Doctoral Thesis

Working Title:
From Placemaking to Place-as-a-Service: leveraging user generated hyperlocal content to enhance decision support, spatial intelligence, and resilience through sustainable, transformative user experiences.

Main Supervisor:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Martin Behnisch, IOER and Dresden University of Technology (TUD)

IOER Research area:
Spatial Information and Modelling

Abstract (WIP):
The rapid advancement of societal digitalisation as well as urban digitalisation is shaping the future of cities, with our lives becoming increasingly ‘virtualised’, which is to say that certain parts of it have completely shifted online. A reality sans convenient at-home shopping via smartphone or PC is now inconceivable, which reflects the deep entrenchment of digitalisation in daily life, as well its role in transforming human behaviour. Even in the built environment, modern planning and design is no longer about "mere spatial arrangements but rather an interplay of physical and virtual experiences contributing to and shaping modern social connections and interactions between a person and their physical environment", with "modern digital tools changing the balance of participation and spectatorship" (Mathew, 2011). At this juncture, it is prudent to ask: what is the role of ‘place’ in the digital Anthropocene? What constitutes spatial ‘intelligence’, and how does it enable the sustainable transformation of human behaviour? What do these transformations look like and what do they mean for society and for spaces of the future?

Place-as-a-Service (PlaaS) is a proposal for a new service model within spatial research that encompasses comprehensive digital repositories of spatial data and context-dependent information that are accessed, interpreted, and augmented by users through personal digital interfaces (such as smartphones, smart wearables, tablets, PCs) or through public digital infrastructure (such as digital street displays, public wayfinding panels etc). PlaaS has been explored to a very limited extent in the fields of commercial real estate and potentially in logistics and supply chain management (Work and Place, 2013; Esri, 2015), and does not appear to exist as a concept in the spheres of spatial intelligence, urban planning, or user experience design in literature as yet, unlike Mobility as a Service (MaaS), or Platform as a Service (PaaS). Highly interdisciplinary in design and operation, it exists at the intersection of discourse in phenomenology, post-phenomenology, placemaking, cybernetic theory, and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM).
 

CV

Education

06/2024 – Present
Doctoral Student at Dresden University of Technology (TUD), Faculty of Environmental Sciences

10/2019 – 02/2023
Studies in Urban Research and Planning at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences
Academic Degree: M.Sc. in Urban Agglomerations

08/2020 – 01/2021
International exchange semester in urban research and planning (Erasmus)
M.Sc. “Urban Agglomerations”, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

08/2012 – 07/2017
Bachelor’s degree in architecture and design.
B.Arch., BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

Work Experience:

08/2023 – 01/2024
Visiting Lecturer, Department of Architecture and Planning
National Institute of Technology Calicut (NIT-C), Kozhikode, Kerala

02/2023 – 05/2023
Visual Design Lead, Japan Habba 2023
Japan Habba Foundation, Bangalore, Karnataka

07/2017 – 09/2019
Associate Architect
b.i.r.d., Kozhikode, Kerala

01/2017 – 05/2017
Intern in Architecture
Stapati Architects, Kozhikode, Kerala

06/2016 – 12/2016
Intern in Architecture
Jaisim Fountainhead, Bangalore, Karnataka

Awards and Certifications:

Doctorate Scholarship, Dresden Leibniz Graduate School (DLGS)

Registered Architect, Council of Architecture, India

Certified UI/UX Designer by Design Boat, Bangalore, Karnataka