Tutor Profiles

Amber Dar Wagh

She is an Interior designer with over 19 years of experience in interior design. She is a founding Director at Dar & Wagh. Schooled in the modernist architectural tradition of Ahmedabad and having honed her skills designing resorts in tropical Asia, she sees interior design as something rooted in the fundamentals of space planning rather than as material gymnastics.

Amit Gotech

He is an urban planner with over 10 years of experience in spatial planning projects. The projects range from preparation of development plans/master plans, preparation of town planning schemes, housing projects and urban design and street design projects. He works as Senior Consultant and Operations Manager with CUPP-CRDF and is involved with CEPT University as Visiting Faculty. He holds a Master’s in Planning from CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

Amruta Patel

She is an engineer-planner. She has specific interest and knowledge in the field of Housing. She had worked at Affordable Housing Mission with the Government of Gujarat to monitor the preparation of HFAPoA-PMAY. She is currently working as a visiting faculty at the Faculty of Planning, CEPT. Also, she is pursuing her PhD from CEPT.

Anand Belhe

He is the Dean of Faculty of Design, CEPT and has been teaching design for the last 13 years. He has designed and manufactured furniture and building products for 28 years and has immense knowledge of industrial design, building products design, and product detailing and manufacturing. He has several Indian and European patents and an American one too. He graduated from NID and studied Architecture in Vienna.

Aparna Joshi

She is an architect and an urban designer. With an undergraduate degree in Architecture from CEPT University and a master’s degree in urban design from Bartlett, UCL, Aparna has a varied work experience of close to 15 years in Ahmedabad, Dubai and London. She has been a visiting faculty at CEPT since 2012, and is a partner at Studio ārā.

Arjun Joshi

He is an architect, urban and regional planner with over 16 years of experience of working on urban planning, architecture, interior design, landscape and urban design projects. He holds an M.Plan. in Urban and Regional Planning from CEPT University, and a B.Arch. from M.S.University Vadodara. Currently he heads ‘URBINTARCH’, a firm co-founded by him.

Ashna Patel

She is an architect and academic based in Vadodara. She holds an MA in International Architectural Regeneration and Development (IARD) from Oxford Brookes University, UK and a B.Arch, from CEPT University. She is a senior architect and partner at Fifth Column design studio. She has taught design studios and Architectural History and Theory courses at NUV and MSU, Vadodara. Her key research interests include cultural tourism and urban regeneration.

Brijesh Bhatha

He is an architect and urban designer practicing since 1998. He founded Groundwork Architecture in 2010. He has an undergraduate degree in Architecture from CEPT and a Master’s degree inUrban Design from UC Berkeley. He has taught design studios at CEPT since 2012 and is currently the program chair for the Master of Urban Design.

Catherine Desai

Catherine is an architect from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Her work encompasses both research and practice in Australia, UK, and India. She has recently co-authored The Architecture of Hasmukh C. Patel and is completing a reading guide to Twentieth Century Indian Buildings. Both publications develop a historical methodology which views the building as a primary resource through which broader narratives of architectural history can be critiqued and expanded.

Chandrani Chakrabarti

She is a landscape architect based in Ahmedabad. She has over ten years of professional consulting experience in Landscape Architecture and Urban Design and continues her practice as a consultant with Jerde Partnership based in Los Angeles. As an Adjunct faculty at CEPT, her teaching and research interests include urban ecology, landscape urbanism, and productive landscapes in cities.

Claire Reuter

She has been teaching at the interior design department at CEPT for 2 years and has completed her Bachelor’s in Interior Architecture from Stuttgart, Master’s in Interior Architecture and Crafts from CEPT. Before teaching at CEPT, Claire worked in London for over 2 years and at HCPID Pvt. Ltd in Ahmedabad for 3 years. She earned on-site experience during the construction of charity homes in Bolivia, Senegal, and Slovenia.

Deepa Maheshwari

She is an Adjunct Professor at the Master’s program in Landscape Architecture. She did her PhD after Master’s in Landscape Architecture from SPA Delhi (1990) and M.Sc. Botany from Delhi University (1988). She has been associated with the program since its inception in 1993. Her areas of expertise are ecology, botany, phytogeography, planting design, and regional landscape planning.

Dhaval Gajjar

He is a graduate from the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT. He has been working in the field of architecture and landscape design for over 13 years. As part of his practice, he has worked and collaborated with many design studios and consultants from India and overseas and has been involved in projects of various scales and typologies.

Divya Shah

She is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University. Her teaching at the postgraduate program in Landscape involves developing visual and speculative tools to read, record, and interpret narratives and processes of indigenous landscapes as physical and cultural systems. Her current research is in areas of landscape anthropology and spatial ethnography, with a particular focus on landscape and its reciprocity to cultural narratives of rural places.

Jigna Desai

She is an Associate Professor and Program Chair for Masters in Conservation and Regeneration at the Faculty of Architecture and Executive Director of Center for Heritage Conservation, CEPT Research and Development Foundation. She is also a director at a small, award winning practice, JMA Design Co that she co-founded with Mehul Bhatt in 1999.

Gauri Bharat

Gauri has developed construction history as a personal research area in the past 3 years. Her earlier research on adivasi history initiated this interest where she explored the making and physical transformation of domestic architecture as an archive of the community’s history. She is currently working on a research project funded by the Graham Foundation on the rise and spread of reinforced concrete construction between 1920 and 1950.

Gayatri Doctor

She has over 20 years of experience in the IT industry and academics. She is currently engaged in the field of Urban Management from a technology perspective. She teaches studios and courses in Urban Governance and Management, Service Operations Management, E-governance, and Future Cities and Technology. Her interests include data-driven governance; open data; smart cities; emerging technologies & their applications in the urban realm and future cities.

Hemangi Dalwadi

She is working as Principal Researcher with the CoE, CRDF. She is an architect and transport planner with more than 9 years of work experience. She has worked on various urban transport projects including comprehensive mobility plans, metro demand assessment, bus operations plan and fare structuring studies. She is also a visiting faculty in FP, CEPT University

Hersh Vardhan Bhasin

He is an Architect-Planner with over 10 years of experience. The experience ranges from preparing LAP, townships, providing transaction Advisory services for Smart City projects, and various architectural projects in the domain of Residential, Healthcare, Hospitality, etc. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Rizvi College of Architecture, Mumbai, and a Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

Jayashree Bardhan

She has an educational background in Architecture (CEPT University) and World Heritage (BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany: UNESCO Chair in Heritage Studies). She has worked on diverse architectural and cultural heritage projects, research and assessments. She is an ICOMOS member and has recently conducted research on ‘Heritage at Risk’ initiatives, mentored by an ICOMOS International Board and ICORP Team.

Jignesh Mehta

He is an adjunct associate professor and area chair for Master of Urban Planning at CEPT. With more than 20 years of international professional experience in the fields of urban planning and urban design in India and the USA, he has worked on award winning projects. He holds a Master’s degree in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), USA and a degree in Architecture from CEPT.

Kaulav Bhagat

He is an interior and furniture designer; an alumnus of CEPT and NID. He is currently the Program Chair for Master’s in Furniture Design. He has 14 years of work experience in the field of retail Interiors and furniture design. He loves to experiment with materials and making techniques. He believes in design processes for developing creative ideas.

Khushru Irani

He is an architect whose practice searches for an appropriate response to the places it works in, inspired by specific context, culture and building technology. The work of the studio includes buildings for education, institutes, adaptive reuse projects and buildings for the social sector. He is also the founder of The Loft Forum, a non-profit organisation.

Kiran Keswani

She is a co-founder, Everyday City Lab: - an urban design & research collaborative in Bangalore that focuses on understanding the everyday practices of people, in order to develop a people centric approach to urban design & planning. She graduated in Architecture from Mumbai in 1988 and has worked on architectural and urban design projects in India and abroad.

Kireet Patel

He has been a fellow at the Institute for Light-Weight Structures, IL Frie Otto at Stuttgart, Germany and has initiated the knowledge of tensile architecture into a number of academic activities at CEPT. He received a scholarship from Asian Cultural Council, NewYork to visit diff erent architectural departments, universities and design-craft studios of different artists and museums across the United States. He has worked as chief designer for National Cultural Festival New Delhi, 1986 and at his own practice has worked on several architecture and interior projects.

Madhav Raman

He co-founded Anagram Architects, internationally recognised amongst the top emerging practices in the world. He is committed towards delivering deeply contextual designs that encourage sustainable lifestyles. His Aga Khan Award nominated practice has also been included in the Architectural Digest’s list of the most influential South Asian designers from 2014 to 2020.

Meghal Arya

Teaching architectural design and history since 2000, including international studios, she has a deep interest in the architectural design traditions of India and their relevance today. She curates training programs for teachers. Her firm Arya Architects, with Vijay Arya, engages with the design of public institutions as inclusive dignified realms.

Mercy Samuel

Her teaching and research interests lie in evidence-based policy design for urban governance and city finances. She teaches studio courses like Urban Governance and Management, Urban Service and Operations Management and Facilities Management. Mercy is passionate about social innovations and business models. She has been trained in public policy from Harvard Kennedy School of Government and is certified from Stanford Graduate School of Business in design thinking and business models.

Moksh Thapar

He is an industrial designer trained at NID and CEPT. He has developed products and processes for fusion of traditional wisdom and technology; worked on interior projects of varied user profiles and scales from conception to execution and has also worked for a brief time with leading art directors of film industries on film sets to research the role of visual perception in set design.

Mrudula Mane

She is an architect from Mumbai and has pursued MA in Conservation of Historic Buildings from University of York, UK. She has been actively involved in documentation, research, survey and conservation projects for Government and Non-Government agencies in Mumbai, Matheran, Pune and Ratnagiri region since 2013. Presently, she is also working as a research associate with the Center for Heritage Conservation at CRDF.

Narendra Mangwani

He is an academician, researcher and practicing architect and urban designer with his firm URBSCAPES, Ahmedabad along with his wife who is a landscape architect. He has been involved with master planning, urban design, housing, landscape, architecture, as well as community projects. He teaches urban design at the Faculty of Planning and Faculty of Architecture at CEPT.

Neeru Bansal

She has over 24 years of experience spread across academics, working in regulatory bodies and in research. She is a civil engineer and urban planner with a doctorate on Industrial Development and Water Pollution in Gujarat. Her interest areas mainly include fields associated with Environmental Planning and Infrastructure Planning with a focus on Environmental Laws and Policy, Environmental Governance, EIA, Sustainable Development, Renewable Energy and Urban and Industrial Infrastructure.

Nikhil Dhar

He completed his B.Arch. degree from the SPA Delhi, and an MLA degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has been a practicing landscape architect since 1996, as the principal of the firm Artemisia. He is also a visiting faculty at the Landscape Architecture departments at SPA, Delhi and Sushant School of Art & Architecture, Gurgaon. His interests include the methods and theory of teaching landscape architecture.

Nikita Bhakuni

She is working as Associate Professor with a background in Environmental Planning with a PhD from CEPT. She has over 18 years of work experience in India and the United Kingdom. Her expertise lies in database development, land use transport integration, and equity issues for a wide range of transportation projects undertaken at CoE-UT, CEPT.

Purvi Chhadva

She has over 20 years of professional experience as an architect, urban designer, and educator. She has professional experience in designing institutes, housing, and various urban and master planning projects. She currently partners an architecture design firm ‘AVN Architecture’. Since 2007, she has been teaching UG and PG programs in Architecture and Urban Design at CEPT

Rajendra Mistry

He is a Product Designer; graduated from National Institute of Design. His work involves rendering design and development services for the last 25 years in lighting design, product design, exhibition design, museum design and experience design. He has in-house workshop & production facilities. His clients range from TCS, Tata Sons, TCL, TSL, Tulip Lighting, to Aurion Pro, HMG and Shreyas Foundation.

Rebecca Reubens

She was trained as a furniture designer at NID Ahmedabad and completed her PhD at Delft University at the intersection of design, sustainability, and craft. She practices through her sustainability design studio Rhizome which works extensively with bamboo. Rebecca is a World Bamboo Ambassador for the World Bamboo Organization. She remains linked to academia through her teaching and writing.

Rishav Jain

He is an Assistant Professor and Program Chair (M.Des. ID; IMIAD) at the Faculty of Design and a Research Expert with DICRC, CEPT University. He is passionate about crafts in interior architecture and design research. He has curated and designed exhibitions, publications, and has conducted various craft-design workshops. His research explores the idea of craft beyond traditions and objects, conducting an exploration into the contemporary perspective on Building crafts in India.

Rudrapalsinh Solanki

He works as a computational designer and specializes in generative design, digital fabrication, and robotic fabrication and assembly-based systems. His area of interest lies in research and development of timber and metal structures fabricated using computational and digital tools. He is a graduate in interior design from CEPT University and holds a master’s degree in Parametric Design in Architecture from the UPC, Barcelona, Spain.

Sadasivan Iyer

He specializes in mentoring design education with a focus on product design and related domains such as technical education, vocational training and management, design education and management. He has over 40 years of industrial experience in R&D, tool rooms, design and manufacturing of electronics products and packaging and teaching experiences at NID, IGTR, NIFT and NTTF, while also managing and counseling the training of trainers in technical and vocational education.

Sagar Modh

He is teaching at the Faculty of Design, CEPT. He has worked in the industry and with the professional sector of the design field. He has collaborated with NID, Elephant Design, Pune and SWATCH NGO, designing interiors and products. He has a bachelor’s degree in Interior Design from APIED VV Nagar and a master’s degree in Industrial Design from MITID Pune.

Samir Bhatt

He has a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from NID and has been teaching at NID and CEPT as a visiting faculty since 2008. He has taught at the Faculty of Design for furniture design studios (1992-2007). He owns a design and manufacturing furniture studio. He has worked with Sarabhai electronics research center for 2 years, with Calico textile mills for retail shop furniture, and with HCP for 1.5 years (1975-1982).

Sandip Patil

He is a landscape architect who balances his professional work along with academic explorations at the postgraduate Landscape program of CEPT. He has presented his work extensively at various forums and institutes. As an academician, his interest lies in landscape planning, programmatic inquiries, water management and relationship of landscape to the human psyche.

Saswat Bandyopadhyay

He is a professor at CEPT and has over 24 years of experience in the Urban Development sector with a focus on Urban Infrastructure Planning and Sustainable Development. He has a postgraduate degree in Planning, Professional Master’s in Urban infrastructure and Ph.D. in Climate Resilience.

Sejal Patel

She is Chair, Master of Urban Housing Program and Head, International Office. She has engaged in professional practice, teaching and research in areas of housing policy and projects, urban planning and legislations, urban regeneration and gentrification policies, and participatory urban governance. As Head of International Office, she has steered academic and research collaborations with institutions of excellence in many countries in various disciplines of Human Habitat studies

Shailesh Manke

He is an interior designer trained from CEPT. He has his own design practice and has been working on various multidisciplinary projects from interior design to experiential design, exhibitions to space graphics. He was associated with NID, Ahmedabad as a faculty member and served as coordinator, Furniture and Interior Design, for more than 7 years. He is also a visiting faculty at CEPT and NID.

Shalini Sinha

She is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Planning and a transport planner. She has more than 20 years of work experience in India and the United Kingdom and has been involved in the areas of transport policy and public transport planning and operations. She has a Master’s degree from the University of Leeds and a PhD from CEPT.

Sonal Mithal

She holds a Doctoral degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master’s degree from SPA Delhi, and a Bachelor’s degree from Lucknow University. In her conservation and artistic practice at People for Heritage Concern, she combines material and archival research. Her artwork has been presented at curated exhibitions in India, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Taiwan, and USA—most recently at the Venice Biennale 2019. Jagrut Patel: He believes in designing spaces that engage experiences. He is a strategic thinker with a passion for innovation, always ready with a solution to tackle any resource crunch, an on-site error, or ‘e-Architecting’ the design process. He heads Jagrut & Partners, a team thriving on collaboration, cross-pollination of ideas, solutions and expertise, having created over 200 products.

Tapan Shah

He is an architect and urbanist and founder of Ahmedabad based “Studionine Architects.” He studied Architecture from Gujarat University, graduated in 2010 with Honors and holds an M.Arch in Urban Design from CEPT. He also holds a post-graduate diploma focused on City/Urban, Community and Regional Planning from the University of Cergy-Pontoise Paris, France.

Vinai Kumar

He is an educator, researcher, writer, practitioner, and consultant designer in areas of design management, human centered system thinking for holistic problem solving, and UX and HCI design. He is currently based in Ahmedabad and is the India Founder of Peridime: For a Humane World, a research, education and consulting unit, dealing with human centered systems thinking for design, innovation, and business.

Vipuja Parmar

She is an urban designer and has been a partner at Urban Architectural Collaborative, since 2016. She has over 10 years of experience working on urban design projects in Ahmedabad and Mumbai. She has been teaching as visiting faculty at CEPT and Indubhai Parekh School of Architecture, Rajkot since 2015. She has a Master’s degree in Architecture and Urban Design from CEPT.

Vishwanath Kashikar

He is a tenured associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture. Scope of architecture in mainstream urban housing, and pedagogy in architectural education are his main interests. He holds a diploma in architecture from CEPT University and a Master’s by research degree from the NUS, Singapore.

Vrushank Vyas

He is an industrial designer and a mechanical engineer with 8 years of experience helping companies in medical, consumer electronics, machine enclosures, and consumer goods sector. He holds multiple patents in the Industrial IoT technology. After finishing M.Des. in Product Design from MIT Institute of Design in 2013, he started a product design studio: Cosire. In 2017, he started a product company,Oizom, which focuses on solving climate change issues.