Architect, Planner, Writer,

Jagan Shah is an architect, historian and urbanist with a sustained involvement in training new generations of architects, urban designers and conservationists and providing advisory services in these fields to a range of clients in the private and public sectors. He has been a visiting teacher at the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi, since 1998 and was recently the Director of the Sushant School of Art & Architecture in Gurgaon. From 2007 to 2010, he was the first Chief Executive of Urban Space Consultants, providing advisory services in urban policy, city development planning and transportation. Shah has worked with a number of organizations as a consultant, including the Ministry of Urban Development, the Infrastructure Development Finance Company, Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transport System, Jaipur Virasat Foundation, Sir Ratan Tata Trust, and India Foundation for the Arts. He is the author of Contemporary Indian Architecture (Roli Books, 2008) and his writings have appeared in a number of Indian and foreign publications.

Shah is presently working on a review and revision of the Regional Plan 2021 for the National Capital Region and is creating transit-oriented designs for railway stations in the NCR and farther afield. His next book is on the 5000-year history of Indian architecture, ‘From River Valley to Metropolis’, in which he explores the evolution of architectural form and the complexity of functions that may reinstate a once-colonized nation as a global leader. He brings to all his work a commitment to public space, which he considers the matrix of the city, and an eye for the qualities that make urban infrastructure work for its rightful beneficiary, the average citizen. Through his diverse pedagogic, creative and leadership activities, he hopes to make the Indian city as productive, vibrant and beautiful as other world cities.  Shah considers his nine formative years of study at the School of Planning & Architecture, the University of Cincinnati and Columbia University, as time well spent.