Future Environments: Arup's Radha Mistry on Curiosity of Spirit and Equitable, Inclusive Futures

By Julia Gamolina

Radha Mistry is the Americas Region Foresight Leader at Arup, teaches futures studies in the Master of Architecture programs at Southern California Institute of Architecture, and spends most of her time exploring the impact of emerging drivers and how they’ll change the way we design and make things in the future.

Most recently, Radha established the Foresight practice at Autodesk and taught speculative design on the Design MBA program at California College of the Arts, and Parsons (The New School) MFA Transdisciplinary Design program. She has also exhibited during the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and worked on design-led community engagement initiatives in cities across Europe. She is based in Los Angeles. In her interview with Julia Gamolina, Radha talks about developing her expertise to become a mediator of future environments, advising those just starting their careers to build out their skillset for times of uncertainty.

JG: You have a really interesting role at Arup, and since we're a magazine dedicated to showcasing all the careers that are possible in creating the built world, could you please tell our readers what "Foresight Leader" means and what your role entails?

RM: There are variations on this definition, but foresight is the practice of critically and intentionally considering how nascent and emerging issues unfolding today could affect our company, our clients and partners, and our projects in profound ways tomorrow. Think of it as a process for challenging your current assumptions about a possible future and replacing them with a new set of considerations. We explore this across social, technological, economic, ecological, and political forces of change (STEEP). While foresight isn’t about prediction — it’s more about provocation — there are certain forms of thinking about the future that get you pretty close. We take that perspective and think deeply about impact based on what we believe the world is going to look like in ten, twenty or even thirty years, and what that future looks like when we consider people and planet, and how we can help build it.

I lead the Arup’s Foresight practice across North and South America. On a day-to-day basis the role is research and strategy oriented, but the true strength of the work lies in how we collaborate with teams across Arup and clients and partners who are designing and building. One of the ways we do this is to use scenario development as a critical tool in our work. I like to think of scenarios as a means of prototyping what could be, in the same way you might consider a visualization or physical model of a future built project. It’s meant to be pulled apart and interrogated. This helps answer questions like, what does the future of passenger rail look like in the US? Or how might we imagine a 100-year resilience plan for a neighborhood in Los Angeles that’s regenerative for citizens, the city, and the natural environment?

Going back a to the beginning, you studied architecture both in New Orleans in London, two very interesting and specific contexts. What did you learn about an approach to architecture from both places?

I didn’t know what kind of designer I wanted to be until Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. When we were allowed back into the city after the storm, I remember thinking, "I wonder if fifty or a hundred years ago, the architects that were building for the city at the time anticipated a hundred-year storm like this." Who were those architects building for? Who was left behind in their visions and plans? I came to understand during this time that cities are inherited, and I felt I had an obligation to those who came after to build better. Buildings become future artifacts and so we must reckon with what the world looks like now and how the world changes around this system you’ve placed in the ground.

When I moved to London, I witnessed the city preparing to host the 2012 Olympics. The city was undergoing massive change, working to build for a large influx of people from all over the world, while ensuring that the legacy of the Olympics didn’t deplete the city long-term. The folks that were being designed for weren’t hypothetical. They had very real hopes and fears and expectations. During this time, at Central Saint Martins, I was being asked to challenge and interrogate what I’d learned from architectural practice and bring it to the real people that would engage with these projects, amplifying their stories in the design process. Much of the work was based in community and in social and experiential research. I learned that I had to consider the whole system within which I was designing, the political and social implications, the economic and ecological bits. London was where I first learned of foresight as a practice and encountered the language to describe what I was interested in. The city had such a deep futures community, and I was eager to learn about anything that seemed to touch futures studies.

“I didn’t know what kind of designer I wanted to be until Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans...I came to understand during this time that cities are inherited, and I felt I had an obligation to those who came after to build better.”

— Radha Mistry

Coming back now to the expertise that you've built, tell me about how you got your professional start with the foresight focus.

I don’t have formal training in foresight; my knowledge and expertise has come via apprenticeship which started with Arup’s foresight team in London. I was most familiar with Arup’s engineering practice, but while at St. Martins we did a project hosted by Arup’s foresight team. The brief was to envision the Highstreet of the Future, twenty years out. Once it was over, one of Arup Foresight’s directors at the time offered me a contract-based research position.

Some of my early projects included research exploring the future of museums, the future of the high-rise, and this project where we envisioned future Londoners in 2022, ten years after the Olympics. I also collaborated on a project with a friend about future rituals around food for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale. I was reading everything I could get my hands on, going to different lectures, and events, and I was lucky to be mentored by folks like Josef Hargrave and learn from peers like Tobias Revell. I was just learning through immersion and experimentation in all the ways I could. I spent almost two years with the team in London, and then took a position with Arup to lead foresight projects in San Francisco. I got to build up my consulting muscle with foresight client work.

How did you then get to Autodesk?

I was approached by Autodesk after a brief stint in research at Steelcase. About a month into my tenure at Autodesk, the company dissolved the group I’d been hired into, and I was pulled into Corporate Strategy. It was during this time that I came to realize we didn’t have a cohesive sense of what “future” looked like internally. There wasn’t a uniform point of view on what we thought was changing in the world and what we believed should be prioritized as far as future drivers of change that could impact our business and our customers.

To learn why, I decided to conduct what I called a “foresight audit.” Along with a research partner from the strategy team we went around Autodesk asking, “How do you think about the future, what kinds of tools and methods do you subscribe to, and what value do you see in thinking about the future?” We then compiled our learnings and socialized the outputs across the company. Our thesis was that we could better capitalize on change and come from a place of agency around the future if we had one common language and a practice for how we addressed emerging changes. After really being able to demonstrate the value of foresight in practice, we ended up rebranding the corporate strategy team into Strategic Foresight. I got to start up that practice and work to build up foresight fluency across the organization and guide our planning for Autodesk’s 10-year visioning process. An example of the work looked like this research project in 2018 which contributed to this LA28 Olympics partnership six years later in 2024.

“Four Futures” illustrations byYimeIsGreat.

Tell me also how you bring your specific expertise to your teaching.

At SCI-Arc, integrating a futures oriented syllabus into an architecture curriculum feels like a natural fit. It’s something I wish we had during my architectural education. Within a foresight context, we can conceptualize buildings as future artifacts because we must consider the context within which we’re building and think about how society changes. My classes incorporate futures theory and then put it into practice as applied foresight. I’ve always believed that architecture practitioners are well-equipped to be thinking about futures, and that it’s imperative that we do.

Last semester, we took a page from Near Future Laboratory’s practice, and I asked students to design an artifact for a “mundane future.” Not to say our lives aren’t unique and special, but human beings have basic needs for us to survive and hopefully thrive. For example, it’s one thing to design a sexy and shiny electric vehicle that has a sleek silhouette and a minimalist interior, but it’s another to think about how that vehicle operates when the electric grid is compromised, and a hurricane or snowstorm has hit your city. How do you get groceries, or evacuate if needed? How do you pick up your kids from school? And how will all this change ten and twenty years from now? Sometimes, it’s easier to consider a system and the implications of operating within that system when we can break elements and issues down at scale from global drivers to personal stories, artifacts, and experiences.

Wild Card Scenario: As old patterns of biodiversity are disrupted and new patterns emerge, regular animal swarming events will ravage cities. The image depicts a speculative artifact, everyday armor for the urban citizen. Image by Radha Mistry.

Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?

I went into architecture school knowing I didn’t want to be an architect, but I loved the process of designing and making. The biggest early challenge was figuring out where I fit in as a designer, and having access to the vernacular for what I was interested in. Also, the discrepancy between school and professional practice felt pretty jarring. The realities of professional practice felt disorienting and I didn’t feel well-prepared for that leap. And, I had to make sure that I had a paying job because I didn’t have the benefit of a financial safety net beyond what I could provide for myself. As a result, working for some of the more experimental, research-oriented studios offering only monthly stipends seemed out of reach. Then, I had to defer my London plans for a year to take care of family matters back home in Los Angeles. I remember feeling so stuck, and ultimately had to find my own path which felt foggy at times.

Over time of course I learned through experience and mentorship. It’s something I make sure to discuss with my students now, the importance of finding mentors who could relate to my experience. When I was coming up in the foresight field, I wasn’t aware of many women or people of color in the space. The mentor figures I had access to hadn’t experienced life in the way I was experiencing it. While I’m very thankful to the individuals who took the time to teach and guide me as I was making my way into futures studies, I sometimes felt like I was flying a little blind in carving out a career path. I’ve realized though that every experience is just a moment, for better or for worse. We come into the job market thinking the next gig you get is the most important decision of your life, but really, it's one moment in your story and learning journey.

What have you also learned in the last six months?

In the spirit of full transparency these last six months have been pretty hectic — I was pregnant with baby number two, had him in early July, and we have a toddler already and recently moved house! I’m currently four-weeks post-partum at the time of this interview, so I’m re-learning my relationship to my body, my brain, and myself as a mother of two, as a designer with less time to dedicate to my practice for the moment, as a partner, and friend. It’s forced me to be very intentional and selective with what I prioritize and when. And to be patient.

But, up until my belly got too big to sit at the wheel, I got back into ceramics. The last time I’d done ceramics was twenty years ago in college. So, it was wonderful to be able to come to the skill feeling like a total novice and just make with my hands as an act of exploration and inquiry. I’m also learning about creative practices that aren’t directly related to futures studies. My husband has a creative studio focused on golf called 12onMondays, and they did a big editorial shoot back in March. I got to do a lot of the styling for the shoot. It was absolutely out of my comfort zone, but I learned so much during that process and was introduced to so many artists and creatives.

“The biggest piece of advice I could give is to stay curious — pick up new skills, build new relationships, and be willing to pivot your career to an adjacent practice. This will serve you in times of uncertainty.”

— Radha Mistry

Who are you admiring now and why?

In the futures space in particular I’m consistently inspired by the work of Toronto-based studio From Later, Anab Jain of Superflux, Asia Clarke who’s a designer and artist based in Ghana, Tobias Revell based in London, and Monika Bielskyte who developed the Protopian Futures Framework. These practitioners all found their way into futures practice on paths that were often meandering and unconventional, very much like my own experience. But they also come from unique backgrounds and points of view in their own right.

Thalia Gochez, an LA-based photographer; Nu Goteh and the folks over at Deem Journal; Hannah Traore of Hannah Traore Gallery in New York; Simrah Farrukh, an SF-based photographer; and brands like BODE and NorBlack NorWhite are also captivating in the way they’ve cultivated their creative vision and process. There’s such a richness to the story-worlds they’ve built through their respective mediums.

Finally, omen like Melody Ehsani, Mara Hoffman, and Sarah Kim of By Way of Us, who are forging new paths for what motherhood can look like as an artist or creative. This is something I’m personally interested in as someone who loves being a mama but does not believe it should be my whole identity. I’m trying to parse what I do and do not want to model for my kids as they become whoever they will be.

What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And, what does success in that look like to you?

I remember being in architecture school, and my first instinct was to make my mark in the world and create something novel. Once I stepped outside of myself though, I came to realize, my role as a designer was not only to put my vision out in the world—it was also and maybe more importantly to be a mediator for these future environments. I believe my purpose and core mission is to collaboratively build more equitable and inclusive futures — to make space for all kinds of communities in our future visions.

My take on success has changed over the years, but I think at this stage it would be marked by two things: the first is that when I say foresight, most people will know what I mean or will have had some level of exposure to the field even if it’s to say they’ve heard of it. And the second would be that there are more womxn and people of color in the futures space. This is already happening, and it’s been encouraging to see, but we need more of us! Success for me personally is that I get to keep learning and evolving who I am and what I do as a designer. I might not want to be a futures practitioner for my entire career. Maybe I’ll be a ceramicist one day! I don’t know, but what I do know is that I hope to maintain curiosity of spirit and an openness to change and uncertainty.

Drivers of Change cards. Courtesy of Radha Mistry.

Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?

The biggest piece of advice I could give is to stay curious — pick up new skills, build new relationships, and be willing to pivot your career to an adjacent practice. This will serve you in times of uncertainty. Don’t put pressure on yourself to make the exact right decision about your career or fear getting pigeonholed for a particular skill or capability. Take each opportunity as a moment to learn and see where it leads you. Not every moment is going to feel inspiring or creatively stimulating, and that’s ok. Trust in the ebbs and flows.

And, find mentors and peers and build community around you. It’s so important for both your personal growth and professional development to have a group of people who can support you as your career moves forward, and as you evolve as a practitioner.