Kartik sensed from an early age that pursuing a design career would enable him to combine his aptitude for science with a keen interest in the arts. During his Bachelor of Architecture studies in India, environmental design captured his attention and prompted him to intern with a local landscape architecture firm. There, he gained practical experience in developing construction drawings, along with a desire to study landscape architecture at the postgraduate level. Kartik moved to Canada and completed his MLA at the University of Manitoba, in 2021. He views landscape architecture as a holistic discipline that integrates wilderness, industrial production, and aesthetics. Several of his Masters projects involved proposing inventive ways to enhance natural cycles – growth and decay, floods and ebbs – to purify polluted watersheds and renew the biodiversity of cultivated land. At PLANT, his current projects include the landscape for Ryerson University’s Science Building, and a block context master plan that initiates a municipal works yard’s transformation into a new neighbourhood.