About Us
Our
Story
About Us – Thisai
(Pronounced “thee-sai”, meaning direction in Tamizh)
This is not just the story of two architects. This is the beginning of a movement born from the quiet rage of seeing cities suffer under the weight of neglect, and the unwavering hope of what our landscapes could be.
We are driven by a powerful belief: that the built environment holds the pulse of a civilisation. That every line drawn, every brick placed, every void created or filled, carries within it a potential to uplift, to resist, to provoke, to heal.\
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Our journey began in a time of flux. India’s cities surging with contradictions, alive with histories and futures colliding became our muse and our battleground. We were architects first, but our questions kept growing louder, bolder:\
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What is a street without its people?
Can a city breathe if its policy does not listen?
Can direction come from chaos?
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Thisai emerged as our answer. A Tamizh word that signifies direction, not as a fixed compass point, but as an evolving trajectory shaped by choice, conflict, and collective will.
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We are an urban planning consultancy firm, but labels often fall short. More than consultants, we are cartographers of change : mapping the subtle tremors that shape our cities. We believe in the butterfly effect: that a humble intervention in a forgotten neighbourhood can one day echo through the corridors of power. That the layout of a street market in Chennai might whisper a lesson to a masterplan in Delhi.
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At the heart of our work is an emotion, a deep vulnerability masked as purpose. A kind of joy that comes from asking difficult questions. From doubting the grand narratives. From dismantling the opaque and reconstructing it with clarity and compassion. We distrust hollow profundity. We prefer raw honesty, friction, and the creative tension that births better futures.
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Thisai is a gathering place of divergent ideas. A collective of thinkers, doers, dreamers who are committed to exploring how individual actions, policies, and design decisions reverberate through the broader urban ecosystem. We believe that architecture is not just form, it is politics, it is memory, it is protest, it is possibility.
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Our practice is interdisciplinary, intersectional, and deeply rooted in context. We navigate the messy, beautiful intersections of environment, culture, governance, and community. For us, a city is not a problem to be solved, it is a conversation to be deepened.
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Like filmmaker Boris Noir once said,
“To make our world a better place, everyone should have an idea of how architecture works and what it can have an impact on.”
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That’s why we’re here. To translate complex urban systems into stories people can understand, engage with, and be inspired by. To flap our wings, however small the motion, and change the direction of the wind.
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Thisai is not a place. It’s a momentum.
A storm waiting to be born.
And you’re invited.
