Namrata Dewanjee writes about cities, buildings, and objects, and is interested in what design reveals (and conceals) about gender, power, and the urban condition. She trained as an architect and is routinely sidetracked by difficult questions: Why does convenience feel like control? How does the built environment tell you what is important? Or why do we love to hate trends but follow them anyway? Her thesis, a speculative fiction about the palimpsest of civic spaces and the slow collapse of sites of dissent, won a national design award and probably wouldn’t get built (which is kind of the point). Her writing lives in Elle Decor, Architectural Digest, and anywhere design is up for a conversation.