In 2014, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty co-founded the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA) with six friends in Mumbai. Today, a community of about 200 students and 30 faculty members sustain the institution. A fully accredited architecture school, SEA stakes its reputation on cultivating a critical, and playfully experimental, environment for questioning the architectural profession and its approach to cities.

Gupte and Shetty reflect on the motivations and challenges that shaped their commitment to such an all-consuming project. Their account hints at one of the clearest ways architects contribute to a city: by engaging those who will soon be designing it. 

School Is a City is part of Night School 2026 | Pardon Our Progress, a five-week programme of seminars and public events led by Todd Reisz and dedicated to encounters with urbanism and history in Dubai. Learn more about the programme here.

The event is free and open to all. Please confirm your attendance by registering here.

Prasad Shetty is an urbanist based in Mumbai, India. He is one of the founding members of the School of Environment and Architecture and is currently Professor and Dean at the school (sea.edu.in). He is a partner at the Bard Studio, Mumbai (bardstudio.in), and was also one of the co-founders of the urban research network, CRIT (crit.in). Prasad has studied architecture (B-Arch, Mumbai University) and urban management (M-A, Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam). Earlier, he has worked with: Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority as an Urban Manager, MMR – Heritage and Environment Society as Secretary, Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture as a Lecturer, Town Administration of Mendefera, Eritrea as an Urban Management expert. His work includes exploratory research and experimental pedagogy on diff erent aspects of urban form, experience, practice and culture.

Rupali Gupte is an architect, artist and urbanist based in Mumbai, India. She is the co-founder, director and Professor at the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA), and partner along with Prasad Shetty at BardStudio. She has been a senior Research fellow at the University of Brighton in the UK and a part of the urban research collective CRIT. Her work involves extensive research on contemporary South Asian architecture and urbanism with a focus on housing and urban form, tactical spatial practices, and the role of gender in shaping habitation. Her work often crosses disciplinary boundaries and takes diff erent forms – writings, drawings, mixed-media works, installations, curation, conversations, walks and spatial interventions. Her works have been shown nationally and internationally in biennales including the 56th Venice Art Biennale, X São Paulo Biennale of Art and Architecture, Seoul Biennale of Art and Architecture, Dhaka Art Summit, and galleries and museums such as MACBA, Barcelona, MAAT Museum, Lisbon, Mumbai Art Room, Devi Art Foundation, Project 88, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and IFBE, Mumbai. She has been a part of invited lectures, juries and review panels across the globe.

Image credit: Home in Transience: three nomadic households of Amravati, Maharashtra, as they claim and appropriate space in their seasonal migration across various landscapes. Sanika Kedar, SEA, Mumbai, 2020.