Arya Dhanda is an architect from India, currently pursuing a graduate program in Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from CEPT University, Ahmedabad, and has professional experience in architectural practice and urban research at Matra Architects & Rurban Planners and vir.mueller Architects. Most recently, she worked with Field Operations in New York on urban design and landscape projects in Mumbai, Tokyo, Monaco, and Tunis. At the GSD, she co-chairs Harvard GSD Urban AI, a student-led platform exploring the role of artificial intelligence in the design, planning, and governance of cities.
Her research examines the uneven geographies of extreme heat in warming cities and their implications for the design of public space. Focusing on New Delhi, she approaches heat vulnerability as a condition of both place and movement, questioning the prevailing tendency to assess exposure through fixed geographies such as wards and thermal hotspots, when in practice it accumulates in motion, as people walk, wait, and transfer across the city. Her work develops a comparative reading of Delhi’s settlement types, matching interventions to neighborhood conditions, and positioning public space itself as critical infrastructure for thermal relief.
