Building cities of the future, centred around humans and designed for humans. We ride, walk, map and question the everyday systems that make urban life work.
MOAT looks at Delhi through movement, streets and everyday public life. The projects below are different ways of asking the same question: how can the city work better for people?
EVERY TRAIN. A NOTE.
Delhi Metro Jazz explores Delhi's Metro through music, movement and urban culture.
Stations, lines, announcements and repeated journeys become creative material. The project asks whether a familiar commute can become something people notice again, not only infrastructure to pass through.
HOW DOES THE METRO FEEL?
ENTER THE FULL PROJECTDELHIMETROJAZZ.COM ↗WHAT IF THE BEST ROUTE WAS THE COOLEST ONE?
Cool Shaded Paths asks what happens when walking routes are chosen by comfort and shade, not distance alone.
In Delhi, a route can be technically walkable and still be exhausting. We are exploring shade, tree cover, building shadows and places to pause as part of accessibility itself.
Exposure can make the direct route harder.
Shade can make the longer route more usable.
SHADE CAN BECOME INFRASTRUCTURE.
THE CITY LOOKS DIFFERENT FROM THE PASSENGER SEAT.
Twice every month, MOAT organises public transport rides across Delhi and the NCR on Namo Bharat, the Delhi Metro and DTC buses.
The rides are both community events and field exercises: a way to experience transfers, stations, waiting and last-mile connections from the passenger's point of view.
A bus network is experienced in minutes, transfers and uncertainty, not only as lines on a map.
CAN A NETWORK UNTANGLE ITSELF?
We worked as IIT researchers under the TRIPP Centre on DTC route rationalisation, looking at routes, frequency, waiting and transfers across Delhi.
The central question is simple: can a network become clearer and more dependable without losing the everyday connections people already rely on? The slider below is an illustrative way of expressing that idea.
MAKING THE EVERYDAY CITY MORE HUMAN.
Galilee Studios is MOAT's design arm, where urban research begins turning into physical interventions.
We work at the human scale: gullies, walking connections, shaded edges and small public spaces. The approach is community-led and starts with how a place is already used.
THE ARM THAT TURNS OBSERVATION INTO INTERVENTION.
Work at the human scale where ordinary routines become city life.
People who use a place are part of the design process itself.
Design for sitting, walking, meeting, playing, waiting and moving.
THIS IS WHERE GALILEE STARTS ON THE GROUND.
Said-ul-Ajaib is an old South Delhi village between the Qutub-Mehrauli landscape and Saket. Its name is linked to Sayyid-ul-Hujjab Maruf, a 14th-century noble and chamberlain in the court of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, whose khanqah once stood here. Over time, “Hujjab” evolved into “Ajaib” and the colloquial “Saidulajab”.
Today its narrow gullies are passage, front yard, social space and infrastructure at once. Our first pilot asks how small design changes can improve comfort and accessibility without erasing the everyday life already there.
The work begins with field notes, conversations and mapping before any intervention is proposed.
THE GALI IS NOT LEFTOVER SPACE.
Atishay and Adwitiyaa do not come to the city with the same obsession. That difference is the point.
Atishay's fascination with cities begins with movement: trains, transfers, buses, streets and the walk between a station and someone's home.
For him, transport and urban design are part of the same question: how can a city become easier to navigate, more accessible and more human?
Adwitiyaa absolutely loves buses: the routes, stops, passengers, neighbourhoods and the view of the city from the window.
Their wider interest is in everyday urban life, especially gullies, markets, pavements and the ways people adapt shared space beyond what a plan says should happen.