Vidhu Bansal, an Assistant Manager at Anant, has keen research interests in various aspects of urban development, including urban design, sustainable urbanism, urban ecology and contemporary and vernacular architecture. During her PhD studies, she delved into the intricate relationship between urban patterns and urban identity, focusing on historic cities in India. Her research specifically explored the application of Christopher Alexander’s ‘A Pattern Language’ in Varanasi, a city steeped in ancient history and continuous habitation.

She has published and presented her work at prestigious national and international conferences such as EURA, UAA, ICSBE, RSAI and AESOP. Additionally, she participated in semester-long joint studios with Columbia University in New York, USA and Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA, broadening her academic horizons and fostering international collaborations. Passionate about leveraging the inherent intelligence of historic cities, Vidhu advocates sustainable development strategies that enhance livability and well-being in urban environments. Through her research and advocacy efforts, she strives to promote a holistic approach to urban planning that respects the cultural heritage and environmental sustainability of cities.

At Anant, Vidhu actively helps students explore myriad approaches to solving architecture and urban context issues. She also teaches history, where the idea of construction evolution through history is explored. Vidhu helps with their dissertations and theses, where research and design are practised. Through her teaching, she attempts to incorporate research at the undergraduate level to make the assignments and solutions developed by students more holistic and thought-provoking.

Vidhu holds a PhD from IIT Kharagpur, focusing on a ‘pattern hierarchy driven exploration of a historic city’. She has done her Masters in Urban and Rural Planning (MURP) from IIT Roorkee. During her master’s, she was awarded the DAAD Scholarship to pursue her thesis project in fringe area development from TU Darmstadt, Germany. During her Bachelor’s in Architecture from the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), she was awarded the Obaid-bin-Saif-Al-Nasseri Gold Medal for securing the highest grade in bachelors.

Vidhu has more than ten years of experience as a researcher, academician and architect. She was part of SandHI (Science and Heritage Interface), a mega exploratory project at IIT Kharagpur, funded by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Government of India. The project looked at diverse layers, such as urban engineering, urban design, social engineering, music, linguistics, geomorphology, and creative economy. In this project, she worked as a research fellow on the Urban Design and Engineering project, which focused on the urban exploration of Varanasi. Besides research, she has also worked as an academic. She was an Assistant Professor at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Central University of Rajasthan and DIT University, Dehradun. She has also worked on architectural projects in Aligarh, Bareilly and Nagpur.

Beyond academia, Vidhu is a brilliant photographer who loves capturing the colours of life. She has also taught photography and journalism. She loves cooking and finds it a therapeutic and stress-relieving activity. Travelling, to her, is a way of broadening her horizons and learning new things. She also likes to paint in various media and indulge in creative writing.