Rajmohan Shetty
Architect and Academician
Rajmohan Shetty is an Architect practicing and teaching in Bangalore, India since 1997.
He studied architecture at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India and completed his graduate studies in the History, Theory, Criticism of Architecture & Art Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge in 1984. He received The King Fahd Award for Research in Islamic Architecture in 1986 for his research thesis at M.I.T.
Rajmohan Shetty was an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York from 1985 to 1991, teaching in, both, the undergraduate and graduate programs. He has intermittently taught as a Visiting Faculty at R.V. College, Bangalore, the University School of Design at Mysore University and S.I.T, Tumkur.
Bhavana Hameed
Co-founder, Playgroup Studio
Bhavana Hameed (b.1981) is an architect and the co-founder of Playgroup Studio, Goa + Calicut. The practice was founded in 2009 and is led by Bhavana and her partner Harsh Patel. The studio’s work spans a wide range of architectural works including public buildings, institutions, hospitality and residential projects.
She graduated from CEPT, School of Architecture (in 2008) and has worked with HHF Architects- Basel, ECG Architects- Cairo and Fake Design- Beijing. Her time working with the Chinese contemporary artist Ai Wei Wei has greatly influenced her thinking and practice.
Apart from her engagement with architectural design, Bhavana was also the Associate Director at the Charles Correa Foundation in 2013-14, where she had the unique opportunity to work under the guidance of Mr. Correa on various urban projects in Goa.
Her research work on the Kuttichira Mappila Houses of Malabar has been presented at various schools of architecture and is an ongoing documentation project of the studio.
Sanjeev Vidyarthi
Head of Department of Urban Planning and Policy (UPP), University of Illinois
Professor Sanjeev Vidyarthi serves as head of the department of Urban Planning and Policy (UPP) and the founding director of the Masters in City Design (MCD) program at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is also the co-editor of JPH, the journal of record in the field of planning history. Exploring the case of contemporary India, he studies who does the urban planning and city design work in such a massive, complex country and how. His experiences living, working, and studying in diverse regions including the Middle East, Western Europe, and the United States bring an internationally comparative lens, integrative framework, and an insider/outsider perspective to his scholarship. He has published five books and many essays in leading academic journals. Sanjeev works with progressive scholars and professional practitioners worldwide.
Mustansir Dalvi
Poet, Editor and Academician
Mustansir Dalvi, recently retired, was the longest serving professor of architecture in the University of Mumbai (Sir JJ College of Architecture). His doctoral research, for which he received a PhD from the IIT-Bombay (IDC), examined Bombay’s Art Deco Architecture from a semiotic perspective. His research is published in ‘New Architecture and Urbanism: Development of Indian Traditions’ (INTBAU), ‘Buildings that shaped Bombay: The Architecture of G. B. Mhatre’ (UDRI), ‘Quiet Conversations: the architecture of Kamu Iyer’ (MPC/NCPA), and ‘Mulk Raj Anand: Shaping the Indian Modern’ (Marg). He is the author of ‘The Romance of Red Stone: An Appreciation of Ornament on Islamic Architecture in India’ (Super Book House) and ‘The Past as Present: pedagogical practices in architecture at the Bombay School of Art’ (Sir JJ/UDRI). He is the editor of ’20th Century Compulsions’ (Marg), a collection of writings about early Indian modernist architecture. Mustansir Dalvi delivered public lectures at the Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi and the Asiatic Society in Mumbai.
Manijeh Verghese
Director of Sphere Spaces + Head of Public Engagement at Architectural Association
Manijeh Verghese is the Director of Sphere Spaces, a design and curatorial practice interested in widening access to who can participate in conversations about architecture and culture. Manijeh was co-curator of The Garden of Privatised Delights – the 2021 British Pavilion at the 17th International Venice Architecture Biennale and was the interpretation specialist for the South Asia Gallery at the Manchester Museum in partnership with the British Museum that was co-curated by a collective of over 30 local experts. She is the Head of Public Engagement at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture, where she also co-leads the design studio Diploma Unit 12. She is currently one of the Mayor of London’s Design Advocates and an External Examiner for the M.Arch programme at The Bartlett, UCL. She is on the Board of Trustees for the Architecture Foundation and a member of the advisory board for The DisOrdinary Architecture Project.