Category Archives: Video & Webcasts

Inclusive Cities, Video & Webcasts

Inclusive Cities – Vanessa Dsouza

In this session , we speak to Vanessa D’Souza who works with women, children and public health and safety systems.

Vanessa D’Souza has served as CEO of SNEHA since March 2013, after a volunteering stint with SNEHA. Prior to that, she worked with Citibank India in various positions, her last role being: Director, Citigroup Private Bank. During her tenure with Citibank she worked across various divisions including Non-Resident Indian Business, Corporate Bank, Project Re-engineering and eventually with the Private Bank. She won the coveted Citicorp Chairman’s Service Excellence Award in 1989 for exemplary performance. She holds a Bachelors (Honours) degree in Economics and a postgraduate degree in Management with a specialization in Marketing. Vanessa pursued the Management Executive Development Programme at Stanford University, USA sponsored by Citibank. She also holds a postgraduate Diploma in Public Health Nutrition. She was a Dasra Social Impact Fellow in 2015 and attended their Leadership Programme for non-profit executives. Recently, Vanessa has been a recipient of the Mother Teresa Social Leadership Scholarship, to attend the Strategic Perspectives in Non-Profit Management Programme at Harvard Business School in 2017.

Urban Manifesto, Video & Webcasts

Urban Manifesto – Sustainability Strategies

In this session on Sustainability Strategies we speak to Tara Gbolade, architect and co-founder Gbolade Design Studio and Julian Marwitz, Founder of Urbanomy, urban and energy planning consultancy.

RIBAJ Rising Star Winner, Tara is a Co-Founder of GDS. She previously worked at Mace Group and RG+P Architects, where she was responsible for the strategic organisation and growth of the company, while successfully leading exciting and challenging residential developments for private and public-sector clients. With her expertise in design and planning policy, Tara leads the Harlow & Gilston Garden Town Sustainability Strategy, and sits on a few Design/Quality Review Panels including; Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth, and Merton Councils – advising the council on major planning applications. ​

Julian Marwitz has studied law and sustainable urban development in Geneva, Hong Kong, Germany and at the University of Oxford. During his studies he founded several companies and worked in corporations such as Microsoft, Volkswagen, SAP and Allianz. Some of his major achievements include winning the largest startup competition for pupils in Germany, contributing towards a new legal convention for the UNEP and participating regularly at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Julian was formerly the Executive Assistant to the CEO of JLL in London and Development Manager of ECE, European market leader in shopping malls. He is passionate about sustainability, travelling, building technologies and the development of megacities.

Urban Manifesto, Video & Webcasts

Urban Manifesto-The Future of Development

In Urban Manifesto Series , we are creating a manifesto for a happier, healthier and liveable urban future as the world transitions from the COVID emergency into a new era. In this session we discuss “ Future of Development” with Jonny Anstead’s , founding Director of TOWN and Surendra Hiranandani, Founder and Managing Director, House of Hiranandani.

Urban Manifesto is co-hosted by Lucy Bullivant, place strategist, author & founder of Urbanista.org and Prathima Manohar, founder of think-do-tank The Urban Vision. We are partnering with the Architecture Foundation as part of its ongoing 100 Day Studio online initiative: https://www.architecturefoundation.or…

Jonny is founding Director of TOWN, a developer with a focus on delivering well-designed and sustainable homes, streets and neighbourhoods. Set up in 2014, TOWN works at varying scales, including community-led housing projects of 20–40 homes, mixed-use, residential-led town centre regeneration schemes, and large-scale urban extensions. TOWN is the developer of Marmalade Lane, a 42-home cohousing project in Cambridge. At larger scale, Jonny is leading TOWN’s work on a 5,500-home new quarter of Cambridge, in partnership with U+I Plc.

Surendra Hiranandani, Founder and Managing Director, House of Hiranandani has the distinction of transforming barren land into some of India’s most vibrant lifespaces. The real estate projects undertaken by his firm over the years across Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad visibly blend aesthetic beauty with practicality and sustenance. He is a pioneer in introducing indigenous species of trees and shrubs into the fabric of urban communities. Today his company is synonymous with innovation, quality construction, superior design and adherence to delivery schedules. Surendra Hiranandani has been globally recognised for his outstanding contribution to the real estate sector, particularly for his architectural acumen. He has also been honoured with numerous awards such as, for adapting the best of foreign technology to the skills of Indian engineering and labour artistry by the American Concrete Institute; not to mention a fellowship from the Indian Plumbing Association for his contribution to the plumbing profession – He is credited with the introduction of copper plumbing and the use of fly ash in concrete across the country.

Design Disruption, Video & Webcasts

Design Disruption: The Future of Workspaces

The COVID-19 Pandemic is a disruptive moment for our world, and it’s poised to spur transformative shifts in design, from how we experience our homes and offices to the plans of our cities. The webcast series Design Disruption explores these shifts—and address issues like climate change, inequality, and the housing crisis— through chats with visionaries like architects, designers, planners and thinkers; putting forward creative solutions and reimagining the future of the built environment.

EPISODE 2 will focus on the future of the office. Our guests will be Eliot Postma, partner at London-based Heatherwick Studio, and Verda Alexander, co-founder of San Francisco-based O+A. Postma is leading Heatherwick’s design for Google’s HQ campus in Mountainview, California; a flexible, permeable complex that is reimagining what offices can be. He has worked on projects for Heatherwick ranging from the transformation of the 14-acre Olympia London site, the Bund Finance Center in Shanghai, and Bateau, a futuristic riverboat on the Loire River in France. Alexander, winner of a 2016 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award, has helped spearhead her firm’s creations for companies like Nike, Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, Slack, and dozens more. Her artistic initiatives have challenged the status quo in office design, and in 2018 she launched a small studio within O+A to work exclusively on experimental projects and unconventional interventions. She recently completed The Food for Thought Truck, a mobile design studio that took a team of designers on the road to work with local communities throughout California.

The series is co-hosted by New York-based architectural writer Sam Lubell, who has written ten books about architecture, and contributes regularly to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Wallpaper, Dwell, and Architectural Digest; and Bangalore-based Social Entrepreneur Prathima Manohar, a contributor to The Times of India and founder of think do tank The Urban Vision. Our goal is to provide an international perspective, mixing guests from different continents. ArchDaily is the main media partner for this series.