ABSTRACT
Ranade sort of wandered into the field of architecture when she joined the Centre for Environment Planning and Technology (CEPT) University in Ahmedabad in 1990. It was a hop away from home and did not ask for a great HSC score, and her mother, who had once wanted to be an architect, seemed to think it was a great idea. Her first couple of years passed in kind of a daze while she learnt to negotiate the new culture of the campus. Though she did well academically and enjoyed herself while working, she did not have a grip on architecture. It was only sometime in the third year of her undergraduate studies – when she began to reflect and write about architecture – that she got a hang of things around her. Living independently, away from the protected environment of her family during her training at Edgar Demello’s office in Bengaluru, was another turning point. She loved the discipline as well as the freedom of working in an office. Her subsequent fellowship to ETH in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, as an exchange student from CEPT in 1994 furthered her independent thinking.
