AwareTech / DesignAwareness Lab

Unfolding // Designed and shortlisted for Urban Commissions @dubaidesignweek . Arrived at through a series of topological explorations with strips of paper, the surfaces morph and transform from one height setting to an-other, broken and connected at once. When unoccupied by humans, Unfolding becomes an undulating, fractured, sculptural landscape, and an urban art statement. #Unfolding welcomes all manners of gathering, eating, drinking, work-ing, discussing, sitting alone or together, standing or reclining, each with its cultural significance. It encourages the unraveling of stories and spreading of ideas. The urban intervention is like the open-air agora, with the focus on the table surface, which can be used as a table or a seat at different heights, as one feels comfortable. Cushions, table runners, mats, and other accessories added to different levels of the surface make it more personalized. There is no right or wrong way to be Unfolding.

Unfolding // Designed and shortlisted for Urban Commissions @dubaidesignweek , #Unfolding is a prototypical, adaptive seating system developed from a picnic table and benches. Unfolding is a continuous surface that bends, turns, creases, folds, un-folds, and takes diverse forms that turn into tables and seats of varying heights inspired by various traditions. Arrived at through a series of topological explorations with strips of paper, the surfaces morph and transform from one height setting to another, broken and connected at once. When unoccupied by humans, Unfolding becomes an undulating, fractured, sculptural landscape, an urban art statement.

A talk in the park! I love startup events. There’s this unique energy, drive, potential, and unfounded conviction that entrepreneurs bring that’s unparalleled and unkillable. This kind of borderline-delusional optimism I rarely see in the rest of the world and I relate to it, hard. When I meet a fellow founder, we speak our own unique language that others just don’t get. Listening to someone at the beginning of their journey takes me back: starting @designaware as a grad student with a laptop and a dream, in a corner of the @aadrl l, the @fractalsworkshop (when I had no way of knowing how the learning economy would boom), and more recently @buildaware (in the middle of the pandemic!). The world-changing idea, the curiosity, the nerve-wracking uncertainty, the joy of discovery, the creativity, the journey, at once backbreaking and highly rewarding; I’d choose it every time. Starting up is addictive, and that’s why serial entrepreneurs exist. This panel at @founders.fest 2026 was one of the most enjoyable ones I’ve been a part of, because it wasn’t about design or architecture. It was about leadership through collaboration, but also about running your own company, how we all approach it in different ways. What I appreciated was that we veered away from focusing on our identities as women, and instead centered on practice, decisions, struggles, and growth. I also enjoyed the startup pitches by students of VIP International School, starting them young, and more importantly, encouraging them to fail confidently. Many thanks to @merajismeraj for inviting me to be a part of this well-curated event, a front-row seat to a slice of #Telangana ‘s startup ecosystem. And why don’t we have more events in parks?! A pleasant winter day in the heritage setting of Public Gardens was the perfect way to start the year (and a rare chance to wear my aunt’s Kashmiri coat in #Hyderabad!). Last pic: Public Gardens gate seen through the Peacock designed by students of @csiit_hyd in a @fractalsworkshop during @hyderabaddesignweek . #entrepreneurship #startup #education

Terraced in Tehran // Becoming architecture: Generative AI diffusion models make it possible to communicate architectural ideas before static outcomes, as an evolving conceptual thought process. A ceramic vase with a curvaceous twist stacked and aggregated was reimagined as a terraced tower, its white marble massing echoing ceramic form, green terraces punctuated with copper accents, rooted in Tehran’s context. Veo 3.1 beautifully depicts the growth and aggregation down to the subtle sound of ceramic clinking! This kind of generative AI video becomes a powerful way to narrate conceptual intent, inviting viewers into the “becoming of architecture.” #architecture #conceptualdesign #generativedesign #artificialintelligence

#ChronoWave is a kinetic clock: its spiral form slowly rotates to mark the passage of time. Instead of hands on a dial, the form of the lamp itself becomes the timekeeper. The mechanical system is driven by a silent stepper motor connected to the cable and concealed in the ceiling, calibrated to rotate the spiral at a precise rate (one revolution per 12 hours). A timekeeping controller governs the motor, ensuring accuracy like clockwork movement. The spiral’s slow, seamless motion transforms the lamp into both light source and timepiece. Instead of looking at a number or hand, you “read” time in the many orientations of the spiral: the scripture itself is the chonometer. Unlike conventional clocks that measure time in discrete ticks, #ChronoWave visualizes time as continuous flow. The turning spiral is a metaphor for waves and cycles: of light, of motion, of life rhythms. Fabrication @amjadkhan9541 Styling + photography @cataclysmbymariam @m.abdullaa

I had the opportunity to share our experiments with new technologies including AR/VR and GenAI in architecture, and talk about our crazy, far-fetched, in-process ideas at @designaware as well as talk about where our profession is/can be/should be headed in my presentation “Technology, Design, Awareness” at DATUM:TECH, under the theme Augmentic at @klaf_my Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival 2025. Many thanks to Malaysian Institute of Architects @pam_architecture President @adrianta.aziz and @azlan.syarawi  for inviting me to speak at this prestigious event and to share the stage with inspiring speakers Abdullah Shakir (@wearefilamen ), @mondqu  (@unitedmake ), and Dr. Vitaly Berezka (@planradar ). I had an amazing time in beautiful Kuala Lumpur, made all the better by the wonderful people I met there, including @sarah.sarapan and @ar_esmondeyap , and continue to connect with. Here’s to new collaborations!

New Renaissance // Real, Unreal and Virtual Originally, ornament was born of materiality, access to technology and fabrication methods, structural possibilities, and cultural aesthetics. Over time, the strong connection to material and technology fell away, and ornamentation began to be used to embellish architecture, and mimic familiar traditional forms that had come to represent a certain style or aesthetic. With 3D modeling and digital fabrication, the dependency on tools no longer dictates, restricts, and shapes what and how we create form. What can ornamentation of the future look like? What meaning will ornament, craft, and decoration hold? What new formal revolution can we imagine arising from the freedom of multi-axis CNC, 3D and 4D printing, photogrammetry, extended reality, and a combination of various techniques, an overlap of the tangible and intangible, and a collaboration between the human mind, human hands, and machines? This direction of experimentation with GenAI tools formed a part of my presentation “Technology, Design, Awareness” at DATUM:TECH, under the theme Augmentic at @klaf_my 2025. I’m grateful to @pam_architecture @adrianta.aziz @azlan.syarawi for inviting me to speak at this prestigious event and the opportunity to share our crazy, far-fetched, in-process ideas and to share the stage with inspiring speakers @wearefilamen @mondqu (@unitedmake ) @planradar . My first visit to #Malaysia was an exhilarating experience, made all the better by the wonderful people I met there and continue to connect with. I presented earlier work in this area at the Young Architects Festival, @iia_kottayam . Free of the constraints of materiality, buildability, and physics, we’re applying some of these formal ideas in VR at @museum_of_science_fiction . Tools used (in the design and in the making of this video): @midjourney @dreamstudioai @lumalabsai @googlegemini @veo3ai @tripo_3d “Real” photographs by @neerfaniaa @gunottam_reddy #generativedesign #ornamentation #formfinding #digitalfabrication #virtualreality #computationaldesign #futureofform #making

#Repost @klaf_my A step into the future! As architecture shifts its gears into the innovations of technology DATUM: TECH 2025 convened by Ar. Azlan Syarawi, the event opens with a presentation by Ms. Takbir Fatima of DesignAware, India presenting her charity works and her integration of AI into construction, followed by Mr. Abdul Shakir Abu Samah and his “colorful” insight into FILAMEN and their works of light projection mapping onto heritage architecture. The short tea-break heightened spirits up as audiences jumped back into PlanRadar’s presentation on BIM and trending digital technology from Austria and ended with Mr. Mon Qu’s exploration of installations representing United Make, Australia!

A whirlwind two weeks! I was invited to speak at the School of Planning & Architecture, Vijayawada spav2008 as a part of their symposium “Computational Design and Digital Fabrication in Architecture” alongside architects doing inspiring work in the field, @kavitha_mohanraj_ @devadasspradeep @kingsleyclaudin @tvasta3dp @sharifmynasabgari I enjoyed the conversations around new technologies and the future of architecture, especially alternative practices. A few glimpses of the beautiful campus and the most delicious meal! Handmade fractal ring by @eclipsemakes , custom-designed just for me!

Fractured Tectonics // Pleating, creasing, folding, faulting 1 Imagining navigating a fractured tectonic space, VR style. 2 Plissé is a technique by which fabric is chemically treated, causing localized shrinkage, to create a permanent puckered, crinkled texture. 3-5 Imagine what it’s like to live inside a geode crystal? Smoky quartz volcanic geode sections with varying formations. 6 Mountains in Ladakh. 7 Tandur blue slate wastage from one of our construction sites at @BuildAware , that was reused in flooring and bespoke furniture pieces. 8-11 “Ribbonesque” studies in folding paper, iridescent card and metal for #RibbonHouse and artwork for @onpaperofpaper . 12-14 FLOCK: Interlocking assemblies, explored using dual-color acrylic, as a part of a Directed Research Project at @fd_cept , and FLOCK workshop at @anant_architecture . 15-16: Prototyping studies in full scale using paper and metal for #Rewind at @DesignAware . 17-18: Paper models by participants of the @fractalsworkshop . 19: Modeling a stepped office building at @DesignAware . 20: Fractured architectural moment imagined using GenAI.

Speaking about technology, design, awareness at the Young Architects Festival 2025, hosted by the @iia_kottayam , sharing how we use different tools and methods in our practice and research at @designaware and the @fractalsworkshop . Every time I talk about technology, specifically generative AI, I need to redesign my presentation because it is so rapidly evolving and many times, in self-contradictory ways. There’s so much happening and so quickly in machine learning and new tech, if only I could clone myself to experience it all! The event was an enriching mix of different perspectives and ideas, and thoroughly enjoyable (also because Kerala is one of my favorite places to visit!). I met some admirable people and serendipitously reconnected with a few peers from London!

Urban Lattice // Transitioning from analog to digital, 2D to 3D, and facade to urban scale using generative AI. Which is your favorite?