A G KRISHNA MENON
A G Krishna Menon is an architect, urban planner and conservation consultant practising in Delhi for over 40 years. He has been simultaneously teaching in Delhi and in 1990 co-founded the TVB School of Habitat Studies in New Delhi. In 2007, this private School became the University School of Architecture and Planning of the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi. He is actively engaged in research and his contributions have been extensively published in professional journals and several academic books.
HIMANSHU BURTE
Himanshu Burte has practiced architecture in Mumbai and Goa, and written extensively in the popular, specialist and academic press on the poetics and politics of the built environment since 1990. His book, Space for Engagement: The Indian Artplace and a Habitational Approach to Architecture (Seagull Books, Kolkata, 2008), proposes an alternative theoretical framework for architecture, centred on the act of dwelling. He has also co-initiated a national network of architects practicing sustainably, called Gubbi Alliance for Sustainable Habitats. A former Fulbright Fellow, he teaches at School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. He is co-writing a book on sustainable architecture in India with a grant from Graham Foundation, Chicago, and pursuing a PhD in urban planning from CEPT University, Ahmedabad. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Panel of Marg Publications, Mumbai, which publishes the preeminent art and architecture journal of India.
MELISSA SMITH
Melissa Smith is an architect based in Ahmedabad, India, and part of banduksmithstudio, an architecture, urban design, and research practice that she founded there with Sachin Bandukwala. Their work engages processes of making through research on unique construction methods, both institutionalized and inventive, and built projects that explore the boundaries of material and craft in the context of contemporary Indian construction.
Melissa completed Master of Architecture and Master of City & Regional Planning degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, in 2011, where she was a John K. Branner Fellow in 2010. She completed her BA with concentrations in German, Asian Studies and Art History from Calvin College, Michigan, USA, in 2006. She now teaches in the Architecture and Planning Faculties at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. Her interests, explored through the investigation of the incremental, unplanned transformation of aging modernist planned cities, and continued through the examination of settlement formation in India, follow how inhabitants tend to restructure their built environments over time.
Along with practice and teaching, Melissa works to create a public voice that addresses issues she sees in the fields of architecture and planning. She does this through initiatives like the Ahmedabad Mapping Project, a group working toward transparent mapping practices in the city, Various at Dhobi Talao, a storefront for designed, handcrafted furniture and platform for dialogue on processes of making, and through her own writing.
BIJOY RAMACHANDRAN
Bijoy Ramachandran is an architect and urban designer based in Bangalore. He currently runs, Hundredhands, a design studio, with his partner Sunitha Kondur.
Bijoy has been a panelist at the annual all-India undergraduate thesis review, the Kurula Varkey Forum, at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, and currently serves on the Academic Council of the Wadiyar Centre For Architecture, Mysore and Avani Institute of Design, Calicut. Apart from architecture, he has also made two films. ‘Architecture & the City: A Bangalore Perspective’, a documentary feature on professional practice in the city in 2005 and ‘Doshi’, produced in 2008, on the Indian architect B.V. Doshi, directed by Premjit Ramachandran.
Bijoy has a Bachelors degree in Architecture from BMS College, Bangalore University and a Masters degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, in Architecture & Urbanism. He also attended the Glenn Murcutt MasterClass in 2012.