Snehal Nagarsheth, Professor and Dean, School of Architecture, is a seasoned architect and academician with more than 25 years of experience in teaching and practice. Her current research interests lie in water and architecture and the genesis of modern Indian architecture. Her work largely draws from the everyday and the ordinary to define her language of architecture.
At Anant, Snehal focuses on imparting architectural education beyond the basics and must-knows to open up bold ways of thinking. As the dean, she tracks current trends in architecture while navigating through collective student aspirations to work out courses and collaborations that are of relevance to both. She also advises the in-campus infrastructural development process and is invited to participate in various meetings of government bodies and architectural associations that feed into the field of architecture in India. She oversees departmental consultancy work as a means to engage her faculty pool with design practice to ensure grounded learnings are fed into the academic discourse.
Snehal is a Postgraduate in Urban Design from the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT). She was also awarded a Diploma in Architecture from CEPT, where she studied under the guidance of prominent architects such as BV Doshi and Neelkanth Chhaya.
Before joining Anant, Snehal was a core faculty at the Faculty of Design, CEPT University, where her teaching focused on themes such as spatial and furniture design, history of architecture and research methods, guiding over 50 thesis projects. Her architecture and interior design projects have been featured in A+D, Indian Architect & Builder, Elle Decor and India Modern. She has also presented her work at numerous national and international conferences, including in Prague, Amman and Edinburgh, with topics ranging from adaptive reuse to enquiries into epistemology.
She was awarded a scholarship under the Erasmus Mundus India4EU-ii programme to conduct research related to urban planning in Madrid in 2015. She was recently nominated as a Member of the Education Council at the Indian Institute of Interior Designers.
Beyond academia, Snehal enjoys travelling and finds gardening a rejuvenating activity. She also loves experiencing new cultures and places beyond her own that make room for the much-needed joys and opportunities for fascinating discoveries.