Arjun Kothari

Projects

UUrban design BBuild MMapping 33D model

Shopping Cart GardenLow-cost mobile gardens bringing fresh food to local communities that lack access BNew York City 2026

Go Gardens! is a social enterprise solution that empowers and equips local communities to feed and nourish themselves with fresh, healthy, and affordable produce through portable shopping cart gardens, giving people greater control over their own food production.

Role: [ ]
Location: New York City
Year: 2026
Program: Harvard Crimson Business Competition, Food Insecurity Challenge

Go Gardens! deck (PDF)

Taking apart a discarded shopping cart — [Caption]

Go Gardens! title slide — Go Gardens! deck

Design slide labeling the cart garden parts — Design

Implementing Go Gardens! slide — Implementing Go Gardens!

Logo sketches

embARC[One-line description] UBerkeley, CA 2025

[Short intro]

Final project, Community Development

My pavilion is a circular structure that was designed to exemplify community development. The pavilion, inspired by my two abstractions of growth and spikes, shows the harsh reality of the life of an egg, as an embodiment of modern-day society: humans grow up only to be engulfed by societal norms, losing their individuality. My pavilion promotes community engagement by allowing people of all ages and abilities to enjoy amenities such as a bonfire pit, an accessibility ramp, benches, and an open field, in order to escape from society, work, classes, stress, and the world of conformity and enjoy the moment. The open field around the main structure encircled by bushes, juxtaposes a natural escape to the bustling city of Berkeley.

Role: [ ]
Location: Berkeley, CA
Year: 2025
Tools: Rhino 8, Adobe Illustrator

Pavilion site model with trees — Final project: pavilion model

Pavilion site model from above — Final project: plan view

Pencil drawing titled Growth — Final project: Growth

Pavilion plan drawing — Final project: pavilion plan

Map redesign and three street sections of Berkeley — Map redesign and street sections

Hand-drawn site mapping sketch — Site mapping

Five views of a 3D modeled folly — 3D folly, modeled in Rhino 8

Colored render of the folly — 3D folly render

Section drawing of a small house — 3D house: section

Plan drawings of a small house — 3D house: plans

Pencil drawing of a cactus and cloud — Cactus drawing

Abstract line drawing labeled Spikey — Spikey

Two redwood tables in a parking lot — Table build

Design Lab[One-line description] B[Place] 2025

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Year: 2025
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Metal raised garden bed — Community garden

Wooden planter with red flowers on a rooftop — Planter

Shipping Container[One-line description] 3[Place] 2024–26

[Blurb]

Role: [ ]
Location: [ ]
Year: 2024–2026
Type: Cargotecture

Case study slide on Keetwonen Container City, Amsterdam — Case study: Keetwonen Container City, Amsterdam

Floor plan of a 20 foot shipping container home — 20 ft container plan

Floor plan with circulation arrows — Floor plan and circulation

Hand-drawn exterior elevation with materials list — Exterior elevation

Interior views of a play area and a library — Interior views

3D model of a shipping container tiny home, cut away — Tiny home: 3D model

Top view of the tiny home model — Tiny home: top view

Title slide: Tiny Homes Villages Case Studies — Tiny Homes Villages Case Studies, Humanities Night

GIS Maps[One-line description] MAtlantic City · Mt. Whitney 2024

[Blurb]

Role: Cartography
Location: Atlantic City, NJ; Mt. Whitney, CA
Year: 2024
Tools: QGIS

Map of projected sea level rise for Atlantic City — Projected Sea Level Rise for Atlantic City, New Jersey

Elevation map of Mt. Whitney — Elevation Map of Mt. Whitney

3D Prints[One-line description] 3[Place] 2025

[Blurb]

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Location: [ ]
Year: 2025
Type: [ ]

Research

The Conquest of the “Gigantic Green World”: The 1964 Brazilian Military Dictatorship’s Harm on the Amazon RainforestIOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science IOSR-JHSS 2026

Today, over 20% of the Amazon Rainforest has been destroyed and thousands of Indigenous people have perished. This is not an accident. In fact, its systematic destruction can find its roots heavily in the policies of the Brazilian military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. While historians have studied Brazil’s dictatorial government’s harm to the Amazon, environmentalists have documented ecological deforestation, and scholars have reported Indigenous displacement, existing scholarship fails to recognize these as interconnected historical processes relating to Brazil’s colonial history. This paper argues that Brazil’s military government employed Amazon colonization campaigns and Indigenous extermination efforts disguised under the guise of national development and Operation Amazonia, deliberately reviving and institutionalizing colonial extraction patterns and cementing the Amazon as a frontier for both local and global exploitation. By situating the dictatorship within Brazil’s broader history of Amazonian governance, tracing colonial patterns, and studying Indigenous resistance movements, the essay aims to understand the destruction of the Amazon as more than an environmental crisis but rather a colonial and labor issue. Because contemporary Brazilian development programs echo 1960s strategies, only by studying the Amazon’s history and understanding environmental conservation, Indigenous sovereignty, and labor justice as inseparable struggles can Brazil begin to undo the colonial habits it still practices today.

Journal: IOSR-JHSS
Issue: Vol. 31, Issue 10, Ser. 3, pp. 44–61
Published: October 2026
Keywords: Colonial Americas History, Brazilian History, Environmental Science, Indigenous History

Read the paper (PDF) DOI: 10.9790/0837-3110034461

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Projects A

Research B

Projects

Research