Press

Panel

A panel on how everyday, overlooked environments shape architecture — from Metro Manila's urban interstices to the community birdhouses of Kutch.

Nipun Prabhakar joins the panel 'Unremarked Landscapes', part of the Becoming Attuned track at the UIA 2026 World Congress of Architects in Barcelona. The session explores how everyday, overlooked environments acquire meaning through observation, documentation and reinterpretation — bridging the informal urban interstices of Metro Manila as sites of urban becoming, the modest Mediterranean vernacular buildings that serve as living cultural resources, and the community birdhouses of Kutch that carry deep environmental knowledge. Hosted by Natalia Vera Vigaray (O-SH Architecture), the panel brings together Francisco Felipe Muñoz Carabias and Sete Álvarez Barrena (Universidad de Alcalá), Jose Lorenzo Belandres (De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde), Ella Fleri Soler and Andrew Darmanin (Text Catalogue), and Nipun Prabhakar (Dhammada Collective), reflecting on how re-reading the familiar can open alternative architectural imaginaries grounded in existing realities. Prabhakar participates online; the session takes place on 1 July 2026 at CCIB Stage 8.

Article

Why the studio's low-income rural housing models make a case for regional design intelligence.

Written by Prasad Shetty for The Architectural Review's online and print editions, this article examines Dhammada Collective's low-income rural housing prototypes in Bhopal and Indore. Against India's drive to mass-produce housing for low-income rural residents, it argues that the practice's prototypes make a case for regional design intelligence -- responses tuned to local climate, materials and ways of living rather than standardised templates. The piece situates Dhammada's participatory, fieldwork-led method within a wider conversation about what good public housing can be.

Award

Recognised in the Local Scale category for turning post-disaster reconstruction into resilient, community-led learning.

The official recognition of the Kuklah primary school, commissioned by SEEDS, with the Ammodo Architecture Award 2025 in the Local Scale category. The jury citation notes that the project transforms post-disaster reconstruction into a thoughtful, community-led opportunity for resilient learning, creating belonging and dignity in vulnerable conditions. The nomination-based award provides the support to carry the project into its next stage, placing Dhammada among practices it has long admired.

Feature

Nipun Prabhakar on an open-source chair made from discarded cardboard tubes and vermilion rope.

Wallpaper* speaks to Dhammada Collective about the studio's open-source Paper Tube chair, made from discarded cardboard tubes and bright vermilion rope left over from a weaving workshop. The piece recounts how an early attempt to recreate a Jeanneret chair in cardboard failed -- glue sheared, legs splayed, tubes buckled -- prompting the team to abandon imitation and design for intent instead: fairness, repairability and joyful frugality. A continuous figure-eight lashing tightens under load and keeps every component replaceable. Team: Simran Channa, Nipun Prabhakar and Joy.

Profile

How the Bhopal studio combines participatory design with cultural preservation to foster sustainable growth.

The definitive online profile of Dhammada Collective, written by Suneet Zishan Langar. It introduces the Bhopal-based practice founded by Nipun Prabhakar in 2021, with Nilesh Suman and Simran Channa completing the core team, and its choice to work in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and rural areas where access to design is lacking. The piece centres on two interlinked ideas: participatory design, exemplified by an ongoing project with the Hunnarshala Foundation to co-create over fifty rural homestays across nine villages, and cultural preservation, with every project beginning from a survey of local materials and vernacular ways of building. It also covers the Sharjah Triennial exhibition and the studio's move into craft-based products.

Interview

Sandeep Virmani and Nipun Prabhakar on impermanence and bringing indigenous craft into mainstream architecture.

A conversation with STIRworld in which Nipun Prabhakar and his mentor Sandeep Virmani discuss designing and curating Hunnarshala Foundation's pavilion at the Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023. They talk about Hunnarshala's vision, the innateness of impermanence, and subverting canonical architectural themes with indigenous practices. The exhibition spotlighted a range of traditional building crafts, from brick dome-making to mud and lacquer work, as part of the triennial's wider theme of impermanence and adaptability.

Feature

After landslides destroyed the village school in 2023, a community-led rebuild becomes a prototype for resilient rural education.

A dedicated feature on the Kuklah primary school in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, rebuilt by Dhammada Collective after the 2023 landslides destroyed the original structure. The piece traces how the practice spent weeks in the village running workshops with teachers and leaders and a drawing competition for the children, whose sketches asking for sunlight, safe outdoor play and open steps to gather on directly shaped the design. Commissioned by SEEDS, the school is framed as a replicable prototype for resilient rural education that builds minimally and leaves room to grow with the community. The feature accompanies the project's Ammodo Architecture Award win in the Local Scale category.

Profile

How a Bhopal studio pairs indigenous knowledge, material reuse and community collaboration to rethink sustainability.

A profile of Dhammada Collective as a Bhopal studio reimagining sustainable architecture through indigenous knowledge. It describes how every project begins with fieldwork -- cataloguing vernacular houses, mapping local stone and timber, and learning from masons and potters -- which then becomes the raw material for design decisions. The piece covers the studio's range, from co-created rural homestays and bird-friendly installations with conservation partners to low-cost prototype houses that test circular construction, all built with local stone, bamboo, mud plasters and earthen techniques.

News

The 2025 Ammodo Architecture Awards recognise 26 socially and ecologically responsible projects, including the Mandi school.

Coverage of the second edition of the Ammodo Architecture Award, which recognised 26 projects chosen from 168 entries across more than 60 countries. The report highlights Dhammada Collective's Rural Primary School in Mandi among the Local Scale winners, with a project photograph credited to Nipun Prabhakar. It places the school alongside an international cohort of community-led and ecologically minded practices, from a community space in Dhaka to a rural library in China.

Feature

An open-source chair built from salvaged print-shop tubes, reframing waste as functional, democratic design.

A design feature on Dhammada Collective's open-source Paper Tube chair, presented as a question about design democracy. It explains how the chair, inspired by Pierre Jeanneret's Chandigarh library chairs, swaps luxury teak for discarded cardboard tubes salvaged from a local offset print shop -- a waste stream that usually goes to landfill because its glue layers prevent recycling. The article details the construction, with fifteen thick tubes cut like bamboo segments and bound into a structure that embodies the studio's idea of joyful frugality and democratic, repairable design.

Interview

Nipun Prabhakar on sustainable alternatives, participatory design and spaces that double as cultural testimony.

An interview with Abir Pothi, India's daily for art, architecture and design, in which Nipun Prabhakar lays out Dhammada Collective's vision for sustainable alternatives to conventional development. He traces the practice's roots to formative work with the Hunnarshala Foundation -- post-riot housing reconstruction in Muzaffarnagar and post-earthquake rebuilding in Nepal -- and explains the meaning of Dhammada as a commitment to societal well-being. The conversation also covers the studio's use of accessible VR and AR in participatory design with rural communities, including a breakthrough moment when the village head in Kuklah grasped the school design through a VR walkthrough.

Podcast

Nipun Prabhakar on photojournalism, community architecture and earning credibility through process and ethics.

In episode 26 of the Better Architecture Podcast, Nipun Prabhakar of Dhammada Collective discusses how a path as photojournalist, writer and community architect has been shaped by curiosity and a commitment to authentic storytelling. He reflects on the interconnection of architecture and media, arguing that meaningful work comes from process, ethics and real engagement rather than instant gratification. Drawing on grassroots experience, he encourages young professionals to diversify their skills, seek out mentors and build credibility over time through substance rather than superficiality.

Interview

On building long-term relationships with artisans and treating salvaged materials as the starting point for design.

A long-form interview with Beautiful Homes on Dhammada Collective's deeply contextual approach: integrating local traditions with modern tools, building long-term relationships with artisans, and championing the reuse of materials. Nipun Prabhakar describes a hands-on process of sitting with communities, building physical models and sketching so that local voices shape the outcome. The conversation spans projects from the Sharjah Triennial dome -- made by traditional dome-maker Azad Singh -- to the Kuklah school and the stepwell-inspired Kund Under the Mahua Tree, and frames the journey of building, the hands and the stories involved, as being as significant as the final structure.

Award

Recognised in the Vernacular Design category among fifty one-of-a-kind Indian homes.

Dhammada Collective receives the ID Honours in the Vernacular Design category -- India Design ID's initiative celebrating fifty cutting-edge, one-of-a-kind homes and the architects and designers behind them. The recognition places the practice's vernacular, craft-based work among contemporaries it has long admired, and marks a notable moment of national visibility for a studio rooted in Tier-2 and rural contexts.

Talk

An invited talk presenting the studio's grassroots, vernacular work at the IIA national convention.

An invited speaking slot at NATCON 2025, the National Convention of the Indian Institute of Architects, where Nipun Prabhakar presented the practice's community-led, craft-based work. The platform placed Dhammada's grassroots and vernacular approach before a large national gathering of architects.

Profile

Dhammada named among nine emerging Indian studios on a mission to transform their country.

A print-edition feature in Wallpaper* (December 2024) naming Dhammada Collective among nine forward-thinking studios on a mission to transform their countries. The tearsheet accompanies the magazine's wider online profile of the practice and marks the studio's arrival in one of the most widely read international design titles.

Interview

Nipun Prabhakar on a cross-disciplinary path across architecture, photography and community practice.

Part of Arcohes' Not To Scale interview series, this conversation profiles Nipun Prabhakar's cross-disciplinary path across architecture, photography, writing and community practice. It explores how he stepped outside conventional architectural training to build a practice grounded in fieldwork, craft and grassroots collaboration, and what it means to work deliberately at the edges of the discipline rather than at its centre.

Podcast

Nipun Prabhakar and Rupali Gupte on photojournalism as a mode of architectural expression.

Episode 21 of the Copperpod podcast, a conversation between Nipun Prabhakar and Rupali Gupte. Nipun discusses photojournalism as a profession and how the photographic frame becomes a strong mode of expression in architecture and design. He also shares the work and thinking behind the Dhammada Collective, describing it as a foundational thread running through his architectural journey.

Feature

A six-page spread on the studio's stepwell-inspired Kund and its Madhya Pradesh Tourism homesteads.

A six-page feature in the 77th edition of the LA Journal, spotlighting Dhammada Collective's vernacular-led work. The spread covers projects including Kund Under the Mahua Tree -- a basalt-stone plunge pool that reimagines the Indian stepwell at garden scale, fed by gravity from a nearby pond -- alongside the studio's Madhya Pradesh Tourism homesteads, situating the practice within a landscape and water-sensitive design conversation.

Award

An award-winning short film on Bhopal's women builders reclaiming the city's construction waste.

The Nagri Silver Bioscope Award for the short film A Work in Progress. The jury praised its subtle, never overtly forceful treatment of construction waste, set against Bhopal, where the city itself becomes a character as houses are dismantled to make way for new ones. The film foregrounds the often-overlooked women builders who reclaim urban waste, turning adversity into opportunity and instilling hope through their everyday endeavours.

Panel

A panel at the RIBA Photo Festival on the state and ethics of architectural photography today.

Nipun Prabhakar was invited to the Royal Institute of British Architects in London for a round table and panel discussion, Architecture Photography Now, held as part of the RIBA Photo Festival. The session brought together practitioners to discuss the present state and future direction of architectural photography, and the responsibilities that come with representing built environments and the people who inhabit them.

Interview

Nipun Prabhakar on the idea behind Dhammada and the value of working with like-minded people.

An interview in Kalpa, the annual magazine of RV College of Architecture, in which Nipun Prabhakar discusses the idea behind the Dhammada Collective. He reflects on how important it is to collaborate with like-minded people across disciplines, and on building a practice that brings design attention to communities and regions often overlooked by the mainstream.

Talk

An invited lecture introducing Dhammada's community-led, craft-based work to a UK audience.

An invited lecture at Coventry University, UK, where Nipun Prabhakar presented his journey as a designer and the work of Dhammada Collective. The talk introduced the studio's community-led, craft-based approach to a UK academic audience and was hosted by Professor Ahmed Al-Mallak and Professor Araz Agha.

Panel

A round table on refuge, displacement and urbanism through a Global South lens.

A round table and panel discussion, Refuge City: Towards a New Urban Perspective in the Global South, examining questions of refuge, displacement and urbanism through a Global South lens. The conversation connected to Dhammada Collective's wider interest in mobile, impermanent and community-shaped ways of inhabiting space.