Parag Tandel is a Mumbai-based artist whose practice delves into the changing ecologies and oral traditions of the city’s coastal communities. With training in sculpture, he extends his work into installations, public art, and community-led archives, often centering the experiences of fisherfolk and the fragile marine ecosystems they depend on. From the Tandel Fund of Archives, a living museum of coastal memory, to works like How to Cook ‘Bombay’ Duck in Various Ways?, his projects trace how urbanisation, overfishing, and climate change erode both environments and cultural practices. By transforming local rituals, food, and materials into contemporary art forms, Tandel creates spaces of remembrance and resistance, situating art as a vital force in reimagining resilience and ecological futures

Arthur Mamou-Mani does not see architecture as fixed form, but as a future in motion, fluid, parametric, grown from bio-based matter and shaped by digital craft. His Fab.Pub in London doubles as both laboratory and commons, where participation replaces prescription and making becomes collective. Named among the disruptors of architecture, awarded by academies and journals alike, he has carried his vision across continents, always speaking of possibility, never finality. For him, architecture is a dialogue, where ecology, technology, and community fold into a single evolving form.

Ayaz Basrai moves at the intersection of design, culture, and imagination. As Co-founder of The Busride Design Studio, he has shaped some of India’s most compelling architectural and interior experiences, always with a spirit of play and provocation. At The Busride Lab in Goa, his gaze turns experimental, blending heritage with future thinking, technology with speculative fiction, to reimagine how design can question, conserve, and create. His practice is rooted in curiosity and cultural inquiry, making connections across disciplines to map the shifting contours of contemporary India. In his teaching and workshops, Ayaz extends this philosophy outward, inviting new ways of seeing, thinking, and building for the world to come.

Bandana Jain is a celebrated contemporary artist and sustainability advocate, acclaimed for transforming recycled corrugated cardboard into striking works of art. With a practice that blends luxury, elegance, and environmental consciousness, she has carved a distinctive niche in the worlds of art and design.

Her signature medium elevates the discarded into the extraordinary, creating collectible pieces admired for both their aesthetic brilliance and their ecological ethos. An award-winning artist with over a decade of experience, Bandana’s works are part of prestigious collections and have been commissioned by leading architects and cultural institutions across India and beyond.

Through her art, Bandana champions a vision of creativity as renewal, where materials are not simply used, but reimagined with care, depth, and purpose.

Debasmita Ghosh works at the intersection of architecture, ecology, and community. Her practice is rooted in a belief that buildings are not just shelters, but extensions of the land and the people who shape them. As a Sustaina India Fellow, she explored the changing landscape of Kondh architecture in Odisha, where mud walls and communal courtyards are slowly giving way to concrete. Across projects, whether it is reinterpreting vernacular forms or creating resilient prototypes, Ghosh’s approach is consistent: to design with empathy, and to listen to what the land and its people already know. Her work is less about imposing change and more about reweaving connections, between past and present, tradition and innovation, community and environment.

Diana Kellogg is an award-winning architect and founder of Diana Kellogg Architects, established in 1992 with a commitment to sustainability, advocacy, and supporting marginalized communities. A graduate of Williams College and Columbia University, she began her career working on major cultural projects in New York, including David Zwirner’s first gallery and the Dia Art Foundation, and went on to design private spaces for leading artists and cultural figures.

Through her practice and nonprofit initiative, TARA for Change, Kellogg champions architecture as a force for social impact, working with NGOs and global institutions to support education, culture, and equity. In India, her design for the Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls’ School in Rajasthan has received international recognition, including honors from the Aga Khan Architecture Award and Architectural Digest’s Building of the Year, celebrated as a model of sustainable design and community empowerment.

Michael Pawlyn is an architect, writer and speaker whose work bridges design and ecology. Through his practice, Exploration Architecture, he pioneers regenerative solutions, from zero-waste factories to green cities, drawing inspiration from nature’s intelligence. He was a key force behind the Eden Project and co-initiated the Sahara Forest Project, redefining what architecture can restore. His books and talks have sparked a global movement, including Architects Declare, now embraced by thousands of firms worldwide. Today, Pawlyn continues to advise industries and governments on shifting from sustainability to true regeneration.

Nuru Karim’s practice is where art, architecture, and technology converge into living, breathing ideas. Through NUDES, his award-winning studio, he translates computational precision into forms that respond to culture, community, and climate. His journey, from Mumbai to London to Montreal, from Zaha Hadid’s atelier to global stages like TEDx, shapes a design voice both rooted and futuristic. Each project carries the rigor of research and the lightness of imagination, rethinking how we inhabit and interact with space. Visionary yet grounded, Karim continues to expand the possibilities of architecture as a social, cultural, and environmental catalyst.

Poludas Nagendra Satish brings together architecture, craft, and cultural memory in ways that feel both grounded and experimental. As a Sustaina India Fellow, Satish explored the fragile ecosystem of brick kilns in Telangana, where the act of making a single brick speaks of migration, labour, and environmental cost. His documentation turns these overlooked sites into archives of resilience and struggle, asking how design can respond to systems that are at once essential and exploitative. Satish’s work insists on slowing down, looking closer, and recognising the human and ecological narratives embedded in every layer of construction.

Rajan Rawal is a Professor at CEPT University and Senior Advisor at the Centre for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE). A leading voice in energy-conscious design, he brings decades of expertise to the study and teaching of energy-efficient built environments, policy, and simulations. His work today is centered on Passive Design Strategies, Urban Climates, Human Thermoregulation, and Adaptive Thermal Comfort, fields that bridge science with lived experience, and research with real-world resilience. Through both teaching and practice, he continues to shape how India imagines and builds for a future that is not just sustainable, but humanly attuned.

Rajeev Kathpalia is the designated partner at Vastu Shilpa Sangath LLP, the celebrated practice founded by Pritzker Laureate Balkrishna Doshi. His work integrates frugal, environmentally responsible strategies with a deep commitment to social inclusion, creating campuses and habitats that set new benchmarks in sustainability and innovation. Four of his institutional campuses are cited in India’s National Education Policy as examples of design, reflecting his ability to combine ecological thinking with people-centered spaces.

A trustee of the Vastu Shilpa Foundation and a long-time educator at CEPT University and SPA, Kathpalia has shaped both practice and pedagogy in equal measure. Honored with awards including the Prime Minister’s Award for Urban Design and Washington University’s Award for Distinction in Architecture, he continues to influence architecture at multiple scales, reimagining not only how we build but how we live together sustainably.

Sameep Padora is an architect, author, and the founder of his Mumbai-based practice, established in 2007 after graduating from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. His studio’s projects have been widely acclaimed, receiving honors such as the Wallpaper Design Award, the Beazley Architecture Prize, the Wienerberger Brick Award, ArchDaily’s Building of the Year, and commendations from the Architectural Review. Their research and built works have been showcased at major forums including the Seoul, Buenos Aires, and Venice Biennales.

Alongside practice, Padora runs sPare, a not-for-profit research initiative focused on urbanization and housing in India. Its publications, including In the Name of Housing, How to Build an Indian House, and (de)Coding Mumbai, have contributed significantly to discourse on affordable housing. A regular lecturer at institutions such as Harvard, Cooper Union, Cornell, and TU Delft, he is currently Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at CEPT University, shaping both architectural practice and pedagogy in India.

Sonali Rastogi is the Co-Founding Partner of Morphogenesis, one of India’s most influential design practices working across architecture, interiors, and landscape urbanism. With a portfolio that spans over 250 million sq. m., her work combines research-driven innovation with a sensitivity to context, delivering projects recognized with over 120 national and international awards, including multiple World Architecture Festival wins and the SIA Getz Award. Educated at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, and the Architectural Association, London, Rastogi approaches design as a synthesis of art, technology, and theory. From large-scale urban visions to finely crafted homes, her practice reflects a belief in equity, sustainability, and cultural integration. Beyond the studio, she contributes to the global discourse as a speaker, juror, author, and member of the Delhi Urban Art Commission, situating architecture as both a local responsibility and a global conversation.

With over two decades in media, Pramiti has shaped the design and décor conversation in India. As Editor-in-Chief of ELLE DECOR India for 18 years and a founding member of India Design ID, she helped define the country’s modern design voice. Her subsequent role as Editorial Advisor at STIRworld.com further deepened her engagement with global design discourse. In 2018, she founded The Blue Pencil Design Company, an independent brand strategy and design consultancy that brings together creative storytelling and tactical expertise. Through Blue Pencil, Pramiti collaborates with brands to craft impactful product launches, build distinctive IPs, and conceptualize one-of-a-kind events. With an instinct for originality and a deep understanding of the design ecosystem, she continues to influence and inspire the world of interiors, design, and creative strategy in India.

Sonia Bajaj is the Founder of Ten Palm Court, a boutique advisory that helps brands navigate the fast-evolving landscape of design in India. Through strategic counsel, curated opportunities, and a nuanced understanding of the industry, she partners with clients to strengthen their positioning, incubate new ventures, and build design-led properties that resonate with influence and impact. Her expertise is anchored in over two decades of shaping India’s design narrative from within. As Publishing Director of ELLE and ELLE DECOR India, and a Founding Member of India Design ID, Sonia played a pivotal role in steering the country’s most influential design platforms, driving brand growth, pioneering new initiatives, and creating India’s definitive forum for design dialogue. Today, she brings this rare confluence of media insight, brand strategy, market creation, and community building to help companies in the design and décor sectors not just find their voice, but define their place in an increasingly competitive and creative world.