Aneesha Dharwadker, AIA
Aneesha is originally from Hyde Park and grew up in Georgia, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. She attended Cornell University (B.Arch ‘09) and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (M.Des.S ’12). Prior to founding Chicago Design Office, she practiced at Booth Hansen, Safdie Architects, CS&P Architects, and SOM Chicago. She is licensed in the state of Illinois and founded her own practice, Chicago Design Office, in 2017.
From 2016-2024 Aneesha was on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she taught architecture, landscape architecture, and sustainable design. In 2022 she was awarded the national New Faculty Teaching Award from the ACSA for excellence in early career design education. Now a full-time practitioner, she brings a strong educational and interdisciplinary ethos to the firm, drawing inspiration from poetry and literature, music, painting, graphic design, photography, and film. Her favorite writer is James Joyce and favorite film sequence is the first five minutes of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011).
Aneesha’s ideas and design work have been published in both peer-reviewed and public journals. Key writings include Dystopia’s Ghost (Places, 2022), detailing the ongoing destructive urban design practices of Narendra Modi’s administration in New Delhi, and Design for Covid-19: Rethinking an American Campus (The Plan Journal, 2022), offering multiple campus design strategies for improved public health and educational outcomes after the pandemic.
Permanent Buildings, Fluid History: An Account of Diasporic Practice in America (Princeton Architectural Press, 2024) details how Chicago Design Office is, among other firms in the U.S., working to establish a new practice paradigm that draws from diverse, often postcolonial cultural backgrounds to positively impact both the built environment and the day-to-day workings of an architecture office.
Aneesha lives in West Town with her husband Conor, a visionary landscape architect with whom she often collaborates, and their two adventurous sons.