Shivani Vinayak Atre is an Architect and Urban Designer with a Bachelor’s degree from Mumbai University and a Master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley . Her professional experience spans four years, working both independently and with design firms in India and the United States, gaining hands-on experience across diverse scales and contexts.
Her work is guided by a deep belief that architecture and urban design carry a social responsibility to serve both communities and the environment. This conviction forms the foundation of her design approach, which emphasizes equitable, context-sensitive, and ecologically resilient solutions.
During her graduate thesis, she focused on brownfield remediation through community-driven planning. The project examined environmental injustices, contaminated land and groundwater along the wetlands, and the impacts of potential sea-level rise on communities living in the Meadowlands, New Jersey. This work deepened her understanding of how historic inequities shape the built environment and underscored the urgent need for design processes that amplify marginalized voices and foster genuine community equity.
Shivani is passionate about exploring the complex intersections of social, cultural, political, and ecological forces that shape cities. She is continually seeking new tools and methodologies that extend design beyond aesthetics toward meaningful impact. For her, the most successful work emerges from careful research, open collaboration, and genuine teamwork.
Bhagyasshree Ramakrishna is an urban designer and architect whose work sits at the intersection of spatial equity, access, and design. Her projects challenge and disrupts conventional spatial norms, advocating for inclusive urban interventions. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she is also a community engagement strategist, focusing on waste equity in Black and Brown frontline neighborhoods.
At Berkeley, she is investigating historical urban areas with a focus on water equity, examining how infrastructure, culture, and urban form intersect. Her published work explores the culture of play, specifically addressing children’s mobility in cities. In 2021, she received a research grant to study the water tanks of a historical port town in Greater Mumbai, analyzing land-water management conflicts. She has contributed to urban practices that retrofit child-friendly spaces in low-income communities in India through social mapping.
Her research emphasizes urban gendered patterns and community-driven transformations across the Global South. Bhagyasshree Ramakrishna is an urban designer and architect whose work sits at the intersection of spatial equity, access, and design. Her projects challenge and disrupts conventional spatial norms, advocating for inclusive urban interventions. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she is also a community engagement strategist, focusing on waste equity in Black and Brown frontline neighborhoods. At Berkeley, she is investigating historical urban areas with a focus on water equity, examining how infrastructure, culture, and urban form intersect.
Her published work explores the culture of play, specifically addressing children’s mobility in cities. In 2021, she received a research grant to study the water tanks of a historical port town in Greater Mumbai, analyzing land-water management conflicts. She has contributed to urban practices that retrofit child-friendly spaces in low-income communities in India through social mapping. Her research emphasizes urban gendered patterns and community-driven transformations across the Global South.
Resolute in her pursuit, Ayesha Ateekh is an urban designer and community partnership program assistant at Buy-In Community Planning. A graduate of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, her work focuses on spatial exploration, community upliftment, and embedding equity into everyday urban environments. With an ardent love for cities and an innate knack for systems thinking, her interests lie in climate resilience, community well-being, and socio-spatial justice. At Buy-In, she supports public awareness campaigns for the Relocation to Restoration project, which addresses community planning and hazard mitigation for Cherokee residents in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Her previous work includes proposing community acupuncture interventions for revitalizing public spaces in Low-Income Group Housing in Hyderabad, India. She was also awarded a grant for her research on the spatial dynamics of everyday-use public transit spaces in Hyderabad, India.