Safder Machilakath

Safder Machilakath trained as a civil engineer and practises as a built environment consultant. He is co-founder and Principal Consultant of URU Consulting LLP in Kozhikode, and leads URU Design Services LLC, the practice’s Dubai studio, established in 2025.

He began on construction sites. After graduating in civil engineering from MES College of Engineering, Kuttippuram, in 2013, he worked as a project engineer. In 2015 he founded URU with three school friends who had also become engineers. They started from one conviction, and it still organises the practice: architecture and engineering practised separately produce worse buildings and worse outcomes for clients.

A decade on, he leads design across homes, resorts, schools and workplaces in Kerala and Karnataka, and commissions in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Many of his clients are Malayali families living abroad, for whom a house in Kerala is less a daily address than the place the whole family gathers. He works with clients directly, in English, Malayalam or Hindi.