I grew up in Chennai, watching cities change faster than people could keep up with. I've spent my career trying to understand why — and do something about it.
Chennai
I was born and raised in Chennai, formerly Madras — a city layered with history, contradiction, and constant movement. Old colonial buildings stood beside rapidly rising apartment blocks. Streets transformed overnight. Neighbourhoods shifted within years. I didn't have words for urbanism back then, but I was always watching: how people moved through places, how buildings carried stories, how cities held memory.
As a child, I was drawn to history — ancient civilisations, lost cities, forgotten patterns. I wanted to understand how societies were built and why they collapsed. That instinct — to look for systems beneath the surface — never really left me.
I also drew constantly. Not to make art, but to think. Drawing was how I processed the world. But growing up in a traditional Indian household, creative fields weren't seen as serious pathways. So I moved toward science and mathematics instead — and eventually, almost by accident, into architecture.
Architecture school
When I entered Anna University, I had a naive idea of what architecture was — sketching, creativity, imagining spaces. What I found was something far more demanding. Architecture was rigorous. It required technical thinking, structural logic, regulatory understanding, coordination, and relentless problem-solving. It challenged every assumption I had about what design actually meant.
What differentiated me early was technology. While others focused on hand drawing and traditional methods, I gravitated toward digital workflows, visualisation tools, and emerging software. That instinct opened doors.
An internship with SWBI Architects — working on large-scale corporate projects, including work associated with Barclays Bank — made architecture real for me. I saw how it intersected with business, finance, stakeholders, and delivery. I understood, for the first time, that design was never just about form. It was about solving complex problems within real constraints.
Toward the end of my degree, I discovered urban design. That changed everything.
For the first time, I was thinking beyond individual buildings — understanding the larger systems shaping cities, housing, mobility, and public life. It connected everything I'd always been interested in: history, patterns, culture, movement, spatial relationships.
Sydney & beyond
In 2017, I moved to Sydney to pursue postgraduate studies in Urbanism at the University of Sydney. It was a significant shift — personally and professionally. Sydney exposed me to a different planning culture, a different scale of development, and a different way of thinking about cities.
I travelled extensively during those years — across Australia and internationally, including Japan. Japan left a lasting impression. The precision, spatial discipline, and the way tradition and modernity coexisted without conflict deeply influenced how I think about design and practice. Across every city I moved through, I was studying the same thing: how culture shapes built form, and how built form shapes people in return.
Over time, I developed a clear perspective: good design isn't about trends or ego. It's about clarity, systems thinking, and genuinely understanding people. And the built environment industry, far too often, overcomplicates both.
Hobart & URBART
My move to Hobart was initially practical — part of a permanent residency pathway. But arriving came with its own set of challenges. The market was smaller. Opportunities weren't waiting. The transition was harder than expected.
That difficulty became the turning point.
Rather than waiting for a seat at someone else's table, I started questioning whether I could build my own. By then, I had accumulated years of exposure across countries, cities, project types, and design cultures. I had seen how firms operated, where systems failed, and where genuine gaps existed in the market.
That recognition led to URBART.
URBART was never intended to be just another architecture studio. It was built on a straightforward philosophy: no unnecessary complexity, no inflated design ego, no disconnected jargon. A practice that is strategic, collaborative, and grounded in how things actually get approved and built — not just how they look on a page.
Today, URBART operates across architecture, urban planning, design strategy, and visual communication. The same curiosity that drove me as a child — the desire to understand how environments are shaped and what they do to people — is still what drives the work.
I was born and raised in Chennai, formerly Madras — a city layered with history, contradiction, and constant movement. Old colonial buildings stood beside rapidly rising apartment blocks. Streets transformed overnight. Neighbourhoods shifted within years. I didn't have words for urbanism back then, but I was always watching: how people moved through places, how buildings carried stories, how cities held memory.
As a child, I was drawn to history — ancient civilisations, lost cities, forgotten patterns. I wanted to understand how societies were built and why they collapsed. That instinct — to look for systems beneath the surface — never really left me.
I also drew constantly. Not to make art, but to think. Drawing was how I processed the world. But growing up in a traditional Indian household, creative fields weren't seen as serious pathways. So I moved toward science and mathematics instead — and eventually, almost by accident, into architecture.
Architecture school
When I entered Anna University, I had a naive idea of what architecture was — sketching, creativity, imagining spaces. What I found was something far more demanding. Architecture was rigorous. It required technical thinking, structural logic, regulatory understanding, coordination, and relentless problem-solving. It challenged every assumption I had about what design actually meant.
What differentiated me early was technology. While others focused on hand drawing and traditional methods, I gravitated toward digital workflows, visualisation tools, and emerging software. That instinct opened doors.
An internship with SWBI Architects — working on large-scale corporate projects, including work associated with Barclays Bank — made architecture real for me. I saw how it intersected with business, finance, stakeholders, and delivery. I understood, for the first time, that design was never just about form. It was about solving complex problems within real constraints.
Toward the end of my degree, I discovered urban design. That changed everything.
For the first time, I was thinking beyond individual buildings — understanding the larger systems shaping cities, housing, mobility, and public life. It connected everything I'd always been interested in: history, patterns, culture, movement, spatial relationships.
Sydney & beyond
In 2017, I moved to Sydney to pursue postgraduate studies in Urbanism at the University of Sydney. It was a significant shift — personally and professionally. Sydney exposed me to a different planning culture, a different scale of development, and a different way of thinking about cities.
I travelled extensively during those years — across Australia and internationally, including Japan. Japan left a lasting impression. The precision, spatial discipline, and the way tradition and modernity coexisted without conflict deeply influenced how I think about design and practice. Across every city I moved through, I was studying the same thing: how culture shapes built form, and how built form shapes people in return.
Over time, I developed a clear perspective: good design isn't about trends or ego. It's about clarity, systems thinking, and genuinely understanding people. And the built environment industry, far too often, overcomplicates both.
Hobart & URBART
My move to Hobart was initially practical — part of a permanent residency pathway. But arriving came with its own set of challenges. The market was smaller. Opportunities weren't waiting. The transition was harder than expected.
That difficulty became the turning point.
Rather than waiting for a seat at someone else's table, I started questioning whether I could build my own. By then, I had accumulated years of exposure across countries, cities, project types, and design cultures. I had seen how firms operated, where systems failed, and where genuine gaps existed in the market.
That recognition led to URBART.
URBART was never intended to be just another architecture studio. It was built on a straightforward philosophy: no unnecessary complexity, no inflated design ego, no disconnected jargon. A practice that is strategic, collaborative, and grounded in how things actually get approved and built — not just how they look on a page.
Today, URBART operates across architecture, urban planning, design strategy, and visual communication. The same curiosity that drove me as a child — the desire to understand how environments are shaped and what they do to people — is still what drives the work.
URBART is the foundation. Beyond it, I'm developing a broader ecosystem — spanning construction, branding, and strategic development — with a long-term goal of building a fully integrated, design-led group operating across Australia. Boutique in culture. Precise in execution.
— Aditya, Hobart