What the practice does
Direct Create Projects is the advisory practice of Cultural Intelligence. On every engagement, the practice operates as the cultural intelligence layer alongside the design team. The practice researches, synthesizes, frames, recommends, and guides; it does not design interiors, does not fabricate, and does not manage construction. The relationship to the architect or the design team is parallel, never hierarchical.
The product is a Culture Stack, a place-and-purpose Study a designer builds on. The process that produces it is Culture Stacking. The five stages, Scoping, Fieldwork, Mapping, Argument, Edition, are the same across hospitality, residential, institutional, and publication work. The vertical changes; the method holds.
The selected work below is the evidence. Each project carries its own page with the brief, the cultural findings, the methodology notes, and the image catalog. The work is the proof, and the work is dated.
Selected engagements
Birla Niyaara Phase 2, Worli, Mumbai
Read the full case study. For Birla Estates, the 110-slide Culture Stack at Worli, Mumbai, designed alongside Foster + Partners. Delivered 21 May 2025. The deepest deliverable in the practice’s archive and the benchmark document for Culture Stacking. Mumbai read as accumulation, with bidriware, Dhokra, and the Paithani grammar bound into a single luxury-residential argument.
Alila Fort Coorg, MULA Two Directions, Karnataka
Read the full case study. For Seabird Resorts, the 2026 Culture Stack for a luxury hospitality property in Coorg, Kodagu, operated under the Alila brand. The MULA Two Directions Study reads the Kodava cultural substrate and the Western Ghats forest ecology as a single coherent property positioning, with a coffee-and-honey agricultural thread running through.
The Dadar Edit, Narrative Threads, Mumbai
Read the full case study. For Broadway Malyan, three handmade floorcoverings for the firm’s Mumbai studio at the Bandra Kurla Complex. Two are handwoven, the third is hand-tufted. Kharad from the Tejsi family workshop in Bhuj. Panja dhurrie from Shankar Lal Mali’s loom in Dausa. Bhadohi tufting from Raj Kumar’s workshop in Uttar Pradesh. Mumbai written in wool and cotton. Delivered August 2024.
Future of Tradition, the published platform
Read the platform page. The Future of Tradition Substack opened on 24 August 2024 and now carries seventeen essays through September 2025. The Jaipur Dialogues workshop convened at SUM House across 30 January to 1 February 2025. The “What is Culture Code?” deck is the workshop’s spine and continues to travel as a standalone talk. Together they are the public articulation of the methodology.
The advisory boundary
Across every engagement, the practice holds the advisory-implementation boundary. The Culture Stack informs the work; the design team authors the spatial and material outcome. On Birla Niyaara, the interior architect translated the cultural findings into door details and material palettes. On the Dadar Edit, the master artisans translated the cultural argument into the loom. On Alila Coorg, the architectural team at Dar and Wagh holds the spatial execution. Direct Create Projects holds the cultural argument across all three, and the line is named in every service order.
How to commission work
Engagements begin with Scoping. The practice and the client agree on the project’s governing question, the audience, the constraints, and the deliverable shape, before any fieldwork begins. The fee structure is tranched against the five stages, with the largest weight on Argument and Edition. The default deliverable is a Study, delivered as a deck that reads as a narrative of Chapters and Exhibits. The Study is the start of the work, not the end; the Commentary continues as long as the designer is reading from it.
To open a conversation, write to rajeev@directcreate.com.