Seldom do built-environment studios step out of their screens in the daily rush of deliverables and submissions. We at ideate restarted our adda sessions to step away from drawings, deadlines, and deliverables for a bit and sit together to listen, talk, and engage with the humans around us.
For our first adda of 2026, we invited a longtime friend of the practice, Dipayan Mazumdar, to spend an unhurried evening with the team. He’s a seasoned communications professional turned music curator and spends his time these days as a beloved chef!
Over an hour and a half, the conversation moved through work, routine, food, music, politics, and everything that quietly shapes how we understand workplaces, workpeople, and work environments, kitchens in particular. What made it special was how personal it felt: people speaking about what excites them, the concept of cloud kitchens, kitchens as economic infrastructure, recipes, and the things they care about outside office hours. For us at ideate, this is a small, recurring space where we can be students again, learning from friends, and letting those stories slowly influence how we practice engaging with spatial contexts!
