Living Not Built. Rethinking Infratsructure

In cities where concrete often eclipses the natural world, how can design bring life back into the built environment? Architect Samira Rathod and landscape artist Kunal Maniar explore this question through their shared belief that true design is never static, it breathes, adapts, and grows with its surroundings.

For Samira, architecture is an act of empathy and endurance. Her work challenges the idea of permanence, asking how materials can age gracefully, how light, air, and texture can make a building “breathe.” For Kunal, landscape is not a finishing touch but the foundation of design itself, conceived in dialogue with architecture from the very first sketch.

Together, they invite us to imagine homes, campuses, and public spaces as living infrastructures, ecosystems that respond to time, culture, and climate. Their practices converge on a vision where walls dissolve into gardens, and the line between built and natural blurs into something humane, timeless, and deeply rooted in place.

This conversation at Conscious Collective 2025 rethinks what it means to build with life, reminding us that the future of design lies not in separation from nature, but in its seamless integration.