I’m Yash Motwaney a second-year ARCHITECTURE student at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. I grew up in Mumbai, in a city constantly in motion, yet always full of tiny, quiet moments: a clothesline swaying on a terrace, cracked tiles holding years of footsteps, a plastic chair left out in the rain. Somewhere in those unnoticed things began my relationship with space. I didn’t call it design back then. I still hesitate to — because what I’m most drawn to is not always the built form, but the people who live around it, the habits they form, and the stories they leave behind.
My work — and the way I learn — leans into observation. I’m more interested in how a window holds a breeze than in how perfect the frame is. I believe spaces are not backdrops, but participants. They don’t just hold life; they shape it. I tend to design with restraint — minimal in form, rooted in material honesty, and guided by the rhythms of everyday use. My influences are quiet ones: a stone step worn soft, a corridor that frames morning light, a bench where strangers begin to speak. These details, often left out of drawings, are where I feel design speaks its truest language.
Beyond the studio, I write — not just to document, but to slow down and notice. Writing helps me make sense of what I feel, and what I want to carry forward in my work: vulnerability, context, memory, and slowness. My reflections live on Medium, where I write about love, identity, and the weight of remembering in a fast-moving world. If my design is about shaping space, my writing is about staying still inside it.
THANK YOU FOR READING!!! I’m Yash Motwaney a second-year Architecture student at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. I grew up in Mumbai, in a city constantly in motion, yet always full of tiny, quiet moments: a clothesline swaying on a terrace, cracked tiles holding years of footsteps, a plastic chair left out in the rain. Somewhere in those unnoticed things began my relationship with space. I didn’t call it design back then. I still hesitate to — because what I’m most drawn to is not always the built form, but the people who live around it, the habits they form, and the stories they leave behind.
My work — and the way I learn — leans into observation. I’m more interested in how a window holds a breeze than in how perfect the frame is. I believe spaces are not backdrops, but participants. They don’t just hold life; they shape it. I tend to design with restraint — minimal in form, rooted in material honesty, and guided by the rhythms of everyday use. My influences are quiet ones: a stone step worn soft, a corridor that frames morning light, a bench where strangers begin to speak. These details, often left out of drawings, are where I feel design speaks its truest language.
Beyond the studio, I write — not just to document, but to slow down and notice. Writing helps me make sense of what I feel, and what I want to carry forward in my work: vulnerability, context, memory, and slowness. My reflections live on Medium, where I write about love, identity, and the weight of remembering in a fast-moving world. If my design is about shaping space, my writing is about staying still inside it.-Y.
