Manas Murthy is an architect, urban designer and educator with a PhD in Architecture from the University of Oregon, USA. His doctoral work follows the emergence of a new building type called ‘builder floors’ in Delhi, India, as a lens to examine the broader dynamics of middle-class homemaking, economic mobility, speculative capital, and automobility, that are central to Delhi’s post-independence narrative. While firmly situated in built environment studies, his doctoral research draws on a range of perspectives from housing studies, postcolonial theory, mobilities studies, and development studies.

Between 2012 and 2017, Manas conceptualised and coordinated a community engagement-led project for last mile connectivity to public transport and pedestrian/low-carbon accessibility, called Aapki Sadak (‘your street’ in Hindi), in Delhi, India. The project was funded by the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation (under the aegis of ClimateWorks Foundation), which gained significant public momentum and media attention. Additionally, he has consulting experience in national programmes for urban development such as HRIDAY (Ajmer) and SMART (Bhubaneswar) cities in India.

Prior to this, Manas gained professional experience and formal training in neighbourhood planning, sustainable mobility and community engagement in the UK. At the King’s Foundation (formerly Princes Foundation for Building Community) in London, he worked on community regeneration and urban design projects based in participatory planning techniques – most notably the Bronllys Hospital Design Charrette in Powys, Wales, and the Welsh Supply Chain Strategy. Manas also conducted an urban sustainability audit for an ongoing heritage regeneration project at Jinze in south China using the King’s Foundation’s Community Capital Matrix. At John Thompson and Partners in London, he worked on master-planning and density modelling for residential extensions.

Manas has over ten years of teaching experience with undergraduate and postgraduate students of architecture and urban design, with a focus on sustainable urbanism and mobility, affordable housing, transit-oriented development, and interdisciplinary research methods.