Hi, I'm Shantesh Kelvekar – an architect, landscape urbanist, and a partner at Reading Grounds, the practice Preetanshi Singh and I started in 2014.
For over a decade, my work has moved between professional practice and academia. And somewhere in that back-and-forth, I've come to believe that the most interesting part of spatial design isn't always the finished product - it's the process.
This page is a space for that. A running archive of my thoughts and deliberations, teaching notes, site visits, design history, and updates from the studio. Not the polished render – the thinking behind it.
You'll find the writing organised under the LAND framework – Landscape, Architecture, Nature, and Design.
Thanks for stopping by.
The Architecture of Stupidity
What we are witnessing today isn’t just youth’s angst. Bonhoeffer’s essay “After Ten Years” triggers this article - Architecture of Stupidity. This essay breaks down Bonhoeffer’s four archetypes of stupidity - foolishness, lacking cognitive ability, ignorance and lastly, stupidity. It further corelates to current situation, and how each category is represented through the spectrum of our society.
Pivoting the Future
(Part 3 of 3) "The essence of landscape is life". This profound idea sits at the very foundation of landscape architecture. While plants naturally embody life, our true ability lies in bringing inanimate spaces to…
Pivoting From History
(Part 2 of 3) As a core part of the Manhattan grid, Central Park helped define the very essence of landscape architecture. Before its creation, landscapes were either…
New Narrative for our Cities
(Part 1 or 3) Our cities are growing at a rapid pace, which creates significant pressure on housing, infrastructure, and workspaces. In many developing countries, the…
The Invisible Barrier
Imagine stepping back into 18th-century France. The aristocrats of the time owned sprawling, magnificent estates. They looked out from their manors and…
Urban Veranda
Did you know the word "balcony" has Germanic roots? It originates from the word balko, meaning scaffold. Historically and functionally, a balcony is exactly…