Rahul Kadri
Mr. Rahul Kadri is Principal Architect & Partner at I.M.Kadri Architects.
The conversation with Mumbai architect and urban planner Rahul Kadri began with a bridge.
The Malabar Hill Forest Trail winds for nearly half a kilometer through a patch of urban forest that had been inaccessible to the public for decades—a place Rahul first explored as a boy with his dog, and rediscovered during the pandemic. His idea for an elevated walkway through the trees created a way to return the forest to the city while protecting the ecology that made it extraordinary.
But the bridge quickly led us somewhere bigger.
Rahul's work is grounded in a lifelong relationship with nature, from his childhood in Mumbai to his school years exploring the forests of the Kumaon Himalayas. That relationship has evolved into a broader way of thinking about cities: access to nature and public space, community involvement and agency in planning, new approaches to housing and density, and even how the places we build can be designed to encourage friendship and connection.
We also talk about another kind of bridge. Rahul inherited a significant architectural legacy from his father, I. M. Kadri, one of the important architects of post-independence India. We explore how Rahul has carried that legacy forward while evolving the practice around his own ideas about ecology, participation, collaboration, and the role of the architect.
What begins with one remarkable piece of infrastructure becomes a conversation about something much larger: how we create cities where both people and nature can thrive—and who gets to participate in creating them.