Malabar Hill Forest Trail
The Malabar Hill Forest Trail is an elevated pedestrian walkway winding through a roughly 12-acre urban forest on the steep slopes of Malabar Hill in Mumbai. Designed by Rahul Kadri and IMK Architects, the approximately 450-meter trail opened to the public in March 2025, returning access to a landscape that had been fenced off and largely inaccessible for decades.
The project grew from Kadri's personal connection to the forest, which he explored as a child and rediscovered during the pandemic. Rather than clearing conventional paths through the landscape, the design lifts visitors above the forest floor on a narrow elevated structure that bends around existing trees, minimizing disturbance to the ecology while offering a rare experience of walking within the canopy of one of the world's densest cities.
But the Forest Trail is also a story about how public projects come into being. It wasn't commissioned through a traditional client brief. Kadri developed the idea, worked with local residents and civic organizations to build support, and ultimately partnered with Mumbai's municipal government to make it possible.
The result is both a piece of infrastructure and an act of reclamation: transforming a long-inaccessible natural asset back into public space while attempting to preserve the wild landscape that had survived behind the fence.