The MOD Team
Anne-Katrin Fenk
Architect and Urban Designer. Co-founder of MOD Institute. Highly experienced in international research projects on urban design and urban development, especially in Asia.
Since 2005 Assistant Professor at the Technical University Berlin. Managed several international research and open space platforms on urban development. Curated several exhibitions on India’s urban landscapes.
She is writing her PhD thesis on modernist movement between 1950s and 1960s in India. Since 2000 she regularly worked and conducted studies in India.
V. ‘Naresh’ Narasimhan
Managing Partner of Venkataramanan Associates (VA), a renowned 40-year-old Architecture firm based in Bangalore. He graduated in Architecture from the Manipal Institute of Technology, and further education in Project Appraisal and Risk Management from Harvard.
Naresh has led the expansion of VA into diversified markets with particular strengths in Research and development, specialized manufacturing, IT business parks, public and institutional buildings, corporate offices and realty. With a sound understanding of global trends in project planning, architectural design, urban design, and infrastructure within a sustainable framework, Naresh also has a keen interest in design theory, economic modelling and information systems.
A Fellow of the Indian Institute of Architects , as well as a Founder-Member of the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF), a public-private initiative to address the problems of Bangalore’s infrastructure.He advises urban government agencies on infrastructure development and is also Director of Janaadhar, a Bangalore based social housing company, and is the Co-founder of MOD Institute.
Tile von Damm
Political Scientist. Highly experienced in project management, especially in field of research and research transfer. He was responsible for the overall strategy of the Humboldt-University Berlin (2005-2008) and of the Centre for Literature- and Cultural Studies (2008-2010). Co-founded and constitute the application-oriented think tank PerGlobal in 2002.
He was official NGO-member of the UN-conferences on Sustainable Development and the Information Society. Besides, 1996-1998 he worked for Sony Music Entertainment in the fields of marketing, promotion and distribution.
His research fields cover city development, sustainable development, new media and global governance.
Sumandro Chattapadhyay
Social scientist interested in issues of spatial economies, cartography, data visualisation and urban informatics. Works with MOD on urban data, processes and policies.
Assisted research on ‘gender and space’. Participated in urban renewal processes in peri-urban New Delhi and (briefly) in Bikaner, Rajasthan. Evaluated participatory action research in Bangladesh. Explored crowdsourced mapping in Kolkata.
Studied economics in Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Contributing Editor at The Pop-Up City blog.
Rachel Lee
Architect and urban researcher. Rachel studied architecture at the Mackintosh School in Glasgow and the Berlin School of Art. She is currently writing her PhD thesis “Otto Koenigsberger: Bringing Modernism to India” at the Habitat Unit, TU Berlin.
As well as working with German architecture firms, she has curated exhibitions on urban/art issues and created sustainable urban development projects with id22: experimentcity.
She has received two INTACH research grants for architectural research in India and is a German management committee member of the “European Architecture Beyond Europe,” an European COST Action ISO904 project.
