and improved.
Reconceptualising how access to opportunity is distributed across the city — formalised through the A.U.R.A. framework in my recent work with Lee, Newton & van Gameren.
Beyond the papers, the A.U.R.A. Pattern Framework lives as an interactive web app — a way to work through its patterns directly rather than only on the page. Try it live below, or open it full-screen.
Launch the appLoading the live app…
If this area stays blank, your browser is blocking the embed — use “Launch the app” above to open it in a new tab.
Full list on TU Delft Research · Google Scholar
Research and city-making are collective work — convened, curated and co-authored. Selected activities, collaborators and partners:
Short observations from fieldwork, reading and the studio — the kind of thing that doesn't fit in a paper. I'll add notes here as they come.
Researching pandemic-proof, spatially-just living environments through case studies in the Netherlands and India.
Co-developed a UN-Habitat-supported MOOC on Transformative Living Labs in mobility with MIT, TU Berlin and the Wuppertal Institute.
Developed a statewide participatory upgradation pilot across 114 cities for a regional Government of India — a framework affecting two million urban poor through land rights, civic amenities and infrastructure.
Led participatory action research with universities, communities and civic organisations through workshops, conferences and exhibitions — with collaborations including Yatin Pandya and Anupama Kundoo.
Produced reports, studies, books and monographs tied to urban development projects, and conceived and ran annual international habitat design workshops.