Dhruv Gulabchande, recently named one of RIBA Journal’s Rising Stars for 2024 and Curation Panel Member for London Festival of Architecture 2025, is the founder and moving force behind the non-profit mentoring community, Narrative Practice.
And, with National Mentoring Day in only a matter of days (Sunday 27 October), it is the perfect opportunity to celebrate this impactful support system and the power it can have in shaping the lives of young architects in training.
How did Narrative Practice begin?
In the four and a half years since its inception – beginning when Dhruv was contemplating how he could assist young people during the COVID-19 pandemic – Narrative Practice has evolved considerably. From regular monthly sessions hosted by his own London-based practice, it has now grown into a mentoring taskforce that partners with some of the capital’s largest practices to support young architects from underrepresented backgrounds.
Over time, Dhruv has built a network of 20 or so volunteer mentors (and friends) from large and small practices across London and he reports that his community has engaged and helped an estimated 740 mentees so far.
Raised in a diasporic family reliant on the welfare state, Dhruv overcame significant socio-economic challenges to succeed in architecture. Despite growing up in council housing in Bradford, he moved to London in 2010 for university, supporting himself through both undergraduate and postgraduate studies. He is now an Associate Director at Southwark-based HFM Architects and an Associate Lecturer of Technical Studies at UAL Central Saint Martins.
With parents of South Asian heritage, raised in Mozambique’s Portuguese community, who arrived in the UK as asylum seekers via Lisbon, Dhruv explains that his mentoring approach is rooted in his desire to provide the kind of personal development support he wished had been available to him while navigating multiple cultural identities.
“We are trying to create the sort of opportunities I wish I had for people from different backgrounds,” he says. “Mentoring doesn’t have to be about race or gender, or disability, it can be for different socio-economic backgrounds too. Essentially mentoring is about working with like-minded mentors.”
How did the idea develop?
During the pandemic, while working full-time and teaching undergraduate design studio, his initial idea was to provide free one-to-one virtual mentoring to anyone from around the world, who felt isolated from their institutions. The initiative reached Melbourne, Hong Kong, Syria, Barcelona, Ireland, Texas, Calgary, Peru and the Maldives, to name just a few, in addition to workshops in Islamabad as well as working with an RIBA-accredited School of Architecture in Bogota.
Despite the initial success, Dhruv says it became clear that he could not personally answer every question, or, in some cases, speak the necessary languages, which led to the first evolution of the Narrative Practice model – reaching out to his immediate network to match mentees with mentors who could address their specific questions.
As the pandemic lifted, the need for local community-building became much more apparent to Dhruv. In developing the in-person sessions in London, he applied a similar model of mentor-mentee choreography, introducing a booking system where mentees were able to share in advance what they hoped to gain from the sessions. His aim was to ensure there would always be a mentor to address the mentee’s needs.
He recalls one PhD student who was looking to discuss ‘robotics in architecture in a future lifeworld’, and he was pleased to be able to say: “I know just the person you should talk to”.
From late 2023, Narrative Practice began collaborating with some of London’s largest practices to address problems of underrepresentation, working with the likes of AHMM, Fathom and Wilkinson Eyre and many more in joint mentoring events.
In its current format, a typical mentoring evening for 40 young people features a 10-table setup, with each mentee having a 30-minute session booked with their mentor. Beyond these structured sessions, mentees can engage with others in the room, including professionals from the hosting practice, informally ‘networking’ and building peer connections.
“I don’t think there is another long-term mentoring programme in the UK other than ours where they help to find specific people you can have a conversation with,” says Dhruv.
Natural progression of the programme has introduced workshops, talks, and office tours, designed to break down the barriers of approachability often associated with larger practices, creating a more open and accessible environment for mentee engagement.
What happens in the sessions?
Practices already have their own internal mentoring frameworks, yet they continue to invite Narrative Practice to collaborate.
Why? Dhruv explains that it’s a testament to the distinctiveness of the sessions. Internal mentoring, no matter how well executed, typically focuses on team dynamics, project performance, and career development from a technical standpoint.
His sessions, however, go beyond these typical workplace conversations, focusing on personal circumstances and challenges that are often overlooked.
Whether it’s building confidence or addressing imposter syndrome in a profession often viewed as privileged, these sessions are centred on the individual. Mentors begin with questions about how the mentee is feeling and their self-perception – not as an employee, but as a person – before exploring their questions to hand. These open discussions are free from the usual constraints of project performance or employment-related issues, allowing for more meaningful and personal reflections – “simply, a supportive sounding board”.
“Our mentors tend to be from underrepresented communities,” he says. “In that sense, they’re easy to relate to for our mentees. Most importantly, they might. By providing mentorship by like-minded people, hopefully students will look up to them, see themselves in their mentors as a path to success.”
What does RIBA offer when it comes to mentorship?
RIBA facilitates its own Future Architects mentoring scheme for architecture students every year, bringing practices into education to support the next generation. In 2023/24, 1500 students across 45 RIBA-validated Schools of Architecture participated in its scheme, collaborating with 375 Chartered Practices.
This flexible programme is a way to gain invaluable experience in practice, providing students with a unique insight into the profession, alongside helping build a network for the future.
For architects working within RIBA Chartered Practices, the Future Architects mentoring scheme is an opportunity to connect with RIBA Schools of Architecture and support students of architecture to prepare for a life in architectural practice. By taking part, they will also be eligible to record this for CPD points.
Read more about the Future Architects scheme and explore additional resources like videos.
Thanks to Dhruv Gulabchande, founder of Narrative Practice and Associate Director at HFM Architects
Text by Neal Morris. This is a Professional Feature edited by the RIBA Practice team. Send us your feedback and ideas.
RIBA Core Curriculum topic: Inclusive environments.
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