Leadership and Key Faculty
The co-directors of the Workshop are Iftikhar mulk Chishti of Studio iF in Delhi and Harry Schwartz in New York City. The Workshop’s faculty consists of educators and active practitioners of planning, architecture and other disciplines in Delhi.
Iftikhar mulk Chishti conducts the Urban Design Studio at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) in Delhi, where he graduated in 1975. In 1990 he founded Studio iF, whose practice includes architecture, interior and product design and installations. Mr. Chishti studied urbanism and film making in Paris and recently launched Design X Design, a series of roundtables and exhibitions in conjunction with the Alliance Francaise de Delhi. He has served on numerous juries and committees, including chairing the prestigious Urban Graphics Forum of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
Harry Schwartz graduated in urban planning from the University of Pennsylvania and is a city planning consultant and a teacher of planning at the City University of New York. He has consulted for the federal, state and city government on community planning, housing, economic development and social welfare. Mr. Schwartz has taught at Pratt Institute, Columbia, Washington and Rutgers Universities in the US; in international study programs and traveled widely in India where he has lectured at several universities.
Key faculty for the Delhi Urban Workshop are:
Ashok Dhwan has degrees from Delhi University and Yale University in architecture. After working in the US and the Middle East for 20 years, he established his own firm in Delhi, where it has worked on housing, commercial and institutional complexes, notably New Tehri Town and Tehri Garhwal, for which he received the Prime Minister’s Urban Planning Excellence Award. Mr. Dhawan has advised the Government of India on housing and development as well as the Indian National Trust for Art and Culture Heritage (INTACH) and chairs the Royal Society of Arts in India. Environmental issues and infrastructure will be of particular interest to him in the Workshop.
Satish Dabral is a graduate of the SPA in Delhi in architecture and Harvard University in urban design. For over 25 years he has worked in India, Canada, the Netherlands, the Middle East and the US on a variety of urban projects. In his practice and as a visiting professor at SPA, he has created sustainable and equitable concepts for inclusive communities in response to the massive migration of people from rural India to the cities, a concern he will bring to the Workshop.
Munishwar Nath Ashish Ganju graduated from the Architectural Association in London and has pursued higher studies in India. He has practiced architecture and planning throughout India as well as in Afghanistan and consulted for the UN and the Government of India. Mr.Ganju has taught at the SPA in Delhi and in the UK and Italy and founded the TVB School of Habitat Studies in Delhi. He has been an advisor on urban development to Government of India. The role of citizens in Delhi’s development will be his special focus in the Workshop.
Sambhudda Sen is a native of Delhi, where he has witnessed the vicissitudes of the growing and changing city from close quarters. He practices in Delhi and teaches at the School of Planning and Architecture. His deep concerns with the polarization of modern cities and how to retain a distinct Indian form of urbanism in the face of global forces will be his concern in the Workshop.
Arun Rewal was educated in planning, architecture and environmental design at the SPA in Delhi and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. He has been involved in a wide variety of architectural, planning and urban design projects in India, Canada, France and the US. Mr. Rewal has written extensively on planning and architecture in India, including monographs on contemporary Indian architecture. He teaches at SPA and maintains a varied practice in Delhi. Plan implementation, the emerging form of Delhi and energy and growth will engage him in the Workshop.
