This is the fifth in a series of profiles of AUD's outstanding graduates from the Class of 2023. Also check out our previous installments: profiles of Alexis Winarske (BA '23), Motomi Matsubara (MArch '23), Shrinethraa Senthil Kumar (MSAUD '23), and Chris Rancourt (MArch '23).

In her home city of Mumbai, one of Akanksha Deolekar’s favorite things to do was long walks with fellow photo enthusiasts–“sauntering around for hours,” she says, “closely observing humans in their habitat.”

One of those walks inspired her photo essay “An Ordinary Day in Banganga,” which she exhibited at Westwood JoyFest just before graduating from UCLA Architecture and Urban Design last June. She describes this as one of her favorite photo projects because of how mundane it is–the same reason she prefers using LA’s public transit instead of driving, absorbing the opportunity to witness and consider lived experience in so-called everyday spaces.

“Different people have different memories associated with the same space, and the same space can elicit different emotions in different people, breaking the notion of space being an isolated or finite entity,” Deolekar observes. “This intangibility and limitlessness, the intimacy and subjectivity, of space as a medium has been of continual intrigue to me. It’s the everyday, ordinary spaces that represent this best.”

Deolekar pursued UCLA AUD’s MSAUD program as a container both flexible and supportive enough to synthesize her varied interests. Deolekar arrived at UCLA AUD with a firm rooting in architecture: she graduated with distinction from the University of Mumbai’s Sir J.J. College of Architecture in 2020, earning a Bachelor’s of Architecture; while there, she interned with Mumbai’s Ranjit Sinh Associates, and joined the office as a junior architect after graduation. She is a Council of Architecture-licensed architect in India.

The early days of Deolekar’s studies reshaped her perception of architecture, especially its role in shaping communities and neighborhoods, and her studio experience in Mumbai deepened this perception. Working through practical assignments at her internship, Deolekar grew increasingly curious about the experiential and behavioral aspects of design. For her BArch thesis, “Emotions and Architecture,” Deolekar interviewed psychologists and researched neuroscience in order to better understand how architecture can induce particular emotions in a user.

She continued this exploration after graduation, completing a program led by neuroarchitecture researcher Andrea de Paiva that offered a deep dive into emotion, memory, decision making, brain plasticity, and perception–an experience that Deolekar calls a “complete game-changer.”

Deolekar has been convening these insights and threads around a budding mission: improving user experience through architecture. Her desire to nurture this interest, alongside her broadening intellectual curiosities, led her toward UCLA and the MSAUD program.

“My inclination towards architecture has always come from a place of being able to hold my interests in both the analytical and the creative,” Deolekar says. “The MSAUD program felt unique in its combination of technical and experimental, and its approach to design is not a boxed-up version of what is traditionally believed to be design or architecture. That sense of freedom was a big plus.”

Deolekar’s vision is influenced by her lifelong experience with dance. She has been studying the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam for over 15 years, nurturing an instinct for rhythm, synchronization, visual balance, and how the human body moves through and occupies space.

At UCLA AUD, Deolekar elected into the IDEO Studio, one of the four topical studios that compose the MSAUD program–a natural, collaborative match between the designer’s emerging interests and IDEO’s commitment to human-centered design. Deolekar’s capstone project, “Factory Reset,” looks at consumer production–specifically furniture–through the lens of the studio brief: a future Los Angeles as impacted by contemporary pressures like climate change and housing shortages. Deolekar envisions an LA where industrial space and consumer-goods practices need a “reset”; a vertical production system allows both optimal efficiency as well as integration of the consumer and their preferences into the entire production process.

Like “An Ordinary Day in Banganga,” “Factory Reset” takes up the ordinary and the everyday, then reimagines it in vibrant detail: a transformed furniture factory evolves beyond its industrial-era rudiments and, instead, becomes a communal ecosystem. Deolekar describes it as “a new paradigm where production, community, and environmental consciousness coexist harmoniously.”

The IDEO Studio's Fall 2023 framework asked students to envision a future Los Angeles, an LA of 2050. Deolekar collaborated with Wei-Huan Chueh (MSAUD '23) on "Plan B," an urban-design strategy anchored - physically and conceptually - by a sea wall; within the wall, an industrialized approach emphasizes systematic and sustainable architecture to navigate resource limitations and maintain resilience. See images from the project below.

Deolekar and Chueh researched the cultural history of Los Angeles via literature, film, technology, and other mediums; they used this to inspire an axis system that frames different imagined realities and possibilities for residents of 2050. They drew from data science, user interaction studies, and industrial design into their process, hoping to elicit transformative strategies from multidisciplinary research.

Deolekar appreciates that the MSAUD program and the IDEO Studio fostered her human-centric design mission within a personalized academic setting. She credits studio instructor Matt Conway with connecting the studio to various collaborators and disciplines throughout Los Angeles, and with optimizing the studio to each student’s interests.

“Akanksha consistently impresses everyone by asking thought-provoking and engaging questions, which not only elevated our studio culture but also drove meaningful interactions with our various collaborators,” Conway says. “This type of two-way interaction is one reason I love teaching. It's not just about a professor passing on knowledge to a student, but having a student like Akanksha who creates a true dialogue and inspires new ideas to grow."

A spring-term critical studies course with Michael Osman, “Architecture and Industry,” encouraged Deolekar to question norms and speculate fresh futures, and enriched her capstone project on industry and production. And, through Tucker van Leuwen-Hall’s technology seminars, Deolekar gained hard skills as well as an appreciation for thinking critically about the software designers take on.

“One of the best aspects of Tucker’s seminars was that we were just going wild,” Deolekar says. “We had access to a lot of creative exploration in terms of media technology and expression, coupled with extensive and intensive execution.”

After graduating last June, Deolekar landed a role at (OU) OFFICEUNTITLED, a Culver City-based architecture office, where she is currently a Junior Designer. There, she is collaborating on both architectural and interior-design projects. She also strategizes with the office’s OUx Design Strategy unit, comprising architects, urban planners, interior designers, and digital artists who iterate new visions for work places and spaces.

Life-long learning and exploration are second nature for Deolekar. This past December, she attended a conference in Italy, “Moving Boundaries,” affiliated with San Diego’s Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture. The conference convened diverse professionals around the interfaces between scientific and design disciplines, especially questions of atmosphere, perception, and behavior; Deolekar had an opportunity to present her undergraduate thesis.

With each project she’s taken on, and each that she hopes to take on in the future, Deolekar indulges a core mission: designing human experiences, especially the everyday, to be sources of profound knowledge. She sees all architecture, but especially those spaces of the everyday and the routine, to be capable of shaping not just space but also mindsets, at levels both personal and societal.

"Human nature includes a built-in empathic morality, and I want to help bring about social change by engaging that empathy, forging experiences as a form of knowledge," Deolekar says. "Mindsets change by reality, and reality is shaped by architecture."