19 May, 2012

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Kavita Wankhade

Kavita WankhadeEmail id: kwankhade at iihs dot co dot in

Kavita Wankhade is a consultant at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements – India’s first prospective National Innovation University addressing the challenges of urbanisation through an integrated programme of education, research, consulting and advisory services.

 

Education:

  • MSc (City Design and Social Sciences), London School of Economics.
  • BArch, SPA, New Delhi

Career Highlights
Kavita Wankhade began her career as an architect, only to realise that her primary interest lay in cities. Through her work, she is interested in understanding how the natural and the built systems interface with the socio-economic ones. Firmly believing in the need to engage with both academics and practice, she has worked variously as a researcher, designer and project manager, and has developed her expertise through a rich mix of field research, design, architectural and consulting projects .While working primarily in the private sector, her work has involved serious engagement with various state governments in India, and also a short stint in the UK public sector.

Convinced of the need for inter-disciplinary education for young people, she gave up ‘practice’ in the conventional sense for past couple of years, and invested her energies to help IIHS take off. Kavita is one of the lead authors of the inter-disciplinary Master in Urban Practice Curriculum developed at the IIHS. Currently, she is actively involved in the IIHS PWP programme, and is part of the research team. Her current work revolves around environmental sustainability of Indian cities.

Awards & Recognitions
Recipient of LSE Graduate Support Scheme for year 2004-05.

Areas of interest

Kavita has a passion for places: their culture, their markets, and their people. It is this fascination with places that has her travelling a lot: on her own, with friends or simply for work.

The desire to capture places is also what made her pick up her camera the first time around. The irony of her life is that though she works on cities, she loves to be midst of nature. She realises this does not happen quite so often, and so she is going for a month long trip to the Western Ghats early next year.

Publications

Working Papers

Conference Papers

Projects

Kavita has been involved in the following projects:

  • Task Manager for the first phase of the India Chapter of Rockefeller Foundation supported Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN). Kavita was part of this project during the phase that involved short-listing of cities based on the preliminary risk mapping. She was responsible for secondary literature review, secondary risk mapping, and initial engagement with stakeholders in different cities.
  • Mid-term Impact Assessment of the DFID (Department for Internal Development)-supported Kolkata Urban Services for the Poor (KUSP) Programme – Kavita anchored the assessment around the planning, infrastructure and basic services component of the programme (2008).
  • Review of Sewerage and Sanitation Interventions in Urban India on behalf of WSP-SA (The Water and Sanitation Program-South Asia) – Kavita was a team member and Field Research Manager (2007-08).
  • Design Review of Cyclone Shelters in Orissa – Kavita was the co-principal investigator responsible for primary and secondary research and documentation (2007).
  • Joint Monitoring Review of the Orissa Post Cyclone Reconstruction of Primary Schools Project – Kavita was part of the technical assessment field team with TARU (2007).
  • Training modules for Urban Governance and Poverty Alleviation, Poverty Alleviation and Urban Development, Disaster Mitigation and Management, Capacity Building and HRD (for Urban Local Bodies), and Project Planning and Management – Kavita was responsible for researching, collating, editing, and modifying material for specific courses with Australian habitat studies (2007).
  • Gujarat Action Plan for Cyclone, Storm Surge and Tsunami Risk Mitigation under the World Bank-supported National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Programme – Kavita was the Chief Architect and Task Manager responsible for development of design brief, conceptual designs and working drawings (2006-07).
  • Spaceshaper- a toolkit for measuring the quality of public spaces in the UK with CABE (Central Advisory Board of Education) – Kavita was responsible for product development and project management (2005).
  • Publication titled ‘It’s our space: a guide for community groups working to improve public space”- Kavita was a team member responsible for managing interviews collating case studies at (Central Advisory Board of Education).
  • Junior Architect for two DAV schools and a residence in New Delhi. Kavita was responsible for design development, working drawings and client presentations.
  • Team member for the design of SDM Medical College and a 500 bedded hospital, Dharwad.