Nisha Mary Poulose is a builder of ideas. The young architect shot herself into limelight when her ideas about urban development earned her the second prize in a national contest organised by the Union Urban Development Ministry. She received the prize from Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Coming from a family of engineers in Kochi, Nisha looks beyond brick and mortar to find answers to the challenges of a cityscape. Pursuing a Master of Science programme in Europe, she focusses on international cooperation in urban development.
Nisha went to the Pallikoodam school in Kottayam up to the 12th standard. After the school life that let loose her imagination, she joined the SRM University’s School of Architecture and Interior Design in Chennai and passed out with first rank. Instead of launching a rewarding career as an architect, she flew to Europe to build on her ideas about humanism in architecture.
She is pursuing Mundus Urbano, an inter-disciplinary programme jointly offered by four European institutions. She completed the first year of the programme in Darmstadt in Germany and moved on to Grenoble in France. Once the course is completed in September, Nisha hopes to join an international organisation.
Nisha is the daughter of Muttathottil Poulose Mathew, the chief engineer at Lakeshore Hospital, Kochi, and Bibi Poulose, an HR manager at Muthoot Finance. Her younger brother Mathew Poulose is an engineer in Doha.
The Mera Shehar, Mera Sapna (My City, My Dream) contest was an attempt to seek innovative ideas from youngsters for building Smart Cities. Contestants were asked to answer 14 questions. Nisha is the only woman and the only Malayali to get a prize in the contest. In the first category, which asked for common solutions for all cities, Shravan Shankar came first and Nisha second.
Sharad Mohindru and Kumresh Kumar Sharma got prizes in the second category on Smart Solutions for transport problems while Rajeev Kumar Dubey and Jayesh Vani secured prizes for their ideas in using IT in improving government services.