Kozhikode and Dubai
System thinking for built environments.
I work on buildings, but what holds my attention is everything a building quietly decides for the people inside it, and the systems and institutions that decide it first.
Get in touchN° 01The work
Architecture, engineering, interiors and project management through URU Consulting. I lead the practice in India and steer its strategy in the GCC.
The work I enjoy most starts from zero, or starts from something that has gone wrong and needs a clear head.
Kerala and the GCCA developing practice that reads a building through building science first, then through the psychology and sociology of how the space is actually lived in.
Independent judgement for owners and institutions who need an honest second opinion.
In developmentEssays on homes, streets, rooms and the systems behind them, written from a Kerala and Malabar vantage point, in English and in Malayalam.
The long form lives on Medium. Shorter arguments go out on LinkedIn every week.
Essays and bylinesI am interested in how the spaces where we grow and live shape who we become. Safder Machilakath
N° 02Selected writing and publications
N° 03The practice
URU is the multi discipline practice I co-founded: architecture, engineering, interior design and project management under one roof, working from Kozhikode across Kerala and the GCC.
It began in 2015 as a design studio in Kozhikode and has grown into a group with an Indian consultancy, a Dubai studio and a project delivery arm. When an idea on this page becomes a building, URU is where it gets built.
Visit URU Consulting Follow the studio on Instagram @uruconsulting_llpN° 04About
I trained as a civil engineer and came to design through practice, which is why I describe myself as a built environment consultant rather than an architect. The title is a statement of scope. A building is a technical object, a social arrangement and an economic decision at the same time, and I find it difficult to look at only one of those.
In 2015 I started a design studio in Kozhikode that grew into URU, a group of practices working across architecture, engineering, interiors and project management in Kerala and the Gulf. The partnership is the institution I wanted to build, and this site is the part of my work that belongs to me alone.
Most of what shapes my thinking comes from outside the profession: sociology, economics, the literature of Malabar. I am studying sociology and sustainability science alongside the practice, because the questions I care about sit where those fields meet a set of drawings.
I write first in Malayalam, which is still the language I think in.
N° 05Elsewhere