System thinking for built environments.
Chartered Engineer and built environment consultant. I work on buildings, and on the systems and institutions that decide how people live inside them.
Three lines of work, each reading the building as part of a larger system.
Architecture, engineering, interiors and project management through URU Consulting. I lead the practice in India and its strategy in the GCC, and I am happiest on new starts and on projects that need fixing.
Kerala and the GCCBuilding science first, then the psychology and sociology of how a space is actually used. Written judgement for owners and institutions who want a second opinion.
In developmentArguments about the systems behind everyday spaces, from a Kerala and Malabar point of view, in English and Malayalam. Long form on Medium, shorter pieces on LinkedIn.
Essays and bylinesI am interested in how the spaces where we grow and live shape who we become.
Not nostalgia for the old house. An argument about what it was doing.
URU is the multi discipline practice I co-founded: architecture, engineering, interior design and project management under one roof, working from Kozhikode across Kerala and the GCC.
It began in 2015 as a design studio in Kozhikode and has grown into a group with an Indian consultancy, a Dubai studio and a project delivery arm.
I trained as a civil engineer and came to design through practice, which is why I describe myself as a built environment consultant rather than an architect. A building is a technical object, a social arrangement and an economic decision at the same time, and I find it difficult to look at only one of those.
In 2015 I started a design studio in Kozhikode that grew into URU. The partnership is the institution I wanted to build, and this site is the part of my work that belongs to me alone.
Most of what shapes my thinking comes from outside the profession: sociology, economics, the literature of Malabar. I am studying sociology and sustainability science alongside the practice, because the questions I care about sit where those fields meet a set of drawings.
I write first in Malayalam, which is still the language I think in.
Safder Machilakath is a Chartered Engineer and built environment consultant based in Kozhikode, Kerala. He is co-founder and Principal Consultant of URU Consulting, and works across Kerala and the GCC.
A built environment consultant looks at a building as a technical system, a social arrangement and an economic decision at once. Safder brings civil engineering, design and project management together with a reading of how people actually use space.
URU Consulting is a multi discipline practice in architecture, engineering, interior design and project management. It began in 2015 as a design studio in Kozhikode and now works across India and the GCC, with a studio in Dubai.
He is based in Kozhikode, Kerala, and works regularly in Dubai and across the GCC.
The quickest route is LinkedIn. Practice enquiries can also go through uruconsulting.com.