We envision an inclusive world where every human enjoys access to vibrant, safe and healthy spaces to live, work and play.

Community Design Agency (CDA) is a nimble, experienced team of architects, engineers, business professionals, community planners, place-makers and artists who work alongside communities on the margins through collaboration of various stakeholders - the community itself, civic and government bodies, corporates and other philanthropic partners.

OUR HISTORY

Community Design Agency received seed funding by Curry Stone Foundation (CSF), a US-based organisation launched in 2007 by architect Cliff Curry and archaeologist Delight Stone. CSF supports groups and individuals using design to build healthier, more vital communities. After running the Curry Stone Design Prize, where it recognised social design practices from around the world for over 10 years, CSF decided to support a practice in India that would take forward its belief that the benefits of social impact design should be accessible to those in greatest need.

Visit Curry Stone Foundation to learn more.

WHAT WE DO

We offer design, research and planning consultancy services to people and organisations who are interested in:

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Architecture & Design

Providing architecture, construction and design services that are sensitive to local context and the needs of communities.

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Placemaking & Arts

Leveraging the power of arts and placemaking as effective tools for bringing about meaningful and tangible transformation within a community.

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Community Led Governance

Identifying and training a cohort of community representatives and establishing a self-governance mechanism to support the project implementation and ensure continued maintenance beyond CDA’s involvement.

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Research & Advocacy

Leading research on socio-cultural aspects of the urbanscape to reveal more holistic insights and perspectives that could influence larger policies on urban design and spatial equality,

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Construction Management

Innovating on construction technologies and materials and managing the project’s schedule, cost, quality and cash flow considering the communities and their socio-economic conditions. We also train communities to remain directly engaged in project implementation.

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Financial Model

Structuring blended financial packages to divert funding in underserved communities. These include funding from philanthropic donors, impact investment, government schemes and CSR funds.

OUR TEAM

The Community Design Agency team includes architects, engineers, artists, designers, filmmakers and researchers.

Chetana Kothari

Intermediate Architect

Chetana is a dreamer from Mumbai. They’re an architect who’s continuously exploring the intersection of their skills and interests to build a just and joyful world. Their diverse pursuits span academia, design practice, research, community organizing, and advocacy across various scales of intervention. They thrive on story-ing, leisuring, working with fellow dreamers, gifting flowers, and doodling through long meetings.

Mansi Bhalerao

Junior Research Associate

Mansi is a researcher interested in questions of identity, justice, and built environment in the urban. In her early career, she works to support the social processes of design-based development work in urban housing. As a Research Associate at Community Design Agency, Mansi works closely with the community living in an R&R colony in Govandi, mainly in areas of programming and capacity building within the built spaces. Working with historically marginalised communities, theirs is a practice in flux, albeit informed by a rights-based, empathetic approach to spatial interventions.

Mansi was a part of the Urban Fellows Programme at the Indian Institute for Human Settlement and has secured a Bachelor’s in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Delhi.

Natasha Sharma

Lead, Public Arts and Design

Natasha Sharma is a Lead for Public Arts and Design and the co-curator of Govandi Arts Festival at Community Design Agency. At CDA, she works with communities living and working in neglected neighbourhoods to drive social and spatial improvements through the tools of community arts, placemaking and participatory research. She hopes that these methods create a space for both dialogue and celebration with different communities, practitioners and government authorities around the idea of home, identity, inclusivity in city-making.

Natasha is also as independent visual artist creating tactile and experiential works of varied scales and materials. Her diverse work has ranged from creating learning environments in metro stations of Bangalore to site-specific interventions in public spaces to replacing advertisement billboards with art in Germany. She was a speaker at Urban Thinkers Campus 2022 (supported by the UN Habitat) and The Global Solutions Summit 2021 (Berlin) amongst others to share on-ground learnings of participatory practice. She won the Reclaim Art Award (2021), Germany for design and use of public spaces.

Govind Bijewar

Site Engineer

Govind has a postgraduate degree in environmental engineering from Nagpur University and is a highly motivated Civil Engineer with 6+years of experience in the construction industry. He is adept at using modern technologies and methods to ensure water efficiency and high-quality construction standards. Govind possesses a proven track record of successfully delivering projects in a timely manner and meeting budget requirements.

Pooja Parameswararao

Intermediate Architect

Pooja is an architect with a background in low-cost, eco-friendly, and alternative building practices. Holding a postgraduate degree in Social and Sustainable Architecture from BASEhabitat Austria, she is passionate about education, training and capacity building. Her research focuses on developing pedagogical tools for designers to facilitate co-design processes for community-led built projects.
Currently, as an Intermediate Architect at CDA, Pooja is actively involved in a slum redevelopment project in Sanjay Nagar, Ahmednagar. Her role involves collaborative design work with the community to ensure their needs and aspirations are integrated into the redevelopment process.

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan

Managing Director

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect with 12 years of experience in community-led design and sustainable architecture. At Community Design Agency, she is working with a diverse group of disadvantaged communities, civic agencies and designers to address inequities in the built environment. Licensed and educated in India, Sandhya is also a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a TEDIndia Fellow. Her previous work spans multiple countries, in both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors – including landscape architecture and design for a Singapore-based interdisciplinary design firm, and post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti for a US Based non-profit.

Sandra Alexander

Research Associate

Sandra Alexander is a researcher and urban practitioner. Her work is focused at the intersections of spatial identities, urban informality and climate action. Sandra is passionate about using her writing and storytelling skills to deconstruct processes of marginalization in urban areas and to work with communities to reclaim their narratives. At Community Design Agency, she works on the community engagement and research front. Sandra holds a Master’s degree in Global Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi, and a Bachelor’s in Mass Media – Journalism from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.

Shashank Mittal

Lead, Partnerships and Development

Shashank is a designer by training and has over 8 years of experience working in the development sector, across rural and urban contexts. He believes that empathetic design practices have the ability to effectively address social and economic inequalities around us. At CDA, alongside being involved in ongoing projects, he works to establish new partnerships and engagement opportunities for the studio.
He holds a BFA in Interior Design from the School of Visual Arts and is a Young India Fellow (Ashoka University).

Vandana Padmanabhan

Lead, Materials and Technology

Vandana is an engineer, who is curious about all aspects of construction and the built environment. At the studio, she implements project management strategies to manage and improve the efficiency of design and construction projects. She is interested in exploring how traditional construction and project management practices can be implemented in community based design and construction projects. Vandana has a Postgraduate degree in Construction Technology and Management from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras and is developing a methodology and model for chloride ingress in concrete as a part of her Doctoral Research at IIT, Delhi.

Community Organisers

Parveen Shaikh

Lead, Community Organizing

Parveen Shaikh is a social worker and community organiser with over 20 years of experience in advocacy work for the rights of slum and pavement dwellers. A powerful public speaker, she has championed the cause of safe formal housing for vulnerable communities at multiple national and international forums as a former member of the National Slum Dwellers Federation. She helped set up the Myna Mahila Foundation in 2015, which works on issues of menstrual health in underserved communities, and is currently the President of Navnirman Association, the federation body of Natwar Parekh Colony. Passionate about the rights of women from Muslim and minority communities, she continues to support the women and young girls of her neighbourhood through her work at Community Design Agency and beyond.

Sana Shaikh

Community Coordinator

Sana Shaikh is an undergraduate commerce student at Mumbai University. She works as a library assistant at Kitaab Mahal and is one of the Community Coordinator for Govandi Arts Festival. She also teaches children the basics of computer literacy at the digital centre run by the Community Design Agency. She wants to become a filmmaker and learns new words by watching English films with subtitles. She enjoys creating mehendi patterns in her free time.

Tayyaba Darvesh

Library Facilitator - Kitaab Mahal

Tayyaba is a second year Management Studies student. She works as a library facilitator at Kitaab Mahal, a children’s library in her neighbourhood. She is also working as a Community Coordinator for Govandi Arts Festival. She started working with Community Design Agency as a volunteer for Young Sangathan – a youth group formed by young men and women of Natwar Parekh Colony. Having grown up in a conservative and patriarchal household, Tayyaba now feels confident about her abilities to work and firmly believes in having equal access and opportunities for women. She wants to be financially independent and become a banker to support her mother.

BOARD MEMBERS

Cliff Curry

FAIA

Architect Clifford Curry’s fifty-plus year career has been dedicated to strengthening underserved communities using architecture, design-and collaboration. For over thirty-five years, Cliff focused his practice on senior living and designed 320 affordable, service-rich innovative facilities that mitigate loneliness, elevate quality of life and promote wellbeing- years before this thinking was fashionable. Arguably his work changed the paradigm for senior housing.

In 2007, out of a desire to further the use of design as a tool to improve the lives of people who don’t usually have access to design services, he co-founded the Curry Stone Foundation with his partner, historical archaeologist and community activist Delight Stone. Together with their team, they promote, empower and inspire a global generation of social design pioneers working in-and with, diverse communities.

Dr. Delight Stone

For over forty years Dr. Delight Stone has worked across platforms and geographies promoting, defending and creating community vitality. Delight is a philanthropist, historical archeologist and community activist. This activism has been local, national, and international and includes work in archaeology, cultural resource management, architectural preservation, design, public health, and environmental and social justice.

In 2007, she and Cliff Curry co-founded the Curry Stone Foundation and the Curry Stone Design Prize to promote and honour designers who address the critical social needs of people who are not typically served by the design community. Among other facets of the prize, Delight oversaw production of short documentary videos about the winners.

Gary Feuerstein

Gary Feuerstein is an architectural engineer with a diverse background in building structural, mechanical and electrical systems. Having worked throughout the U.S., as well as China and Iraq, Feuerstein often provided technical insight and review on the Curry Stone Foundation’s (CSF) initiatives. He is a Director at the CSF and joined the Curry Stone Design Collaborative team in 2017, where he regularly advises the team on their design and construction projects.

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect with 12 years of experience in community-led design and sustainable architecture. At Curry Stone Design Collaborative, she is working with a diverse group of disadvantaged communities, civic agencies and designers to address inequities in the built environment. A graduate of Columbia University’s GSAPP in New York City, Sandhya’s prior experiences span multiple countries include working at an interdisciplinary design firm based in Singapore, and prior to that at the San Francisco based non-profit, Architecture for Humanity.