Episode 123: Pravina Mehta
Pravina Mehta was born in Bombay, India in 1923 or 1925. Her father was a lawyer and an active member of the Indian National Congress, a political party fighting for Indian independence. As a child Pravina was influenced by activists such as Sarojini Naidu and was inspired to protest in the Quit India Movement and was arrested for two months. As a teenager she was accepted to the Sir JJ School of Architecture in Bombay. During her time in school, she got married to a dancer. She and her husband then moved to Chicago in the United States. She then enrolled at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and studied under Mies van der Rohe. She graduated from IIT with a Bachelors of Architecture and then got a Masters in Planning from the University of Chicago. After this she worked at an architecture firm in Washington DC for two years and then returned to India in 1956. She and her husband had divorced in the US and when she got back to the now independent India, she opened up her own architecture firm. She worked on many different project types including houses, schools, factories, warehouses, etc. Sadly not many of them still stand today. In 1964, Pravina along with Charles Correa and Shirish Patel worked to design a new city, Navi Bombay to help offset the exponential growth happening in Bombay. The plan was approved, but throughout the years it was not realized as they originally intended, however, the city of Navi Mumbai (Bombay) does exist today. Pravina taught at the Academy of Architecture in Bombay and passed away in either 1988 or 1992.
Caryatid: Nithya Raman
Nithya was born in Kerala, India, and moved to the US with her family when she was 6. She got a Bachelor’s in Political Theory from Harvard. After she graduated, she moved to India and was working in Delhi when she heard about the Yamuna Pushta eviction which evicted and demolished a large area of slums along the Yamuna River. She was shocked by how little coverage this was given and the disparity between how poor and rich residents were treated in urban planning. She worked for an NGO after that and eventually decided to go back to school and get her Masters of Urban Planning from MIT. After getting her degree, she returned to India, this time in Chennai, and founded Transparent Chennai, an organization started “to empower residents by providing them useful, easy-to-understand information that can better highlight citizen needs, shed light on government performance, and improve their lives in the city, one issue at a time,” (including issues like access to running water and sanitation services). She has since returned to the states and while living in LA started a homelessness non-profit before being elected to the LA City Council in 2020. She is still on the city council today.
References
Contributor, Guest. “Indian Female Urban Planner Makes Cities Safer for Women.” The Way Women Work, 28 Feb. 2014, thewaywomenwork.com/2013/07/indian-female-urban-planner-makes-cities-safer-for-women.
Desai, Madhavi. Women Architects and Modernism in India: Narratives and Contemporary Practices. India, Taylor & Francis, 2016.
Dhar, Arshia. “3 Women Architects From History Who Shaped India’s Built Heritage.” Architectural Digest India, 8 Mar. 2024, www.architecturaldigest.in/story/women-architects-from-history-who-shaped-indias-built-heritage.
Fitzpatrick, Liam. “Nithya Raman Is Already the Strongest Policymaker in Los Angeles - Knock LA.” Knock LA, 27 Mar. 2021, knock-la.com/nithya-raman-is-already-the-strongest-policymaker-in-los-angeles-512e436881c9.
Gattupalli, Ankitha. “Shaping History: The Impact of Women Architects in Post-Colonial South Asia.” ArchDaily, 8 Nov. 2024, www.archdaily.com/991027/shaping-history-the-impact-of-women-architects-in-post-colonial-south-asia.
Reporter, Staff. “Navi Mumbai - the Capital We Did Not Build.” Aζ South Asia, 26 June 2016, architexturez.net/pst/az-cf-179405-1466913911.
Ruggles, D. Fairchild. Woman's Eye, Woman's Hand: Making Art and Architecture in Modern India. India, Zubaan, 2014.
Shaw, Annapurna. The Making of Navi Mumbai. India, Orient Longman, 2004.
Wikipedia contributors. “Navi Mumbai.” Wikipedia, 3 Apr. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navi_Mumbai.
---. “Nithya Raman.” Wikipedia, 1 Mar. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nithya_Raman.
---. “Pravina Mehta.” Wikipedia, 7 Mar. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravina_Mehta.
---. “Sarojini Naidu.” Wikipedia, 16 Feb. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarojini_Naidu.
Women architects in post-colonial South Asia - RTF | rethinking the future. Rethinking The Future. (n.d.). https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/architectural-community/a8906-women-architects-in-post-colonial-south-asia/
Woods, Mary N. “Claiming Space/Designing Space: Women Architects in Modern India.” thinkMATTER, thinkmatter.in/2021/03/08/claiming-space-designing-space-women-architects-in-modern-india.
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